House Votes to Boost the Minimum Wage
After a Decade with no Increase, Nearly 13 Million Workers Would See Wages Rise under Democratic Legislation Approved Today

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, DC -- After nearly a decade during which Congress failed to increase the national minimum wage, 13 million American workers are set to get a pay raise under legislation passed today by the U.S. House of Representatives to boost the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour.

U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, authored the legislation -- H.R. 2, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 -- which the House approved this afternoon with an historic, bipartisan vote of 315 to 116. The minimum wage bill was taken up as the second of six measures that Democrats pledged to pass within the first 100 hours of the new Congress. Yesterday, the House approved a package of measures to improve homeland security.

"What a difference an election makes. I am proud to say that today, after nearly a decade, the House has taken an important step forward to give some justice to minimum wage workers," said Miller. "Democrats have pledged to grow and strengthen America's middle class and today's vote is a down payment on that commitment."

"Nearly 13 million workers would get a raise under the legislation we passed today.  The fundamental principle behind this bill could not be simpler: people who work hard every day ought to be paid and treated fairly," Miller said.

Miller urged the Senate to quickly pass a minimum wage bill without tying it to any other policy changes.

"I urge my colleagues in the Senate to take this legislation and pass it quickly. Businesses of all sizes have been the beneficiaries of one tax cut after another over the last several years, but the minimum wage has not been raised a penny since 1997," said Miller.

"Doing the right thing for workers and the smart thing for the economy need not nor should be conditioned on passing a single additional tax break that our country cannot afford. Minimum wage workers have waited far too long for a raise they desperately need. Working families cannot afford for Congress to take it slow any longer."

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, H.R. 2, will raise the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour in three increments over two years and two months. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the legislation will provide a wage increase to 13 million workers nationwide, nearly 80 percent of whom are adults, and 3.4 million of whom are parents with children under the age of 18. 

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that, among workers who would directly benefit from a minimum wage increase to $7.25 over the next two years, nearly half -- 48 percent -- are the "household's chief breadwinner -- that is, no higher-paid family members live with them."

Miller's legislation will also extend the minimum wage, on a separate timetable, to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Oceans where labor abuses have been rampant.  The Commonwealth has its own minimum wage and its own labor and immigration laws.  Miller has tried for more than a decade to reform the Commonwealth's labor and immigration laws and was blocked at every turn by now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his congressional allies, including the now former Majority Leader, Congressman Tom DeLay.

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