Wage and Price Controls
Kennedy was a longtime advocate of raising the minimum wage. He helped pass the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which incrementally raises the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over a two-year period. The bill also included some controversial tax cuts for small businesses and higher taxes for many $1 million-plus executives. Kennedy was quoted as saying, "Passing this wage hike represents a small, but necessary step to help lift America's working poor out of the ditches of poverty and onto the road toward economic prosperity".
In the 1970s, Kennedy joined with fellow senators Ernest Hollings and Henry M. Jackson in a press conference to oppose President Gerald Ford's request that Congress end Richard Nixon's price controls on domestic oil, which had helped to cause the gasoline lines during the 1973 Oil Crisis. Kennedy said he believed ending the price controls (which have been blamed for increasing America's dependence on foreign oil and were ended in 1981) would produce "no additional oil."
Read more about this topic: Political Positions Of Ted Kennedy
Famous quotes containing the words wage, price and/or controls:
“I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him can fright my faith.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”
—Richard Price (b. 1949)
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)