Bill Pascrell Quotes

The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.

There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

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

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

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.

Raising the minimum wage, as President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address, tends to be more popular with the general public than with economists.

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.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.

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

I believe in $15 as a minimum 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.

The minimum wage should be a living wage.

President Obama has made a minimum wage increase a focal point of his economic agenda.

Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.

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.

The current minimum wage simply is not supporting Ohio's working families.

The minimum wage was enacted in 1937 during the Great Depression and it has been increased 16 times. It's a well-established economic policy to help families.

It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels.

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.

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

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

The sad fact is that in communities such as mine, the minimum wage is the maximum wage.

living wage