Rep. Steve King [R] To Workers: Your "Labor Is A Commodity Just Like Corn Or Beans"

KING: If you wanna do as many Democrats have said on this floor, and that is that any relationship between two consenting adults the federal government shouldn't be involved in, well this is a relationship the federal government should not be involved in. For the federal government to tell me that I can't say to my own son, I'd like to climb in the seat of your excavator and sit there for $10 an hour, federal government says I can't, he's gotta pay me some $28 rate or whatever that is. But the government has no business interfering and no business driving up these costs. And we must go through this period of austerity. That requires that we not impose federal union scale on federal construction projects. [...] And I think the free market should set the wages. Labor is a commodity just like corn or beans or oil or gold, and the value of it needs to be determined by the competition, supply and demand in the workplace.