Russ Carnahan Quotes

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

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.

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.

No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty.

Today, the Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years. Let me repeat: The Federal minimum wage purchases less than it has at any point in the last 50 years.

I thought I was answering a question that I had heard that was about increasing the minimum wage - would I consider that. So let me just go on record and say this: I am not for decreasing the minimum wage. I did not say that and that is not something I would consider.

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.

The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.

Mr. Speaker, the time for an increase in the minimum wage has not just arrived; it is long overdue.

During Seattle's successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, 'If $15 is so good, why not $50?' It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

These Americans are among the working poor with full-time jobs earning $5.15 an hour. Millions fall into this boat, even more when you consider that the poverty line has not been adequately adjusted to reflect the true level of poverty in this country.

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

You get paid more at McDonald's than you do under the existing minimum wage.

The minimum wage is important for many nations

My question becomes, 'If we want to empower people with higher pay, there are probably better ways to do it that are more enduring than simply a federal mandate on wage level.'

If Donald Trump wants to raise the minimum wage to $15, yes, I will work with Donald Trump.

Minimum wage laws have never worked in terms of having the middle class attain more prosperity.