The minimum wage can play a vital role in lifting hard-working families above the poverty line.
Adam Cohen
Being unemployed - or working at minimum wage - is rough in the best of circumstances.
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.
Alcee Hastings
I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever - no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights - for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance.
Andrea Leadsom
If you go from $7 to $15 in a very short period of time, potentially that could have a negative effect on some economies because that is a very big jump. And you're saying to businesses that employ a large number of minimum wage workers, your payroll is basically going to double. That could have a negative impact. It would have to be studied.
Andrew Cuomo
I believe in $15 as a minimum wage.
Standing athwart ineffective, feel-good legislation shouting, 'Stop!' is seen as a betrayal of those struggling to get their footing on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Yet raising the minimum wage hacks the lowest rungs off the ladder altogether. But economic logic doesn't wash with liberals who are intent on inflaming class warfare.
Angela McGlowan
Any success I have had is thanks to Labour governments that provided the council house, minimum wage, tax credits and Sure Start children's centre that enabled me to achieve it.
Angela Rayner
Despite broad public support, raising the minimum wage is always difficult owing to the disproportionate influence that wealthy firms and donors have in Congress.
Angus Deaton
On the campaign, I've had the privilege of advocating for important issues that affect all women, like demanding equal pay for equal work, pushing to raise our minimum wage, and promoting the idea of paid family leave.
Ann Callis
The worst job I ever had was working in the call center of an electric company. I sat in a tiny cubicle getting yelled at every day so I could earn minimum wage.
Anna Todd
European centralism, European statism, the communitization of sovereign debt, a Europeanization of social systems and of the minimum wage would be the wrong way.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high.
Arthur Laffer
Those who claim that they need cash because they are unable to pay labourers are those who are not paying minimum wages.
Arundhati Bhattacharya
It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.
Barack Obama
Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.
I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs aren't paying enough to keep families out of poverty.
Barbara Mikulski
No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.
Benjamin Todd Jealous
Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'
Bernie Sanders
While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25. What an outrage!
The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States, and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.
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.
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.
Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.
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?
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.
If I hadn't gotten into the entertainment business, I would be probably making minimum wage still.
It is Trump who plays with the tax code to pay no taxes; it is Trump whose Trump-brand products are made overseas by cheap labor; it is Trump who hires undocumented workers from Poland to work on his projects, then refuses to pay them minimum wages.
I've been very outspoken that the minimum wage needs to rise.
I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage.
For many young people, the minimum wage is a stepping stone to higher employment levels.
Illinois will only get economically healthy if we stop focusing on growing minimum wages and start focusing on growing everyone's wages.
I think we've got to be competitive here in Illinois. It's critical we're competitive. We're hurting our economy by having the minimum wage above the national. We've got to move back to the national.
When I was young, I had minimum wage jobs as a busboy, flipping burgers and parking cars.
Incremental increases in the minimum wage won't address the underlying skills and investment gaps in Illinois.
I will advocate moving the Illinois minimum wage back to the national minimum wage.
Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.
Those of us in the Congress must confront and overcome Republican intransigence to increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance and protecting food stamps.
It is an uphill fight to persuade workers that the minimum wage is not in their interest.
Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.
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.
The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box.
As we move beyond Women's History Month, I am committed to advancing legislation to raise the minimum wage and ensure women are paid equally for equal work.
When we talk about the minimum wage, we have to ask ourselves what it is that we owe both our workers and employers. I think clearly we owe them fairness.
I have never said I was against raising the minimum wage.
I spent my 20s earning minimum wage decorating cakes for a living. But one day, I looked in the mirror and realized I wanted more, for me and my people. I saw too many Native Americans struggling, and I realized we should have a voice in who our elected officials are.
Why not add benefits for making healthy food choices, provide a transition bonus for getting off food stamps, or increase job training opportunities and income - raising minimum wage?
Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.
Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.
In the 1960s, a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.
