Cleo Fields

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I offer one final amendment printed in the Record, amendment No. 5.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, this is a very simple amendment. It simply provides that each of the housing authorities have or create an advisory council. We have just voted whereby members can serve on a board; only one tenant, as the bill was presently perfected, only one person can actually serve on a board who lives in a housing facility. This amendment is very simple. It provides for an advisory board. That advisory board will not be 100 percent residents. That advisory board will be 60 percent residents, which means that the advisory board will take 60 percent of its membership from the actual residents of the housing facility, and they will simply make recommendations, not rules and regulations, but only recommendations to the actual board. We would hope as a result of this, this board will take those issues into consideration. Mr. Chairman, many housing authorities today have implemented advisory councils or advisory boards simply because they feel that is a true way to get input from the residents who live in public housing. This is a very straightforward, noncontroversial amendment that allows an individual to serve on an advisory board for the facility that he or she lives in, to make recommendations, recommendations only, to the board itself as to how they feel different rules should be implemented upon them that they have to live with. Mr. Chairman, I do not know if there is any opposition to this amendment, but that is what it does.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the distinguished gentlemen from Arkansas, New York, and Illinois, and the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia would allow me to now operate on a controlled time basis, at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to also thank the gentleman to my right for their special order tonight, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank them for their colloquy, and I want to thank them for such a great expression of the issues in terms of bringing this body to a level that this body should be at. I am very encouraged by the gentleman's pledge, and want to pledge to the gentleman that I will be one gentleman who will sign his pledge, and I thank the gentleman for bringing it to the floor tonight to talk about it in a special order.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his words of encouragement. I want the gentleman to know that I want to continue to work hard to remain in this body and to remain a force to change not only the conditions of this country, but the way we do business as Members of Congress. I also want to expressly thank the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] who has agreed to be a part of this colloquy tonight on an issue that is very important to me and an issue that is very important to people all across this Nation, and also the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney] who is going to be joining in this colloquy tonight on the issue of minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about the minimum wage, and why I feel that we should raise the minimum wage. There are people, Americans in this country who work hard every day. They wake up early in the morning, they go to work, they work a 40-hour work shift every week, and they go home. At the end of the day they are still poor. It is not because they are lazy, but it is because we must raise the minimum wage. I am here tonight to offer a plea to this Congress and to you, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the millions of Americans who cannot afford to buy the food at the restaurant that they work at on a day-to-day basis, they cannot afford to sit at the tables that they clean, they cannot afford to sleep in the beds that they make up in hotels, because they cannot afford to check in that very hotel. They cannot even afford to go to colleges and universities and send their kids to colleges and universities that they work at as custodians and janitors. I am here tonight to offer a plea for those millions of Americans, who come in all shapes and all sizes and all colors. Let us take this Congress. We as Members of Congress, we make about $550 a day. To have the audacity to come on the floor of this House and say that people who make $680 a month do not deserve an increase to me is wrong. Tonight I offer a plea for those millions of Americans, because I do think that they deserve a minimum wage increase. I call upon Members from both sides of the aisle to look at this issue and give it some serious consideration, because in all frankness, Mr. Speaker, these people have not had an increase for 5 years. If we look at the history of the minimum wage when it was passed, the act when it was passed in 1938, when this Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, the wage was set at 25 cents. Then this Congress came back and changed the minimum wage 17 times. Seventeen separate times this Congress voted to raise the minimum wage. Now it has been since 1991. The last time the minimum wage was raised in this country was in 1991, so this country has gone 5 years without a minimum wage increase. I think it is long overdue. If we look at the history of the minimum wage, we will find that the minimum wage was increased on an average of about every 3\1/2\ years. We are now at 5 years, which means we are a year and a half late on raising the minimum wage. Why do we raise the minimum wage in the first place? Why did this Congress raise the minimum wage, or even start a minimum wage in 1938? It is because it is no more than fair to give people the opportunity to earn a decent wage. No one would sit or stand before this podium or any podium tonight on this floor and suggest that inflation has not gone up in the past 5 years. It would be a bit crazy, for lack of a better word, for us to think that a person can buy a loaf of bread in 1996 at a 1991 price. It would not be fair for us to even assume that a person can buy a gallon of milk in 1996 for a 1991 price. If inflation is moving up on an average of 3 percent a year, then it just makes basic sense to give those working people the opportunity to earn a decent wage. The other thing I want to talk about is welfare reform. People talk about it, that we need to put people on payrolls in this country and get them off of welfare rolls. I think they are right. There is not a Member of this Congress who does not want to get people off of welfare more quickly and sooner, in a compassionate way, than I do. But we are saying, ``Get off the welfare rolls and go on the payrolls,'' but we do not want to pay people for the work they do. The best way to decrease the welfare rolls, in my estimation, is to pay people for the work they do. People need to make a decent wage in this country. Think about it; 34 cents a day. We have decent Americans, good Americans, who wake up. They want to provide health care for their children. They want to send their kids to school. They work in restaurants. They bus tables, they make beds, they mop floors, they work at gas stations, and at 40-hour work shifts a week, because they want to be productive. They do not want to be on the welfare rolls. We criticize these people because we do not want to even give them an opportunity to be paid for the work they do. I am happy that the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] is here, who will talk about some of the reasons why we should not raise the minimum wage, and I am going to yield to the gentleman in a minute, but before we do, I am going to yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney] who has joined us to talk about the minimum wage increase as well. I notice that the gentlewoman earlier tonight was on the floor talking about the need to raise the minimum wage. I want to thank her for her tenacity, and I want to thank her for her commitment to try to give people a decent wage in America, because in my opinion, that is just no more than fair. If we want people to get off of the welfare rolls and go to payrolls, then the very least we can do as a Congress is to make sure that they get paid for the work they do. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney].

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentlewoman for her presentation. Before I recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, who is a distinguished gentleman for whom I have the utmost respect, as a matter of fact he and I have shared planes on a number of occasions. As a matter of fact, as recently as this last week, we took the same route here to Washington. I want to thank the gentleman because it is very honorable of the gentleman to stay as late as he is staying to talk about an issue that certainly I feel very strongly about and, of course, the gentleman feels very strongly about, as well. I want to talk a little bit about, and then I want to yield to the gentleman from Arkansas, because I think he may be able to shed some light on this. Because I have heard those who are against raising the minimum wage assert the argument that it would in fact decrease jobs particularly among young people. That it would also have an adverse effect on the economy because people will in fact lose jobs. My assertion and my belief is people did not lose jobs when we raised the minimum wage the 17 times that we did raise the minimum wage in the past, and young people were not thrown out of the work market, which, and I will be quite honest here, as one of the youngest members of Congress, I fight for and advocate for every time I walk on this floor. They did not lose their jobs then, and I suggest that they would not lose their jobs now. If we look at the economy, and I am no economist. The gentleman has been around a lot longer than I have been around, and he has read many more books than I have read because he has been around a lot longer. But I can tell you, it just makes practical sense to me that if you give a person more buying power, then that person will probably buy more. So to say that people will lose jobs as a result of raising the minimum wage to me does not make much sense because if you raise the minimum wage and give a person more buying power and give those producers the opportunity to come in and then take advantage of the products that we have to offer, the goods and services that we have to offer instead of at $4.25, at $5.15, then it just makes sense that that will in fact generate more money in the economy. I have heard the argument, also, that you will also cause prices to go up. Well, I believe in the free enterprise system, and I think that our consumers are smart enough and wise enough to know where to shop and where not to shop. At hamburger stand X, if we have enough insight to raise the minimum wage, if this Congress raises the minimum wage, if hamburger shop X decides to send the price of a hamburger from 90 cents to a dollar, I just fail to understand the logic of hamburger X raising that price of a hamburger without assuming or making the assumption that every hamburger stand in that location or locality will raise the price of hamburgers as well. As a former businessman it would just make sense to me to keep my hamburger at the same price provided that I can and if I have as good a burger as hamburger stand X, then I would suggest that people would come and buy my burger and if enough people buy my burger then hamburger stand X will reduce its burger to a reasonable price. We talk about how we let the free enterprise system grow and work and give consumers the opportunity to make decisions. I just cannot see how people are going to lose jobs if we raise the minimum wage. Let us take it another step. Let us say the hamburgers go up, the price of goods and services go up. You are still going to have to have people who are going to produce these products, who are going to be in these service jobs, to cook the hamburgers, so forth and so on. So people are not going to lose jobs. And if you give a person $5.15 versus $4.25, and you raise the burger by a penny, then that money goes into the economy. I am going to yield to the gentleman because I know the gentleman would like to shed some light on why this will cause an adverse effect on the economy. At this time I yield to my distinguished friend from the State of Arkansas.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Will the gentleman yield on that point?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the gentleman would just answer a few questions for me so I can understand exactly what mode of operation the gentleman is in in terms of his philosophy on the minimum wage. Does the gentleman believe that there should be in fact a minimum wage irrespective, and let us not get into whether or not we should raise it now or in the future. Does the gentleman believe that this country should have a standard in terms of what is the minimum wage for an individual when they enter the work force?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I am asking you as a human being. As either. As a human being, do you think that this Congress should have a standard in terms of a wage when a person enters the work force?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the gentleman would agree to that, then let me just go to first base. The gentleman knows that this country, the American workers, have not received a minimum wage increase since 1991, and I am sure that the gentleman would agree with me that the cost of living between 1991 and 1996 did not go down but it went up. As a matter of fact, inflation is on the average 3 percent a year. So if that is the case, then the gentleman would have to agree with me, or it appears to me that the gentleman would have to agree with me that is just makes basic sense that those low-paid workers, those minimum wage workers deserve the opportunity to have their increase, not commensurate with inflation but in 5 years they are overdue for an increase. Would the gentleman not agree to that?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentleman. I certainly do not want the gentleman to leave. I just wanted a colloquy among all of us. But let me just make a couple of comments before I yield to the gentleman from Illinois. The gentleman stated that he did not believe or feel that we should have a minimum wage at all. That being the case, you take some of these countries across the world that this Congress has passed legislation to even try to censure. You have countries that make Nike tennis shoes at the cost of paying employees 50 cents and shipping them to the United States of America and selling them for $80 to $110 a pair. Certainly the gentleman would not suggest we ought to have that type of slave labor right here in the United States of America. First the gentleman said he was in favor of a minimum wage. Then the gentleman said we should not have a minimum wage at all. I would only suggest to the gentleman that I think a minimum wage is the right thing. Now, lastly, finally, the gentleman stated that it gives employees some sense of knowing that the Government will reward you for an increase versus the increase being dealt with on merits. Let us be realistic. I do not think if we increase the minimum wage that employees for some reason or another are going to sit back and wait for the Government to pass another minimum wage in 6 months or 1 year after that in order to get an increase in salary. We know that all these jobs are on a competitive basis and merit. That is not going to take away the merit system from the private sector. Employers will give increases based on the productivity of that worker. You are a businessman. You own several restaurants. You have had to operate under the minimum wage. It was the law when you had your business. You had to pay employees, you could not pay them below that minimum wage. You gave employees, I am sure, an increase, and it was not based on the Government saying you had to do it. You gave the employees an increase based on their self-worth, their ability to do the job. The Government had nothing to do with that. To suggest that is going to take away that now, it did not take it away then, to me is not a fair assumption.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Realistically speaking, you have to do it based on inflation. You have to take inflation into account. I would never say that the minimum wage of this country should be $25 an hour now, henceforth and forevermore. That would not even make basic sense. The reason why is because a loaf of bread 20 years from now may cost $50. So that would not make economic sense nor would it make basic sense. I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois who has been waiting so patiently. I want to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for his comments. As the gentleman pointed out, many of these minimum wage workers are women. I mean, almost 60 percent, about 57 percent of the people who earn minimum wage, are female. These are the people who wake up every morning and go to work. I think we also, whenever we talk about the minimum wage debate, if you are for getting people off of welfare, then I just cannot understand how one cannot be in the same breath for raising the minimum wage. One of the best ways to get people off of welfare is to pay the people for the work they do. We have been joined by the distinguished gentleman from New York, the gentleman who has advocated the raising of the minimum wage long before I was elected to this Congress, a gentleman who is a strong advocate of not only the working people of this country, but of educators, who was an educator himself. I would like to yield to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] for as much time as he may consume.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Since each of the gentlemen and the gentlewoman have made their opening statements, at this time I am going to allow Members to enter into a colloquy, and I notice the gentleman from Arkansas had a question of the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I will yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from New York and I will then yield to the gentleman from Arkansas for a response.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have left?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming the time, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia for 1 minute.