Mitch McConnell Quotes

6.6 million people will benefit from a rise in the minimum wage.

Now all of you know that right now the federal minimum wage is a starvation wage.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

People can't live on $7.50 an hour.

Most of America doesn't pay dishwashers $10.

House Republican leadership have refused to allow a clean minimum wage vote. Close to 15 million Americans will be affected if we did this. Do Republicans really expect a family to live on less than $11,000 a year?

When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we're not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We're talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed.

Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages - below the poverty line for a family of two. That's unacceptable.

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

I don't know of a single economist who disagrees that when you raise the minimum wage, you kill jobs for the poor.

It takes so long for the folks who are earning minimum wage to finally see a little bit of a rise... that it takes a little nudge, I think, from government.

For many young people, the minimum wage is a stepping stone to higher employment levels.

The people at the bottom who are working but working at relatively low wages need some help.

I do not support a livable wage.

One of the biggest disagreements between Sen. Hagan and I - I don't believe we should be building an economy that's founded on making ends meet on minimum wage. It's impossible; it's a stepping stone.

Even if we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, it's still hard to prosper on that wage.

I know firsthand that many employers who comply with other labor standards still hire the undocumented. Many businesses pay the minimum wage and have barely tolerable working conditions because there are sufficient undocumented workers willing to accept those terms. If we care about low-income workers in this country, we need to create pressure to improve their economic condition by reducing the supply of unauthorized workers.

I want us to raise the national minimum wage, because people who live in poverty should not - who work full-time should not still be in poverty.

There's a pretty equitable distribution in the restaurant industry of how money gets paid, except for in the kitchen. The kitchen is the lowest-paid group of people.

[A] family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That's wrong. That's why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, 19 states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.

Why don't these companies making big profits just pay people better than $14 an hour? It's kind of simple. When you're making record profits, why not? I don't get it.

MCJOB: A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice for people who have never held one.

It would help the poor people who need jobs. Minimum wage is a mandate. We're against mandates so why should we have it? It would be very beneficial.

The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.

Global inequality is such an abstract concept, simply because there is no global government. Telling people in rich countries who have had no increase in real incomes, stagnant median wages and so on, that on the other hand global inequality is going down because people who are much poorer than them are getting richer - it's something that maybe they would like in an abstract sense, because everyone is happy there are fewer poor Chinese, but you may not be as happy if these Chinese are taking your job.