Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997.  If adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years.  Americans today are working more and making less simply to get by as the costs of healthcare, gas, housing and education have done nothing but skyrocket.  Wages have either remained stagnant or declined for many working families while corporate profits continue to grow and the wealthiest of Americans continue to get richer.

It’s time that hard working Americans have the opportunity to earn a fair wage, because no American who works full-time, all year, should live in poverty.  Establishing a living wage is desperately needed by working families who are trying to do the right thing by staying off welfare but are struggling to make ends meet.

Since I came to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2001, I have worked tirelessly to increase the minimum wage for our nation’s working families because it’s impossible to support a family and make the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour.  I am a cosponsor of H.R. 2429, The Minimum Wage Act of 2005.  This legislation would gradually increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years. 

Reports show that more than 80 percent of Americans support an increase in the minimum wage, but the Republican majority in the House of Representatives continues to use procedural tactics to prevent a vote on this long-overdue increase.  In fact, they’ve even held up our last remaining spending bill, the FY07 Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill, because of this issue.      

Increasing the minimum wage would lift people up and allow them to provide for their families.  I commend the Arkansas Legislature for recognizing this need and for passing into law an increase in Arkansas’s minimum wage to $6.25 an hour effective October 1^st of this year.  Raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would do even more for working families and it would provide them a significant boost.