Charles E. Schumer Quotes

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

In Manipur, mostly the top player's family background is very poor. I also come from a poor family, so we have to do more hard work to get money and a better life.

Now, instead of loading up your jalopy and heading for California, you take a second, badly paid job; 'The Grapes of Wrath' has turned into 'Nickel and Dimed.'

I think people are very focused on the economic issues. They want an economy that works for everybody.

Families are struggling to put bread on the table, send their kids to college and take care of their basic needs. America needs a political revolution.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.

Anyone who's tried to pay a heating bill, fill a prescription, or simply buy groceries knows all too well that the current minimum wage does not cut the mustard.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works a full time job should have to live in poverty. That's a fundamental value proposition, an article of faith in our country that I know an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line.

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

Economic issues are a subset of social justice. Social justice is unimaginable without economic justice. Isn't that obvious?

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

President Obama believes that income inequality is one of the most pressing matters facing the nation. If we are going to be a country that provides ladders of opportunity and believes in a thriving middle class, then we have to raise the minimum wage.

I would like to solemnly reaffirm, that poverty is not a fatality.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

Prohibiting Poverty

Nobody who works full time should have to live in poverty.

I have to address the economic conditions of everybody, including, and perhaps first, those who are poor.