Additional Comments by Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

All photos by Deborah Weiner

"Let Justice Roll" Martin Luther King Day celebration

January 16, 2006 - Quincy, MA

"Since I first went to the US Senate, I have had the opportunity to fight for the minimum wage. We have to think, who are the recipients of the minimum wage? They are men and women of dignity...these are proud individuals. They may be making the minimum wage, but they want to do the job, they want to do it right, and they want to do it well...and they deserve our respect. They are assistants to teachers in schools who work with our children...they are those that work in senior citizens homes looking after the elderly...people who sacrificed for their children so that their children could have opportunity. The ‘golden years' are a test of a civilization...whether people who sacrificed and built the nation should live in peace and respect...those who care for them deserve the same.

"If you look at who is affected by the minimum wage, many of them are women, and many of them are women with children. How those children are going to develop in those families is an issue...it's a moral issue, a family issue, it's a civil rights issue, because so many of those who earn the minimum wage are people of color...so it's a fairness issue. And there is something that the American people understand, and that is fairness, and you and I know that the American people believe that if someone is going to work forty hours a week fifty-two weeks a year, they should not have to live in poverty in the richest country in the world. I want to give fair notice to all of those who voted against the minimum wage increase this last year...I give you good news, because those people will get another chance to vote, time and time again. This is a bipartisan issue... it's been nine years since we had an increase in minimum wage...[and] during that time, the Congress voted themselves seven pay increases...you talk about morality. You talk about people speaking about family values: we have a moral issue, a fairness issue, and we are not going to back down."

Kennedy went on to speak about health care, which he has crusaded for over decades: "Let me mention a word on decent health care...I have been passionate on this for years and years. When I filed the first comprehensive health care legislation thirty one years ago... it was a hundred million dollars, we are now spending a hundred trillion dollars on our deficit...thirty three cents of every dollar we spend on health care is non-clinical. You get that down to twenty-six or twenty-seven cents...there isn't a business in the world that has that kind of expense. We can do this if we get the hands of the greedy off the till.

"Our family has been faced like most others with challenges on health care. President Kennedy's son was born and died of hyaline membrane disease, and if he had been born a few years later, he would have lived. What we could do with research on diabetes, on Alzheimer's, on other diseases, is breathtaking. I had a son who lost his leg to cancer. I was at Children's Hospital in Boston, and [Senator Kennedy's son] Teddy was on an NIH [National Institutes of Health] trial [treatment plan], and it looked hopeful in terms of the particular procedure...And I sat in the waiting room listening to parents talking about mortgaging and selling their houses...they needed $3600 every few weeks for two years...and they were asking the doctors what kind of chance their child would have because they couldn't afford the cost of the trial program. That is unconscionable, that we can't fashion a program that can relieve families. More than half the bankruptcies in this country are for health care. There isn't a family here that doesn't know that you are a pink slip away from bankruptcy."

Concluding his remarks, Kennedy offered his observations on the confirmation hearings now underway for Judge Samuel Alito to join the United States Supreme Court. He said, "I want to mention one final thing that bothers me: I believe strongly in equal justice under the law. We had an American Revolution around this issue. And we have a law of the land that is part of our heritage. I believe very deeply that you think I should vote in this Supreme Court confirmation process in a way that will support our march toward progress. We don't want to have to re-fight these battles on race and equality and gender...we need to have someone on the Supreme Court—not that they have to tell me how they will vote—who will have a core commitment to the general march toward progress made since Dr. King began his work, over fifty years ago. We can't have anyone on the Supreme Court who will take us back."

Kennedy Keynotes Greater Boston Martin Luther King Day Living Wage Event

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