Tom Perez Quotes

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.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

living wage

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

Everybody is entitled to solid living wages, which we don't hear from Hillary Clinton. She's quick to talk about parity, but parity at poverty, and that's not adequate.

I've been very outspoken that the minimum wage needs to rise.

I believe in $15 as a minimum wage.

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

This is the middle-class equivalent of raising the minimum wage.

Prohibiting Poverty

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

We must organize. We must protest. We must cry out in a loud voice that America needs a raise. We must keep working until workers in this country don't have to struggle to make ends meet.

I'm not sure there's another way to help move more people out of poverty than to raise the minimum wage.

There is no question that we, as a country, need to deal with economic inequality across the country, and we need to make sure we have good-paying jobs for everyone.

On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.

I've always thought my main concern is to alleviate the burdens on people, who were earning less money, perhaps than £80,000.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

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.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

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

And my approach has always been to stand up and speak out on behalf of the economic rights of people.