Politics & Power Quote by Bill Pascrell

Pascrell’s line is built to make a moral verdict feel like a statistical fact. “Shameful” is the hinge: he isn’t merely describing a policy failure, he’s assigning culpability. In one word, the debate moves from budgets and market forces to decency and embarrassment, a classic political move when you want to shift the burden of proof onto opponents. If you disagree, you’re not just wrong, you’re defending something ugly.

The phrasing “millions of Americans” widens the frame beyond hard-luck anecdotes. It signals scale and normalcy: this isn’t an edge case, it’s a system. Then comes the careful pairing of “full-time job” with “below the poverty line,” a collision designed to puncture the old cultural bargain that work equals stability. The subtext is a rebuke of meritocratic rhetoric: if people are doing the sanctioned thing-working-and still can’t clear the poverty threshold, the problem can’t be laziness. It has to be the wage floor, the cost of living, or both.

“Economic injustice” is also doing strategic work. It’s less polarizing than “capitalist exploitation,” but more forceful than “hardship.” It implies a remedy within the democratic toolkit: legislation, enforcement, wage standards, maybe expanded tax credits. Pascrell, a New Deal-style Democrat from New Jersey, is speaking into a long-running fight over the minimum wage and the meaning of “living wage” in an era when rents, health care, and child care outpace paychecks.

The intent is simple: redefine low wages as a moral scandal, not an unfortunate market outcome-and make reform feel overdue, not optional.