“This Memorial Day people all across Wyoming and this great nation will remember our nation’s veterans and the sacrifices they have made to keep our nation strong and free. We will acknowledge their service and express our appreciation,” said U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. Monday, May 26, is Memorial Day and Enzi is asking all Americans to take the time to honor those who have fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice to serve and protect our country.

“Freedom isn’t free. It comes to us at a great cost,” said Enzi. “Members of our armed forces gave their lives to protect and preserve our cherished American way of life, to defend the rights and responsibilities that come to us from our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Since the Civil War, Memorial Day has been reserved to recognize, respect and honor America's sons and daughters who died serving their country.

“Diana and I will join all of you on Memorial Day and say a prayer that God will keep those who serve our nation safe and bring them home to us so that they, too, may soon be a part of all the activities of Memorial Day. We will also keep those who have died and their families and friends in our thoughts and prayers. We owe them all a debt we will never be able to repay,” said Enzi.

For more information regarding the history of Memorial Day or for ideas on how to commemorate our heroes, visit www.usmemorialday.org.

In a new video recorded this week, U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said an increase in the minimum wage would hurt, not help, Americans looking for a job. The video addresses questions and comments Wyoming constituents sent to him during the past couple weeks through Facebook and Twitter, from phone calls to his D.C. and Wyoming offices, and from email and written letters.

Minimum Wage

“All of us would like to make more money. I would like everyone to make more money. Money is usually related to your education, your skills, and how long you have been on the job. Just raising them with a federal mandate, one-size-fits-all for the United States, does not work. The problem is it will raise everyone’s wages. If you have someone making $7.25 and they go to $10.10, you have to raise the person making $9 up to about $12. You’ve got to keep that separation based on the amount of training and skills and the work that they do. And it has to go all the way up the chain, otherwise it’s not fair to people who have more skills and have been there longer, and are able to produce more. And that is usually what wages have been given out for.”

“If those factors are what the increase in pay is for, it doesn’t cause an inflationary cycle. But, if you just raise wages, and force that on all the people up the line, everyone makes more, but somehow that has to be paid for. And that means it has to raise the price of the goods that you buy. So if get more, you have to pay more, you didn’t make any improvement in your lot in life. Except the federal government benefits, because the upper ones will move into a higher tax bracket.”

“There are some disadvantages to an automatic raise like that, that isn’t tied to an increase in skills, or productivity, or length of time that you have been at the business. The value to the business is what allows people to pay the wages, not some Washington designed law that says everyone ought to make more.”

Senator Enzi records “Collecting Common Sense from Wyoming for Washington” videos every other week when the Senate is in session. He encourages Wyoming residents to continue sharing their thoughts, ideas, and questions and he will address as many of the topics as possible. For individual responses, constituents should email him through his web page – www.enzi.senate.gov.

U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said we need to make sure that the benefits promised to our veterans are delivered and we need to weed out duplication in education spending in a new video recorded this week. The video addresses a few questions and comments Wyoming constituents sent him during the past couple weeks through Facebook and Twitter, from phone calls to his D.C. and Wyoming offices, and from email and written letters.

Child Care and Development Block Grant Bill

“I really appreciated it when I was in this coffee shop and it had an old stove in there and I saw a dad who was explaining to his first and third grader how the damper and the flue on the stove worked. I went over and I said, ‘Are your kids homeschooled?’. He said, ‘Absolutely. They’re homeschooled from the time they wake up until the time they go to public school, and from the time they get out of public school until they go to bed’. Parents are the ones that have an obligation to make sure that their kids are educated.

“The child development block grant is for children whose parents may not have the ability to do that, or the time to do that, and there used to be 119 of the programs…Most of them have turned into babysitting programs. I was able to get that down to 69 while I was the chairman. Since that time, we’ve worked to get that down to 45, but 45 is still too many.

“The amendment that I put into the child care and development bill, would reduce it still further and would come up with a plan that hopefully would get it down to maybe six, and under one department. Right now those childcare programs may have to put in grants from maybe 12 or 15 different agencies to run the program they’re running right now and each of those requires a whole bunch of paper work, so it will be simpler for them too, but it should save the federal government a lot of money and get this closer to being back to the states.”

Vote on veterans bill

“I really appreciate those questions because what we wound up with was kind of an “omnibus-anything-you-can-think-of” for veterans benefits, with none of it being paid for, and what we were trying to do was close the gaps of the retired veterans who lost a percent on their Cost of Living Adjustments, could get that back. That’s where it all started. And then as it works in government, if it’s worth reacting to, it’s worth overreacting to.

“Senator Bernie Sanders threw in everything he could possibly think of, and just in veterans’ hospital cases alone, the way that he opened it up for veterans who haven’t even been injured before, we would have an overload of the veterans system. And in most states, there’s already a backlog of the veterans services at the hospitals. We don’t want to add to that, we want to make sure that whatever’s done, can be done, and will be done right. We want to make sure that the veterans benefits promised is delivered. That’s not the case now, it needs to be.”

Senator Enzi records “Collecting Common Sense from Wyoming for Washington” videos every other week when the Senate is in session. He encourages Wyoming residents to continue sharing their thoughts, ideas, and questions and he will address as many of the topics as possible. For individual responses, constituents should email him through his web page – www.enzi.senate.gov.