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“Finally, after 11 years, we will have a vote to raise the minimum wage. This is America. You play by the rules, you work hard, you are supposed to be able to make it. But that’s not the way it is,” Norcross said. “Less than two years ago, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle made sure that the top 1% got their raise as they’re stepping on the American worker. Today’s the day that we set the record straight and give opportunity to those who need it the most.” Norcross invoked Henry Ford, who famously paid his workers the highest wages in the automotive industry at the time and said that the act would “give a raise to the people who need it most to survive”.

“Americans have been rightfully demanding lower healthcare costs and today the House responded to their call,” said Congressman Norcross, a former IBEW and SJ AFL-CIO leader who spent years negotiating workers’ benefit packages. “Congress has been continually delaying this policy instead of enacting an outright repeal, which means workers and negotiators have been unable to properly plan or bargain during three-to-five year wage and benefit negotiations. By repealing this tax, we’re giving workers the certainty they need to plan their benefit packages, and working families are safeguarded from an undue increase to their healthcare costs.”

“These grants will help advance cutting-edge projects in South Jersey and help ensure students and teachers are ready for the demands of the 21st century economy,” said Congressman Norcross, a member of the House Committee on Education and Labor. “As our hometown researchers work to find cures for diseases and our local teachers gain new tools for the classroom, South Jersey will be able to continue innovating and thriving.”

“I’ve worked for minimum wage and I was once a young single dad raising my son and having to balance work, family life and a checkbook. Back then it was hard. Today, for far too many Americans, it’s nearly impossible.

No American who works fulltime should be living in poverty. Today’s CBO report confirms that when people finally receive $15 an hour, they’ll spend more, become less reliant on government assistance and give our economy a needed boost – just like past federal minimum wage increases where families were lifted up and unemployment went down."

Today, as New Jersey’s minimum wage rises from $8.85 an hour to $10 an hour, U.S. Congressman Donald Norcross (NJ-01), a member of the House Education and Labor Committee and an electrician by trade, Rob Asaro-Angelo, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, New Jersey Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D-Camden, Burlington), Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt (D-Camden, Burlington), Camden County Freeholder Jonathan Young and Ja’Quaya Townsend, a minimum-wage worker, marked the occasion by talking about living wages and calling on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. (Click here to view or download live video from the press conference.)