{"id":986,"date":"2014-04-26T15:07:27","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T15:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=986"},"modified":"2014-04-26T15:07:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T15:07:27","slug":"president-obamas-weekly-address-congress-needs-to-act-on-minimum-wage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=986","title":{"rendered":"President Obama&#8217;s Weekly Address: Congress Needs to Act on Minimum Wage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Hi, everybody.  In my State of the Union Address, I talked about pizza.  More specifically, I talked about a pizza chain in Minneapolis \u2013 Punch Pizza \u2013 whose owner, John Soranno, made the business decision to give his employees a raise to ten bucks an hour&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/25GOnaY8ZCY?feature=player_embedded\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A couple weeks ago, I got a letter from a small business owner who watched that night.  Yasmin Ibrahim is an immigrant who owns her own restaurant \u2013 Desi Shack \u2013 and plans to open another this summer. <\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what she wrote.  \u201cI was moved by John Soranno\u2019s story.  It got me thinking about my \u2026 full-time employees and their ability to survive on $8 an hour in New York City.\u201d  So a few weeks ago, Yasmin put in place a plan to lift wages for her employees at both her restaurants to at least $10 an hour by the end of this year. <\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s the thing \u2013 Yasmin isn\u2019t just raising her employees\u2019 wages because it\u2019s the right thing to do.  She\u2019s doing it for the same reason John Soranno did. It makes good business sense. <\/p>\n<p>Yasmin wrote, \u201cIt will allow us to attract and retain better talent \u2013 improving customer experience, reducing employee churn and training costs.  We believe doing so makes good business sense while at the same time having a positive impact on the community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yasmin&#8217;s right.  That\u2019s why, two months ago, I issued an Executive Order requiring workers on new federal contracts to be paid a fair wage of at least ten dollars and ten cents an hour.<\/p>\n<p>But in order to make a difference for every American, Congress needs to do something.  And America knows it.  Right now, there\u2019s a bill that would boost America\u2019s minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour.  That would lift wages for nearly 28 million Americans across the country.  28 million.  And we\u2019re not just talking about young people on their first job.  The average minimum wage worker is 35 years old.  They work hard, often in physically demanding jobs. <\/p>\n<p>And while not all of us always see eye to eye politically, one thing we overwhelmingly agree on is that nobody who works full-time should ever have to live in poverty.  That\u2019s why nearly three in four Americans support raising the minimum wage.  The problem is, Republicans in Congress don\u2019t support raising the minimum wage.  Some even want to get rid of it entirely.  In Oklahoma, for example, the Republican governor just signed a law prohibiting cities from establishing their own minimum wage. <\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why this fight is so important.  That\u2019s why people like John and Yasmin are giving their workers a raise.  That\u2019s why several states, counties, and cities are going around Congress to raise their workers\u2019 wages.  That\u2019s why I\u2019ll keep up this fight.  Because we know that our economy works best when it works for all of us \u2013 not just a fortunate few.  We believe we do better when everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead.  That\u2019s what opportunity is all about.<\/p>\n<p>And if you agree with us, we could use your help.  Republicans have voted more than 50 times to undermine or repeal health care for millions of Americans.  They should vote at least once to raise the minimum wage for millions of working families.  If a Republican in Congress represents you, tell him or her it\u2019s time to give the politics a rest for a while and do something to help working Americans.  It\u2019s time for \u201cten-ten.\u201d  It\u2019s time to give America a raise. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks, and have a great weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Hi, everybody. In my State of the Union Address, I talked about pizza. More specifically, I talked about a pizza chain in Minneapolis \u2013 Punch Pizza \u2013 whose owner, John Soranno, made the business decision to give his employees a raise to ten bucks an hour&#8230; A couple weeks ago, I got a letter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/oweeka.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}