Honorable Tom Harkin
United States Senator, Iowa, Democrat
Senator Harkin was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984. He was a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1974 to 1984. He chairs the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and also sits on the following committees: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Appropriations, where he chairs the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship. The following is from Chairman Harkin’s opening statement at a March 14, 2013, hearing before the HELP Committee on “Keeping up With a Changing Economy: Indexing the Minimum Wage.” For several years…