[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 190 (Thursday, November 30, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H13862-H13865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE MINIMUM WAGE AND EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I will take 28 minutes and would like to 
yield the balance to the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie].
  Mr. Speaker, I think today is November 30. A continuing resolution 
has been passed which will take us to December 15. So, the countdown 
that I mentioned on Tuesday now moves forward. We have about 16 days 
left before the budget decision will be made. Hopefully there will not 
have to be another continuing resolution.
  So the countdown continues, and tonight I would like to talk about 
two basic questions related to what is going on here as this budget 
process unfolds. The negotiations are taking place in various quarters, 
and we will expect probably next week to begin to see the outlines of 
some proposed negotiating positions by both the Democratic White House 
and the Republican-controlled Congress.
  There are two basic questions I would like to ask tonight which 
relate directly--not so directly, but certainly indirectly, to the 
budget process that is going forward. One of these questions relates to 
the minimum-wage issue.
  This morning we had a forum on the minimum wage. We called it a 
response to the 100 leading American economists, a congressional forum 
on minimum wages. One hundred and one leading American economists said 
more than a month ago that the American economy could not only benefit 
from a minimum-wage increase, but it was highly desirable, and we have 
not responded here adequately on Capitol Hill to that statement by the 
leading economists in the country.
  We have a bill here, H.R. 940, sponsored by the minority leader, the 
gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt], which calls for an increase in 
the minimum wage in two steps; 45 cents an hour 1 year, and then a 
second year, another 45 cents, so a too-little 90-cent increase in the 
minimum wage would take place under the Gephardt bill.
  The Gephardt bill has only 110 sponsors, only slightly more than the 
101 economists, so there is a big question about why there is not more 
enthusiasm, on the one hand, among Democrats since we have 195 
Democrats. I hope soon we will be joined by my good friend, Jesse 
Jackson, Jr., and there will be 196 Democrats, but the 195 Democrats 
are hesitating. Only 110 are on the minimum-wage bill; so there is a 
question there.
  The President has endorsed the Gephardt minimum-wage bill. The 
President has endorsed the increase in the minimum wage to 90 cents 
over a 2-year period.
  But there is a great opposition. First of all, there is not much 
enthusiasm among the whole Democratic Party, and then there is a great 
opposition among the Republicans, the majority Republicans refusing to 
even have a hearing on the minimum wage.
  I am on the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities which 
has direct responsibility for the minimum-wage law. I am the ranking 
Democrat on the Subcommittee of Workforce Protections which has even 
more specific jurisdiction over the minimum-wage law, and we have not 
been able to get a hearing.
  So we had an unofficial forum today to replace the kind of thing that 
would have happened at a hearing.
  Why is there such great opposition? Why cannot we have at least a 
discussion of an increase in the minimum wage? Why does the majority 
leader of the Republican Party here in the House state that not only is 
he against any increase in the minimum wage, but he would like to see 
the minimum wage abolished altogether? He would like to see the law 
repealed. What does this have to do with balancing the budget? You 
know, what does it have to do with the Contract With America? The 
balancing of the budget will not be impacted in any significant way by 
an increase in the minimum wage.

  You know, it is not--taxpayers do not pay workers; you know, the 
various enterprises where they are engaged, they pay the minimum wage. 
So why if there is a great concern about balancing the budget, why do 
we have to go off to the side and wage war against workers by saying 
that we will fight any increase in the minimum wage? Why? You know, it 
is a question that needs to be answered.
  The other question I want to ask is also why do we have such 
tremendous cuts in the education budget? You know, I think that, you 
know, jobs and education are inextricably interwoven. That is why when 
I came to Congress I signed up for the Committee on Education and 
Labor, as it was called at that time, it was not the Committee on 
Economic and Educational Opportunities, because you cannot separate the 
two. Education and the ability, the capacity, of people to qualify for 
jobs and to stay, to keep up with this fast-moving economy and the 
complexities of our present highly technological world, make education 
absolutely necessary 

[[Page H13863]]
in order for people to be able to take advantage of jobs, and the 
employment question cannot be separated from the education question.
  Today the Committee on Education funding has dubbed this day as Save 
Education Day, and they are battling to save education from $4 billion 
in Federal cuts, $4 billion, and the $4 billion in Federal cuts have 
stimulated a wave of cuts across the country at the State level and the 
local level.
  So why is education being cut? Why are we trying to abandon the 
public education system?
  The polls show that the American people clearly favor education as a 
high priority for government expenditures at every level. The polls 
show this. They show it this year, and as a matter of fact right now 
the No. 1 priority, according to the taxpayers and the voters that we 
serve, the No. 1 priority is education. Education is ahead of health 
care, and health care is a great concern; but now education is the No. 
1 priority.
  So why are politicians refusing to read the polls? Why is there talk 
about a compromise at the White House where they are not going to 
insist that we not accept these $4 billion in education cuts? Why was 
it placed on the chopping block in the first place?
  After years of bipartisan support for Federal involvement in 
education and Federal support for education, all of a sudden education 
is placed on the chopping block, despite the fact that the American 
people say that is a priority we want to support. We want to support 
education.

                              {time}  1815

  So these are two basic questions. There is something happening here 
in this Capitol which is not related to balancing the budget. There is 
something else going on. In fact, balancing the budget becomes 
questionable when you look at these other activities.
  Why is there war being waged against workers in terms of the OSHA, 
Occupational Safety and Health Agency? Why are we so determined to make 
the workplace less safe? Why is the Republican majority driving so hard 
to take away safeguards against accidents in the workplace? Why is 
there is war being declared on the Fair Labor Standards Act which 
determines what the hourly wages are going to be and also the 
conditions under which we set those wages in terms of overtime and 
various other provisions? Why is there an attack on that? Why is there 
an attack on the National Labor Relations Board? What does that have to 
do with balancing the budget?
  Yes, it is true they have cut the budget, partially, of the National 
Labor Relations Board. It is such a tiny budget. The cuts clearly have 
nothing to do with trying to get more revenue out of the system in 
order to help balance the budget, the cuts are punitive. The cuts are 
designed to make the agency work less effectively. So the war against 
labor has nothing to do with balancing the budget.
  There is a class war going on here, maybe; I don't know. Every time 
you mention class war, the Republicans on the floor get very upset. 
``How dare you accuse us of waging a class war?'' I am not accusing the 
Republicans of waging a class war; it is not a war, it is a massacre. 
When you have a war, you have contending parties of some kind of equal 
strength. What we have against the working people of America is a 
massacre. They are using their overwhelming power against the workers 
in every way.
  Whether you are talking about OSHA and worker safety, fair labor 
standards or the National Labor Relations Board activities, or you are 
talking about minimum wage, there is a massacre going on directed 
against the American working people. It is not a class war, but 
certainly there is great contempt being shown for working people. There 
is great contempt being shown for the people at the very bottom in this 
society.
  Yes, Wall Street now, the Dow Jones industrial average I think is up 
above 5,000. The boom is going on and on, great amounts of money are 
being made, executives are being paid the highest salaries ever. 
Everything is great for the management class, the ruling class, the 
elite that controls the House at this point. Why can there not be some 
generosity, some sense of sharing? Why can we not give a lousy 90-cent 
increase in the minimum-wage law? Why can we not have a 90-cent 
increase over a 2-year period?
  The history for this minimum wage is that since 1938 we have had 
about six increases, and right now the last increase took place 6 years 
ago. That is when we last enacted legislation increasing the minimum 
wage. At that time the Senate majority leader, who is the leader of his 
party in both the House and Senate, and right across the country, he 
made a statement which I will quote.
  Six years ago Senator Dole said:

       This is not an issue where we ought to be standing and 
     holding up anybody's getting a 30 to 40 cents an hour pay 
     increase at the same time that we are talking about capital 
     gains. I never thought the Republican Party should stand for 
     squeezing every last nickel from the minimum wage.

That is the end of the quote by Senator Dole 6 years ago.
  Apparently the Republican Party has changed their minds. Today it 
seems the Republican Party does stand for squeezing every last nickel 
and every last penny from the minimum wage. As I said before, the 
Republican majority leader of the House of Representatives has 
recommended that we repeal the minimum age law completely, wiping it 
out. We are talking about pennies, 90 cents an hour, 45 cents this year 
and 45 cents next year. But beyond the money and the pennies at stake 
here is more than money. It is the work ethic itself.
  When we permit the value of the minimum wage to erode, as we have in 
recent years, we not only cause economic pain to working people, we do 
violence to the work ethic that we all profess to revere. Our words as 
elected officials exhort Americans to work hard, but our actions 
ridicule them by making work pay less and less year after year.
  The value of the minimum wage is now at its second lowest level since 
the 1950's. It has lost nearly one-third of its value over the last 
decade. When Speaker Gingrich graduated from high school in 1961, the 
real value of the minimum wage was $5.41. That is $1.16 cents more than 
it is today in value.
  When Speaker Gingrich completed higher education in 1971, the wage 
was worth $5.67. That is a value of $2.42 more than it is today. In 
1978, the year Mr. Gingrich was first elected to Congress, the wage was 
worth $6 an hour, fully $1.75 cents or more than 41 percent more than 
it is worth today.
  We had some people testify who bring home this whole matter of how 
important this 90 cents per hour is. We had a gentleman who I would 
call a noble American worker, the best that we can offer, who testified 
today. I am proud to cite Mr. Donald Knight of Elizabeth, PA, who had 
to endure quite a bit of hardship to get to our hearing, our forum 
today.
  I am going to read Mr. Knight's testimony in its entirety because I 
think it drives home the fact that we are not talking about something 
which is paltry. It may seem that 90 cents an hour does not mean much 
to a lot of people, but for the people out there making minimum wage, 
it means a great deal.
  Mr. Donald Knight, I quote:

       My name is Donald Knight. I am 61 years old. I live in 
     Elizabeth, PA. My wife Barbara and I have raised three sons. 
     Life in my area was good for as long as I can remember: Good 
     jobs, and friendly communities. When your kids grew up, they 
     got good jobs and you could depend on them in your old age. 
     All of that changed in the 1980's. All of the good jobs in 
     the steel mills and other manufacturing industries 
     disappeared when the companies closed. For years there were 
     almost no jobs, especially for someone like me in their 
     fifties.
       Now there are jobs, but they don't pay much and there are 
     few benefits. We had an economic recovery, but it was a 
     minimum wage recovery for us. Our kids, the ones that didn't 
     leave the area for jobs somewhere else, they can hardly take 
     care of their own families.
       I started working in 1952 at a glass factory. In 1966 they 
     closed down, and I went to work in a steel mill. From then 
     until the 1980's I worked for U.S. Steel. We had layoffs and 
     it wasn't always easy to support my family, but the mills 
     always called us back to work. In 1982, U.S. Steel laid me 
     off from the national tube mill, and when they closed that 
     place in 1984 I knew things were going to be different. My 
     unemployment checks ran out in 1984 and my wife and I were 
     forced to swallow our pride and take welfare.
       I cashed in my pension in 1987 to help us survive but that 
     money went to bills and we were back on welfare soon after.
       My wife and I took any jobs we could get. Some were under 
     the table and all were temporary. We cleaned houses, got paid 
     to walk other people's picket lines.
       Then in 1990 I finally got a permanent job. It was for 
     Allied Security as a guard. I 

[[Page H13864]]
     worked many different places, guarding other people's property. I even 
     guarded a slag dump where they put the waste from steelmaking 
     though I never understood why someone would want to steal the 
     slag.
       The only problem then was that I never made more than $5.00 
     an hour and have had no health insurance for myself or my 
     family. I have no pension and last made $4.80 an hour for 
     Allied Security after 5 years with the company.
       My wife and I had bought a house and had it paid for by the 
     time I lost my first good job. But over the last 10 years I 
     haven't been able to take care of it. The water main broke 
     and the water has been shut off for 3 years. The thermostat 
     broke and we have had to use a kerosene heater for 2 years. 
     Now my house has been condemned and all of the housing 
     projects where we have tried to get into have waiting lists 
     for at least a year.
       My eyesight and hearing are getting bad and my wife has 
     back problems but we can't afford to go to a doctor. They 
     tell me I got clinically depressed when all the good jobs 
     left my area but I never could find any place to go get help. 
     When we absolutely have to, we go to the emergency room and 
     somehow try to make payments on the bills. My wife and I were 
     shocked to hear the Republicans here in Congress say that we 
     don't need national health insurance because the current 
     system is working fine. They say ``let the private sector run 
     things'' but I can't find out who that is to go get the help 
     I need. We guess they just don't know what it is like out 
     where we live.
       So working at about the minimum wage allowed us to survive, 
     always falling further behind in our taxes and bills, but 
     able to eat and buy kerosene. If a person makes a lot of 
     money, the increase in the minimum wage proposed by President 
     Clinton of 90 cents an hour might not seem like a lot. But to 
     my family the additional couple thousand dollars a year would 
     make a big difference. I probably couldn't pay all my debts 
     but I would not be falling further behind all the time.
       Just one final thing. Last week, just before Thanksgiving, 
     I got fired from my job. After making my rounds I was sitting 
     in my shanty and put my feet up on the table. Someone turned 
     me in and said I must have been sleeping and the company 
     fired me. I hope the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee can help 
     me get unemployment checks and they told us about food stamps 
     and medical assistance so I guess we will survive.
       I only hope I can hang on until July next year when I can 
     get Social Security. That and another minimum wage job will 
     be the best standard of living Barb and I have had in more 
     than 10 years. Lots of people, friends and family have helped 
     us over these tough years but I always took pride in taking 
     care of my family. A higher minimum wage would help me help 
     myself.

  That is the testimony of Mr. Donald Knight of Elizabeth, PA at our 
forum on minimum wage this morning.
  There were other people who testified; a Mrs. Wong, a Mandarin 
garment worker from New York. Mrs. Wong spoke in Chinese and had to 
have an interpreter. Mrs. Wong told us that she would be happy to work 
for the present minimum wage, but the present minimum wage law is not 
being enforced in Chinatown in New York, so people are being forced to 
work below the minimum wage. She would like just to have greater 
enforcement of the minimum wage.
  Why are we opposing a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage, which 
would help these very poor people who are trying to help themselves?
  I think perhaps most of the Members of Congress have lost contract 
with what real working people are all about and with what poverty is 
all about. They do not understand that an increase of 90 cents can make 
a great deal of difference. On the other hand, we are closing off the 
opportunity for the people who are forced to work at minimum wage to 
move beyond the level where they have to work at minimum wage. The only 
road out for people who are on poverty, in poverty now, is education. 
So I ask the second question.
  In addition to us having a situation where the Republican majority 
opposes, adamantly opposes, an increase in the minimum wage, that same 
Republican majority is calling for great, deep cuts in education. Why 
are we cutting education when the American people have clearly said, 
``We don't want education cut, we would like an increase instead''?
  Recently 71 percent of those polled say that President Clinton should 
reject a budget if it makes major cuts in Federal support for public 
education. Seventy-two percent said he should not accept any budget 
that cuts the student loan program and makes it harder for the middle 
class to afford college. This is reported by Peter D. Hart Associates, 
November 15, 1995.

       Americans ranked education as the top legislative priority 
     for Congress, 39 percent did, and improving education as the 
     most important goal for the Federal budget, 35 percent. 
     Lowering taxes and balancing the budget ranked last in the 
     six choices.

  This is an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll taken September 16 and 
19 of 1995. Ninety-two percent of all Americans believe that the 
Federal Government should spend the same or more on education, and 68 
percent of those polled believe that the Government should spend more 
than current levels. Only 8 percent answered that the Government should 
spend less money on education. This was an NBC News and Wall Street 
Journal poll, again of January, 1995. Seventy-eight percent of 
Americans polled opposed cuts to Federal aid in education as a means of 
reducing the budget deficit. This is a New York Times poll and CBS News 
poll that was taken in December 1994.
  Every time you take the polls and ask the question, education comes 
up clearly as a high priority. Why is the Republican majority insisting 
on cutting education so drastically? Where in the Contract With America 
is there a promise, a commitment to cut education?
  There is something happening here which has nothing to do with 
balancing the budget. There is something happening here that has 
nothing to do with economics. There is something vicious happening here 
that needs to be looked at more closely. I enjoy watching the animal 
movies, the nature movies. I do not have any children, so I do not have 
an excuse for watching them. I will have to confess, I like to watch 
them myself.
  There is a particular animal movie about the competition between 
lions and hyenas, and maybe some of you have seen it, because it has 
been shown over and over again, a lot of reruns, and it is fascinating 
because what it says is that in the jungle, in the jungle, in nature, 
animals sometimes behave as irrationally as human beings.
  We always thought, I was always raised to believe that the animal 
kingdom is pure. They only kill for food, when they need food. They do 
not get into revenge and hatred. But the competition between the hyena 
and the lion, the hyenas and the lions, it demonstrated that there was 
something else at work, something else was happening other than the 
battle for survival, other than the desire to survive from day to day, 
and the competition for food. They were not necessarily in competition 
for food. They fought each other like human beings fight each other in 
Yugoslavia and Rwanda. There is a kind of hatred there which makes them 
almost human, unfortunately.
  The hyenas taunted the lions, and one hyena is murdered by a lion 
because he gets caught while he is taunting the lions, not trying to 
get food. The hyenas find a lioness out by herself and they murder her, 
not to eat her, but they murder her because they want revenge. There is 
an evil at work there. There is something that has not been figured out 
by the naturalists and the people who study animals in biology. There 
is something at work here in Washington that we have not quite put our 
hands on also. It has nothing to do with saving money. It has nothing 
to do with streamlining the budget. It is something else. There is a 
contempt, a hatred for working people, a desire to wipe out a segment 
of the population.
  A lot of the budget cuts are not designed to save money, they are 
designed to destroy programs. They are not designed to reform, they are 
designed to wreck. There is a mentality that the elite minority 
deserves to have an America that belongs just to that elite minority. 
Otherwise, how do you justify the intense opposition against an 
increase in the minimum wage? How do you justify the Republican 
majority fighting a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage?

                              {time}  1830

  How do you justify the Republican majority waging war on education 
programs, cutting education when our future is clearly wrapped up in 
our educational advances and the possibility that we will be able to 
survive in the future will depend on the degree of education that we 
have? That is pretty much understood. National security is very much 
interwoven with our ability to educate the population and to stay ahead 
of the tremendous unfolding of more and more complex knowledge all the 
time.

[[Page H13865]]

  Mr. Speaker, we need to have the best educated, the most educated 
population possible. The rhetoric clearly understands this. Speeches 
that have been made by Republican presidents, started by Ronald Reagan 
and then continued by George Bush, have always said that America is at 
risk, that we are a nation at risk if we do not provide proper 
education, and yet the Republican majority has undertaken budget cuts 
that are devastating. If enacted, this will be the largest setback in 
education in our history. They will be cut by 17 percent, while overall 
spending is only being cut by 4 percent.
  We need to come to grips with why is this being done by the 
Republican majority. The proposal would deny millions of America's 
children, youths and adults precious opportunities for education. They 
would slash funding for basic and advanced skills.
  The bills would deny access to college by eliminating student aid 
Pell grants for 280,000 students. The budget bill would jeopardize the 
education of children with disabilities by shifting some $1 billion in 
Medicaid costs for health-related services for more than 1 million 
children with disabilities to the States.
  The legislation would eliminate help for safe and drug-free schools, 
eliminate most of the program that exists throughout the school system 
all over the Nation. The legislation would halt progress on school 
reform and innovation. The cuts would deny access to Head Start for 
180,000 children in the year 2002, compared to the present 1995 
enrollment in Head Start.
  These are devastating cuts, the combination of the two. Why do we 
have the assault on the minimum wage, the assault on workers in every 
way, minimum wage, safety, Fair Labor Standards Act? Why do we have 
these cuts in education which would allow the poor to help themselves, 
allow the poor to get into the mainstream and be able to become part of 
the great middle class?
  America has built a middle class over the years through education, 
something called the GI bill of rights which helped hundreds of 
thousands all in one program. Then we had aid to higher education that 
existed long before we had aid to any other form of education.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to close at this point and yield to my 
colleague, but the question here I want to end with is, what is it at 
work here in Washington that goes beyond a concern with balancing the 
budget? What is at work here that goes beyond a desire to streamline 
government?
  There is a desire by an elite minority to wipe out a certain segment 
of the population. A massacre has been organized against the 
defenseless people at the lowest rungs in our society, and that has to 
be examined closely if we are to understand where we are going in the 
next 16 days.
  In the next 16 days, the people out there who have let it be known 
through the polls that they support education, in the next 16 days the 
people out there who have overwhelmingly supported an increase in the 
minimum wage, they have to let it be known that they are watching; and 
their common sense should prevail over the kind of strange behavior 
that is predominant here among the Republican majority who control the 
House of Representatives.

                          ____________________