I
104TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. R. 1050
To establish a living wage, jobs for all policy for the United States in
order to reduce poverty, inequality, and the undue concentration of
income, wealth, and power in the United States, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEBRUARY 24, 1995
Mr. DELLUMS (for himself, Mr. BONIOR, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. EVANS, Mr.
FILNER, Mr. HASTINGS of Florida, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Ms.
MCKINNEY, Ms. NORTON, Mr. OWENS, Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey, Ms.
PELOSI, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. SANDERS, Mr. TOWNS, and Ms. VELA´ZQUEZ)
introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on
Economic and Educational Opportunities and, in addition, to the Com-
mittees on Government Reform and Oversight, the Budget, and Rules,
for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case
for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned
A BILL
To establish a living wage, jobs for all policy for the United
States in order to reduce poverty, inequality, and the
undue concentration of income, wealth, and power in
the United States, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.
(a) SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the ‘‘A
Living Wage, Jobs For All Act’’.
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS.—The table of contents is
as follows:
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.
Sec. 2. Basic rights and responsibilities.
Sec. 3. Program to implement basic rights and responsibilities.
Sec. 4. Truth in budgets.
Sec. 5. The Joint Economic Committee.
Sec. 6. Authorization of appropriations.
SEC. 2. BASIC RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES.
(a) IN GENERAL.—The Congress affirms the respon-
sibility of the Federal government to implement and, in
accordance with current and foreseeable trends, update
and extend, in accordance with subsections (b) and (c),
the statement by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the
State of the Union message of January 11, 1944: ‘‘In our
days these economic truths have become self-evident. We
have accepted so to speak a second Bill of Rights under
which a new basis of security and prosperity can be estab-
lished for all—regardless of station, rank or creed. Among
these are the following:
‘‘(1) The right to a useful and remunerative job
in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the
Nation.
‘‘(2) The right to earn enough to provide for an
adequate living.
‘‘(3) The right of every farmer to raise and sell
farm products at a return which will provide a de-
cent family living.
‘‘(4) The right of every business, large or small,
to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair
competition and domination by monopolies at home
or abroad.
‘‘(5) The right of every family to a decent
home.
‘‘(6) The right to adequate medical care and
the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
‘‘(7) The right to adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and un-
employment.
‘‘(8) The right to a good education.’’.
(b) UPDATE AND EXTENSION OF BILL OF RIGHTS.—
In updating and extending the 1944 bill of rights de-
scribed in subsection (a), the Congress hereby proclaims
the following:
(1) The right of every adult American able and
willing to earn a living through paid work to a free
choice among opportunities for useful and productive
paid employment (part- or full-time) at decent real
wages or for self-employment.
(2) The right of every adult American unable to
work for pay or find employment pursuant to para-
graph (1) to an adequate standard of living that
rises with increases in the wealth and productivity of
the society.
(3) The right of all employees to organize and
bargain collectively in this country and other coun-
tries, to abstain from any form of work or purchas-
ing when necessary to protect such right, and to re-
ceive full diplomatic, economic, and other support
from the Federal government in helping make this
right effective in other countries and eliminating
policies or activities that undermine such right.
(4) The right of every adult American to live
and work in a safe and sustainable physical environ-
ment.
(5) The right of every adult American to such
widely available health services as may be necessary
and desirable to extend both life expectancy and ac-
tivity expectancy, reduce mortality and disability
through such non-contagious afflictions as cancer,
heart disease, stroke, infant mortality, high blood
pressure and obesity, reduce the incidence of such
contagious diseases as the human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV), the virus that causes the acquired im-
mune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and tuberculosis
and raise the life and activity expectancy of men to
those of women, and reduce the incidence of all
forms of morbidity among ethnic minorities to the
level of others in the population.
(6) The right of every adult American to cur-
rently available and fully explained information on
recent and foreseeable trends with respect to sources
of pollution and on products and processes that
threaten the health or life of people and on employ-
ment, unemployment, underemployment, economic
insecurity, poverty, and the distribution of wealth
and income, with detailed attention to various
groups in the population and broader panoramic at-
tention to such matters in each region of the world.
(7) The right of every adult American to vote
and to seek nomination or election without having
that right debased by the domination of electoral
campaigns by large-scale private financing of cam-
paign operations or by the scheduling of elections
during weekdays or in other manners that may
interfere with regular working hours.
(8) The right of every adult American to per-
sonal security against any form of violence, whether
in the home, in the workplace, on the streets and
highways, or the Nation or world as a whole.
(c) PERSONAL
RESPONSIBILITY.—The Congress
hereby recognizes that every person benefiting from the
rights set forth in subsections (a) and (b) has a personal
responsibility to promote her or his health and wellbeing,
rather than relying exclusively on health services by oth-
ers, to provide for appropriate care of children and elderly
parents, to protect the environment to the best of her or
his individual ability, to work productively, to register and
vote, to involve herself or himself in public concerns and
in ongoing education and training, to speak out against
corruption or injustice, and to cooperate with others in
promoting the nonviolent handling of inevitable conflicts
in the household, the workplace, and elsewhere.
(d) RESPONSIBILITY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.—
Each Federal agency and commission, including the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, has the re-
sponsibility to plan and carry out its policies, programs,
projects, and budgets in a manner designed to help estab-
lish and maintain conditions under which all adult Ameri-
cans may freely exercise the rights or responsibilities rec-
ognized in subsections (a), (b), and (c). Each such Federal
agency or commission shall not directly or indirectly pro-
mote recession, stagnation, or unemployment as a means
of reducing wages and salaries or inflation.
SEC. 3. PROGRAM TO IMPLEMENT BASIC RIGHTS AND RE-
SPONSIBILITIES.
(a) ESTABLISHMENT OF PROGRAM.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—The President shall establish
a program—
(A) to establish and maintain conditions
under which the rights and responsibilities rec-
ognized in section 3 may be exercised; and
(B) to implement the economic and social
obligations of the Federal Government under
the Employment Act of 1946, the Full Employ-
ment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, the
Charter of the United Nations, the Charter of
the Organization of American States, the Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights, and the
International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
(2) GOALS AND GENERAL PERSPECTIVES.—The
program established under paragraph (1) shall set
forth—
(A) specific goals for reducing, not later
than three years after the date of the enact-
ment of this Act, officially measured unemploy-
ment to the interim goal of 3 percent for indi-
viduals who have attained the age of 20 and 4
percent for individuals who have attained the
age of 16 but have not attained the age of 20,
as set forth in the Full Employment and Bal-
anced Growth Act of 1978; and
(B) general perspectives for the quality of
life in the United States by the year 2000 and
the early years of the 21st century.
(3) POLICIES
AND
PROJECTS.—The program
established under paragraph (1) shall include gen-
eral and specific policies and projects designed—
(A) to provide quick action to enlarge em-
ployment opportunities through reductions in
real interest rates, and programs of private and
public works and services to use the abilities of
the jobless in repairing and improving the Na-
tion’s infrastructure of private industry, public
facilities, and human services, with special em-
phasis on the availability of good and affordable
education, health promotion services, housing,
child care, artistic cultural activities, and basic
as well as applied research and development;
(B) to provide quick action to begin staged
reductions in the length of the work year
through longer paid vacations, the elimination
of compulsory overtime, curbing excessive over-
time through an increase in the premium to tri-
ple time on all hours in excess of 40 hours in
any week, exempting administrative, executive,
and professional employees from the overtime
premium only if their salary levels are three
times the annual value of the minimum wage,
reducing the average work week in manufactur-
ing and mining to no more than 35 hours with-
out any corresponding loss in weekly wages,
and voluntary work-sharing arrangements;
(C) to vastly increase the opportunities for
freely-chosen part-time employment, with social
security and health benefits, to meet the needs
of older people, students, the individuals with
disabilities and people with housekeeping and
child care responsibilities;
(D) to take such other steps as may be
needed to cope with the threats of increased
joblessness caused by technologies that replace
people with robots and other machines, includ-
ing vastly improved opportunities for up-to-date
and effective education, training, or retraining;
(E) to prevent or control inflationary ten-
dencies through a full battery of standby poli-
cies, including public controls over price fixing
through monopolistic practices or restraint of
trade, the promotion of competition and produc-
tivity, and wage-price policies arrived at
through 
tripartite 
business-labor-government
cooperation;
(F) to provide improved Federal incentives
for investment, expansion, and increased em-
ployment by small, medium, and large business
enterprises, and by such other private sectors
entities as labor unions, professional associa-
tions, and non-profit, voluntary, and cooperative
organizations, including neighborhood, tenant,
home owner and self-help associations, and or-
ganizations of family farmers, women, minori-
ties, and the unemployed; and
(G) to promote conditions for more self-
empowerment by people victimized by discrimi-
nation in hiring, training, wages, salaries,
fringe benefits, or promotion on the basis of
prejudice concerning race, color, sex language,
religion, political or other opinions, national so-
cial origin, property, birth or other status, sta-
tion in life, political or sexual orientation, or
personal disability.
(b) INCLUSION OF PROGRAM IN ANNUAL SUBMIS-
SION OF BUDGET.—Section 1105(a) of title 31, United
States Code, is amended by adding at the end the follow-
ing new paragraph:
‘‘(30) beginning with fiscal year 1996, a de-
scription of the program to implement the basic
rights and responsibilities in the United States as
provided for in section 3(a) of the A Living Wage,
Jobs For All Act.’’.
SEC. 4. TRUTH IN BUDGETS.
All budget messages transmitted from the President
to the Congress shall be based on policies and programs
to reduce officially measured unemployment to the interim
levels set forth in the Full Employment and Balanced
Growth Act of 1978 and toward this end shall include—
(1) such full distinctions between operating and
investment outlays as regularly appear in the budg-
ets of business organizations and State and local
governments;
(2) not only gross outlays but also net outlays
calculated in terms of estimates on consequences of
additional paid employment may have on—
(5) a tax expenditure budget, as defined in the
Congressional Budget Act of 1974, but presented
not only in a separately published special analysis
but also incorporated into the general revenue provi-
sions of the budget and accompanied by estimates of
the benefits sought and thus far obtained by such
planned losses of tax revenue;
(6) a zero-based budgetary review of every pro-
gram involving more than $1,000,000,000 in gross
outlays;
(7) a wealth inventory providing information on
recent and prospective changes in the type and esti-
mated value of assets owned by the Federal govern-
ment and State and local governments, personal
wealth, and the net stock of both reproducible and
non-reproducible tangible wealth in the United
States; and
(8) the expression of any debt and deficit data
in constant as well as current dollars.
SEC. 5. JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE.
(a) MONITORING OF ACTIONS UNDER THIS ACT.—
In addition to its responsibilities under the Employment
Act of 1946, the Joint Economic Committee shall monitor
all actions taken or proposed to be taken to carry out the
purposes under this Act.
(b) REPORT.—The Joint Economic Committee shall
prepare and submit to the Congress, and publish in Fed-
eral Register, an annual report containing a summary of
the findings of the Committee with respect to the actions
monitored under subsection (a) for the preceding year,
with special attention to the extent to which the President
and Federal agencies have faithfully executed or may have
failed to faithfully execute the provisions of this Act and
fulfill their obligations under international covenants and
conventions.
(c) CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON ECONOMIC POL-
ICY.—Not later than July 1 of each year the Joint Eco-
nomic Committee shall submit to the Senate and the
House of Representatives a Concurrent Resolution on
Economic Policy setting forth both in aggregate terms and
in detail its proposed goals for employment by type of em-
ployment, with special attention to hours, wages, and so-
cial 
benefits, 
and 
for 
reducing 
unemployment,
underemployment, and poverty in urban, suburban and
rural areas. Notwithstanding any other provisions of law,
these goals shall serve as the framework for any concur-
rent resolutions on the Federal budget.
SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
There are hereby authorized to be appropriated such
sums as may be necessary to implement the policies, pro-
grams and projects set forth in accordance with this Act.
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