Chairman Miller: After Ten Years, a Raise is on the Way for Minimum Wage Workers

Thursday, May 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and sponsor of legislation to raise the minimum wage, said that minimum wage workers are set to see their first pay raise in a decade after the House of Representatives voted today to approve legislation to increase the national minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. The Senate is also expected to approve the legislation and the President is expected to sign it.

Below are Miller’s prepared remarks on House passage of the legislation.

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This is a great day for America’s workers. 

Today the House once again passed the minimum wage increase -- and this time we expect this bill to be signed by the President.

America's minimum wage workers have been waiting a long time for a raise.  The last time they saw an increase was nearly 10 years ago. Since that last increase, in 1997, the value of the minimum wage has dropped to its lowest level in over half a century.

Last summer, I had the honor to meet a woman named Sheryl Wade in Louisville, Kentucky.  Sheryl told me about life at the minimum wage.  She couldn't afford housing for herself and three sons.  She had to move in and out with relatives and friends.  Her boys had to constantly change schools and change friends.  She could not afford health care.  Sheryl is a hard-working American, sick and tired of barely living paycheck to paycheck, not making enough to get by.

Madam Speaker, her day has come.

When we increase the minimum wage with this bill, from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour over 2 years, the poorest working families in this country will see a $4,400 increase in their annual income -- enough to pay for 15 months of groceries for a family of three.

Thanks to this increase, in 2009, a family of four will move from 11 percent below the poverty line to 5 percent above the poverty line.

Thanks to this increase, 13 million workers will see their pay go up, directly or indirectly.  That includes 7.7 million women and 3.4 million parents.  Over 6.3 million children will see their parents’ income rise. 

This raise in wages is long overdue. Thanks to the hard work of religious, civil rights, labor, and community organizations -- and American voters and working families -- it is finally coming to pass.

I’m proud of the work this Democratic Congress has done.  This House, under new leadership, is putting working families and America’s middle class first.  What a change that is -- and we’ve only just begun.

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