The Honorable Donna F. Edwards
Raising the Minimum Wage
April 3, 2014
Madam Speaker, I rise today to call on just 25 Republicans to join 195 Democrats to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and to raise wages for tip workers whose $2.13-an-hour wages haven’t been raised in 23 years. The current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has failed to keep pace with the cost of living, leaving families struggling to fill the gap.
Even if you work 40 hours a week at minimum wage, you still live below the poverty line. You rely on taxpayer-funded programs such as nutrition assistance, energy assistance, and housing assistance.
In short, the profit lines of multinational corporations are being subsidized by taxpayers who fill the gap between the mandated minimum wage and what constitutes a fair wage, what people need to live on.
This has an even greater impact for women, who often work for only 77 cents on a dollar; for African American women, 64 cents on a dollar; for Latinos, 58 cents on a dollar. Seventy percent of low-wage workers in this country are women.
So, essentially, we need to raise the tip minimum wage and raise the regular minimum wage. It is the fair thing to do. I call on my Republican colleagues, just 25 of them, to raise the minimum wage.
