minimum wage politics

Congress just gave themselves a $3,300 a year pay raise last week, yet these creeps can't do the same for the people they claim to represent? The last time that the federal minimum wage was increased was fucking 1996. As a direct result America's poor working class find themselves struggling to sustain a quality of living that could possibly be deemed as "middle class" in Pakistan, Vietnam and North Korea. This is unacceptable!

For most working American families, pay has not risen nearly as much as their costs have. Based on a 40-hour work week minimum wage earners take home $10,712 per year before taxes, considerably lower than the poverty level. Members of Congress earned an annual $133,600 at the time the minimum wage was last raised. With their new raise to $168,500 per year, this represents a 26% pay hike over the past 10 years, compared with a 0% increase in the minimum wage.

It is troubling that members of Congress squeal loudly about the inability of companies to pay a higher minimum wage to their employees, yet these same representatives have no problem doling out taxpayer money to line their pockets further during a time of wildly increasing budget deficits. This action represents inexcusable irresponsibility, for which we all share the cost, quite literally.

Today, the real value of the minimum wage is more than $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Approximately 7.3 million workers currently are earning the federal minimum wage. Adults are the majority, 72%, of these workers, 61% of minimum-wage workers are women. More than a third of those working at minimum wage also care for children under the age of 18, with more than 700,000 of them single mothers.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2005, introduced by Senator Kennedy as S.1062 and Representative Miller as H.R.2429, proposes to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 in three steps over two years, benefiting as many as 15.5 million hard working Americans.

This wage increase will give America’s economy a much needed boost, allowing working class wage earners the opportunity to purchase I-pods, refrigerators with water and ice service through the door and second hand late model SUVs.

Seventeen states have already enacted higher minimum wage laws. Evidence from these states and experience with past federal minimum wage increases demonstrates raising the minimum wage benefits working poor families, stimulates the economy and does not cause job loss. 72% of workers who would benefit from this increase are adults, and evidence from the last federal minimum wage increase shows that the average minimum wage worker brings home more than half of his or her family's weekly earnings.

Raising the minimum wage will allow Americans at the bottom of society to save. Currently the national savings rate, an excellent barometer of overall economic health, is at the lowest level since 1933. The 0.5 percent negative savings rate for 2005 followed a 1.8 percent rate of savings in 2004. The last negative rates occurred in 1932, a drop of 0.9 percent, and a record 1.5 percent decline in 1933. In those years Americans exhausted their savings to try to meet expenses in the wake of the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, commonly known as the Great Depression.

Congress should immediately move to enact this legislation; if for no other reason than to mollify mainstream voters outraged by bribery scandals in preparation for the congressional elections in November.