Free The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy by Bill Adler Page A

Republican Members of Congress didn’t blink at giving themselves a pay raise. Yet they deny—and continue to deny—a fair increase for workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. Our Republican friends preach the value of work—and then deny a fair day’s pay for a full day’s work.
    â€”White House Rally for the Minimum Wage,
March 8, 2000
    It is disgraceful that hard-working women and people of color are still battling wage disparities and pay discrimination on the job. There is a wealth of evidence that shows that the wage gap still continues to plague American families, and that wage discrimination continues to be a serious and pervasive problem in workplaces across the country. In spite of the progress we have made, women still earn only 76 cents for every dollar earned by men. African American women earn just 64 cents, and Latinas earn only 54 cents for every dollar earned by white men.
    â€”Statement on Equal Pay Day,
April 3, 2001
    These facts don’t lie. Over the past three decades, the extraordinary benefits of our record prosperity have been flagrantly skewed in favor of the wealthiest members of society. Today, the top one percent of households have more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent combined.
    This extreme and widening disparity is disturbing, especially when so many Americans are working harder and longer. Parents are spending less and less time with their families—22 hours less a week, according to a study last year by the Council of Economic Advisers. Thirteen percent of all Americans are working a second job just to make ends meet. And these extra hours at work mean that the parents have less time to be with their children.
    â€”White House Rally for the Minimum Wage,
March 8, 2000
    A sound economy is the greatest social program America has ever had, the source of our hopes for action on all the other issues facing us.
    â€”Speech, April 2, 1976
    America cannot successfully compete with newly industrializing nations on the basis of which country can pay the lowest wages. It’s a mistake to even try. It makes no sense to run a race to the bottom.
    â€”Speech at the Conference of The National
Association of Private Industry Councils,
February 27, 1995
    The American economy has deteriorated for more than two years, and the patient’s vital signs continue to falter. President Bush and Republicans in Congress have responded by prescribing quack medicine—tax cuts for the wealthy that do nothing to cure the patient’s illness. Even though the patient keeps getting worse, the President just keeps prescribing larger and larger doses of the same quack medicine, with a louder quack.
    â€”Statement on the economy and the
plight of America’s workers,
May 7, 2003
    The aim of tax reform is not to plow up the whole garden but to get rid of the weeds so that we can let the flowers grow.
    â€”Speech, July 1, 1977
    People want to end loopholes in the tax laws, so that those who eat at the most expensive restaurants will pay their bill themselves, instead of making the Treasury foot the bill through tax deductions that are nothing more than food stamps for the rich.
    â€”Speech, September 30, 1978
    This issue [pension plan fairness] presents a stark choice about who we represent here in the Senate. “Which side are you on?” Are we on the side of the workers and retirees who struggle to find some economic security in their old age, or the side of the wheeler-dealers, corporate raiders, and the super-rich?
    â€”Statement on pension plan reversions,
November 11, 1995
    The sad fact is that today small companies and private citizens are Davids without slingshots, competing against corporate Goliaths in wars of attrition which have become increasingly difficult to win. The American people are not just concerned about “big government”—they are also concerned about the control exerted by “big business.”
    â€”Speech,