I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief. And some of them, I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all of you.
My tests for our proposals will be: Will it create jobs and raise incomes? Will it strengthen our families and support our children? Is it paid for? Will it build the middle class and shrink the underclass?
If it does, I'll support it. But if it doesn't, I won't.
Minimum Wage
The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the underclass is also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage.
It rewards work--two and a half million Americans, often women with children, are working out there today for four-and-a-quarter an hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year, that minimum wage will be at a 40-year low. That's not my idea of how the new economy ought to work.
Now I studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum-wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into the job market. But the most important thing is you can't make a living on $ 4.25 an hour. Now --especially if you have children, even with the working families tax cut we passed last year.
In the past, the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue and I think it should be again. So I want to challenge you to have honest hearings on this, to get together to find a way to make the minimum wage a living wage.
Members of Congress have been here less than a month but by the end of the week--28 days into the new year--every member of Congress will have earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum-wage worker makes all year long.
Everybody else here, including the President, has something else that too many Americans do without and that's health care.