Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2849-S2853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

THE MINIMUM WAGE

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, just as a matter of a point of
information, on yesterday when there was the announcement of the
Republican leader, which is on page S. 2839, in the Program, Mr. Lott
said, ``For the information of all Senators, the Senate will resume the
Presidio legislation tomorrow morning with the understanding that
Senator Daschle or his designee will be prepared to offer an amendment
at 10:30.''
I am his designee, and I was prepared to offer the amendment at
10:30. The amendment I was going to offer was the increase in the
minimum wage. I was offering it for myself, my colleague from
Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, Senator Wellstone, and others.
This was not in order, I want to make it very clear. So it was not
consent, but it was an understanding about the way we were going to
proceed. Now, as a result of our indication to try to get a debate on
the increase on the minimum wage, and hopefully some action on the
minimum wage, we have been put into this holding pattern to effectively
deny us that opportunity for debate and discussion about increasing the
wages for working families, some 13 million working families in this
country.
What we are being faced with is another procedural effort by our
Republican friends to deny the Senate taking action on this issue. This
is a similar kind of avoidance by the Senate that we saw on July 31,
when we voted 48 to 49 on a sense-of-the-Senate resolution; again on
October 27, 1995, 51-48 to override a budget point of order on the
issue on the minimum wage, raised by my colleague, Senator Kerry.
We had a hearing on this issue on December 14, 1995. We have not had
the markup. We have not reported anything out. We were prepared to
debate this issue, which is of such fundamental importance and fairness
to working families in this country. Now we are caught up in a
procedural situation where we are, at least at this time, foreclosed
from being able to offer it.
I can even foresee the possibilities where that will continue in the
afternoon, as we are coming down to the line for a cloture motion to be
voted on tomorrow, where those, under the current situation, under the
right of recognition, will be able to offer an amendment and then offer
another amendment right on top of that and virtually foreclose our
opportunity to speak for working families, the 13 million working
families who have not experienced any increase since 1991 and have seen
the real value of that minimum wage deteriorate by some 40 percent.
So we are seeing the commitment of our Republican friends, and
Republican leadership, which cannot be separated from the Republican
who is on the ballot out in the State of California, Senator Dole, as
well as the Republican leadership, saying on the issue of worker
fairness, we are not even going to permit you to vote on that or
address that on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are going to use all
the parliamentary means of denying working families the chance to get
any kind of increase in that minimum wage.
At a time when CEO salaries have gone up 23 percent and we are having
record profits in 1995; again, 1991, of 23 percent--we are refusing to
permit the Senate of the United States to even address this issue, to
vote on this issue--an issue which will mean some $1,800 for working
families. This is an issue which will affect 13 million working
families. It will be the equivalent of a year's tuition in a 2-year
college; 9 months of groceries, 8 months of utilities for working
families. We are seeing, at a time when the disparity between the
wealthiest workers and families and poorest families has been growing
and growing and growing, the small, modest step to try to do something
for working families, families that work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of
the year, trying to make it--we are seeing we are effectively being
closed out. You cannot interpret the kinds of actions we have heard
here this morning to be anything else.

Mr. President, I want to point out, because I am on limited time on
this

[[Page S2850]]

morning hour--hopefully we will have additional time during the debate
going before the break--this has not been a partisan issue,
historically. There have only been two Presidents, Presidents Reagan
and Ford--they are the only two Republican Presidents who have not
supported an increase in the minimum wage. President Eisenhower
supported it, President Nixon supported it, President Bush supported
it. The last time we had an increase, Republicans supported it. Bob
Dole supported it. Newt Gingrich supported it.
At that time, we had a Democratic Congress and a Republican
President. Now we have Republican Congress and a Democratic President.
And we ask: Why? Why is it that we cannot, at least, debate this issue?
And why is it that we cannot afford to provide working families with a
livable wage?
Mr. President, I hope we are not going to hear our Republican friends
talk about their concern for working families in this country when
something that we can do, here on the floor of the U.S. Senate today,
and the House of Representatives can do in a matter of hours, that can
make a difference to the lives and well-being of those--that we are
being denied the opportunity to face this issue, to debate the issue,
to talk about the issue, to take on the issues which have been raised
against the increase --the questions of inflation, the question of job
loss.
All of those issues which we have debated and discussed at other
times, we are prepared today, with our colleagues, to debate those
here. But we are back at a situation where those who lay the agenda out
for the American people in the U.S. Senate, absolutely refuse to give
the American working families the opportunity to be heard on the floor
of the U.S. Senate.
Mr. President, as we have said before, Senator Kerry, Senator
Wellstone and others have said before, this issue is not going away.
This issue is not going away. We have seen the parliamentary maneuvers
to deny us an opportunity to take action. We have seen that before. We
know it is out there again today.
I do not understand what it is. Yes, I could understand. It is,
again, the power of special financial interests, the special interests
that just refuse to let working families in this country be treated
fairly, equitably, and decently. Finally, this is an issue about women,
since 70 percent of all of those who get the minimum wage are women,
and it is an issue about children, whether they are going to grow up in
households that are going to be decently fed and clothed, and in a
setting which is humane and decent. This is not just an issue about
men. It is an issue about women and it is an issue about children. It
is an issue about families. We will not be silenced and we will not be
denied. We are going to continue to press this. I am absolutely
convinced that the working families in this country will be heard and
we will have a successful vote.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Massachusetts,
Senator Kennedy, for his leadership in this effort, and Senator
Wellstone and others who believe that the moment has really come for us
to confront the reality of the rhetoric in Washington that talks about
worker anxiety, that pays lip service to addressing the problem of
downsizing and to the problem of the transformation in the American
workplace.
Countless Senators, on both sides of the aisle, have come to the
floor on many different occasions and talked about the difficulties
that the American worker faces today.
In the Republican primaries, it became a major issue as Pat Buchanan
focused on the anger that is coming out of those workers who work
harder and harder and harder, play by the rules, pay their taxes, try
to make ends meet, teach their kids, and yet they cannot get ahead.
We have an opportunity in the U.S. Senate to ratify what the Senate
has already expressed. Fifty-one U.S. Senators already voted last year,
saying they want to vote on a proposal to increase the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is worth less now than it was when those 51 Senators
who voted said we need to raise it.
The Republican majority has the opportunity to set the agenda of the
Senate and, to some degree, thereby, the agenda of the country. As my
colleague from Massachusetts said, this is their statement about their
agenda. Their agenda is to not even let the U.S. Senate debate this and
have an up-or-down vote on whether or not a majority of the U.S. Senate
thinks it is time to raise the minimum wage.
Increasing the minimum wage is not a great breaking of new ground in
this country. In 1938, we passed a minimum wage and set it at 25 cents.
In 1938, we came to a consensus in America that we ought to pay people
a minimum base standard of living by which they ought to be able to
work and achieve the American dream. Every year since 1938, when that
wage dipped below because of inflation and changes in the marketplace,
we raised the minimum wage. Democrat and Republican alike joined
together to raise the minimum wage. The last time we raised it was
1989, and I think there were something like 86 or 89 votes in the U.S.
Senate to raise it to the current level of $4.25.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. KERRY. Yes.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I wonder, given the bipartisan support since 1938, can
the Senator answer the question for me, what would be the basis now for
the opposition of the majority leader, Senator Dole, and others in
preventing us from even having this amendment out on the floor and
having an up-or-down vote? Does the Senator have any idea, given this
bipartisan support, given how important it is to working families,
given the fact we have heard the majority leader campaign around the
country about the importance of working families and fairness, what
would be the basis of opposition to our having this amendment on the
floor and having this debate? Does the Senator have any idea?
Mr. KERRY. I must confess to the Senator from Minnesota, I do not
understand that. I cannot understand why Senator Dole, who previously
voted to raise the minimum wage, would not want to raise the minimum
wage above what soon will be a 40-year low in purchasing power. The
minimum wage in this country soon will be at a 40-year low. The poverty
level in America is $12,500 for a family of three. It is $15,150 for a
family of four. On a minimum wage, you can earn $8,500, three-quarters
the level of poverty for a family of three, and only about half the
poverty level for a family of four.
I honestly do not know why the Senator from Kansas, the majority
leader, the nominee-to-be of the Republican Party, would not want to
see the minimum wage raised, particularly since he has previously
joined in the bipartisan effort to try to do that. I do not have an
answer. Maybe my colleague has an answer.
Mr. WELLSTONE. If I can ask one other question, because I am trying
to understand the disconnect between politics in Washington today where
at least for the moment you have a Presidential candidate, the majority
leader, who does not seem to want us to have a debate on this versus
what we hear back in our States.
In Massachusetts, as you visit with families and spend time in
communities, do you find that people talk a lot about the importance of
jobs, of decent wages and raising the minimum wage? Is this an issue
that you hear about all the time from people you represent?
Mr. KERRY. Let me say to my friend from Minnesota, when you talk to
working people in Massachusetts and when you talk to almost anybody--
white-collar workers, people who have good jobs in our high-technology
economy, people who are part of our financial services industry, which
is one of the strongest in the Nation--I would say 80 percent of the
people believe that workers at the bottom rung of the economic ladder
ought to be able to secure income from their work that is at least
equal to the poverty level. That is all we are asking for here.
As an example, to answer your question specifically, a fellow named
Neil Donovan, who runs something called Project Impact, which is a
Massachusetts organization that puts homeless people into jobs, has
said that a job placement at the minimum wage is, in

[[Page S2851]]

fact, a recipe for failure. That is the experience of someone who runs
a homeless shelter and wants to help those in the shelter to move
toward self-sufficiency.
Why is that? I can tell you, using as examples people who live in
homeless shelters. There is a fellow about whom I have talked recently
who lost his job. He is now in a homeless shelter. Four months ago, he
found a new job. He is working as a stock clerk, doing errands in a
small operation. He is working at the minimum wage, and at the end of
the week, he brings home $132.50. He proudly brings this $132.50 back
to the homeless shelter in which he still lives, because even the full
$132.50 is too little to be able to pay for the smallest, cheapest
studio apartment in the city of Boston.
That amount does not begin to pay for health care. If you are a
parent of a young child, it does not pay for day care. It does not pay
the food bills for the month, after you have paid for the rent. We are
talking about fundamental subsistence here.
Corporations have seen their revenues increase 12 percent or more,
but the total personal income of the country as a whole, taking all
incomes into account, has only gone up 2 percent. And we know that even
this increase was not evenly distributed across the income spectrum.
The incomes that increased were mostly at the upper level.
Here in the Congress we have a lot of people earning 10 times the
poverty level. Ten times the poverty level we earn in the U.S.
Congress, and the Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate is unwilling
to raise the income level for those who are working at three-quarters
of the poverty level and one-tenth of the salary of Senators.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Might I ask the Senator two more questions?
Mr. KERRY. Yes.
Mr. WELLSTONE. So what the Senator is saying is that right now, $4.25
an hour, what happens is that with a family, you have somebody working
40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year and still not making poverty wages.
If we were to raise this minimum wage in the amendment we want to
offer, I think the senior Senator from Massachusetts said this would be
an additional $1,800. I know what this means to a family in Minnesota,
but for a working family in Massachusetts, what does that mean? What
does $1,800 mean?
Let us talk in real people terms so that people understand this is
not some party strategy, this is about people's lives, and we think
this is critically important to do. As of the moment, we cannot even
get our colleagues on the other side to debate. What does this mean to
people in Massachusetts?
Mr. KERRY. To a family in Massachusetts, say a single parent with two
kids, that spends about 60 bucks a week on groceries, this means a
difference of 7 months groceries. What we are talking about is 7 months
of food for the adult who is the combination breadwinner and parent and
the two children. Obviously, if you can buy the 7 months of groceries,
you then may also be able to move some of the money you had been
spending on food to pay the heating bill, pay the rent, pay the
utilities, or, if you are lucky enough to own a home, pay the mortgage.
But, of course, you are very unlikely to own a home if the family's
income depends on a minimum-wage job.
But there are many Americans who are hampered in what jobs they can
get because they do not have transportation. Often that is the
difference--being able to travel by some means from home to a job. An
increase in the minimum wage easily could enable a worker to afford
transportation, maybe a $3,000 used car, so you can travel beyond the
confines of an area where there are not a lot of jobs, and find a
better job.
There are many people with whom I talk in Massachusetts who are
limited in their ability to get a decent job by their inability to be
able to get to the job. As we are seeing more and more reductions in
transit subsidies, bus routes are being cut, the fares are going up.
People are actually written out of jobs because they cannot get to
them.
But let me just make one further point to my colleague, and then I
will yield the floor to him. All of this is not really that
complicated. You hear the same arguments every time. Oh, if you raise
the minimum wage, all those kids in the work force or who want to come
into the work force are going to be denied jobs. But the truth is, we
are not talking about kids. We are talking about adults. More than 70
percent of the people working on minimum wage are adults. More than
two-thirds of them are women. These are working families that are
affected here.
The argument is made that, oh, we are going to lose jobs if we raise
that minimum wage. Well, there are at least 12 studies, several of them
in the last couple of years, that refute that argument. A couple of
these studies were done in New Jersey because New Jersey raised its
minimum wage. You heard all the same arguments about New Jersey. And
New Jersey experienced an increase in jobs.
Can anyone look around America in any year in which we have raised
the minimum wage and say that doing so held us back--that it hurt our
economy or cost us jobs? Can you look around this country and suggest
that we have not created more jobs and raised people's incomes while we
provided that income floor which guaranteed that American workers are
not going to be exploited?
Mr. President, let us be honest about the history of what happened in
our Nation. Go back and read the ``Grapes of Wrath.'' Go back through
the history of the labor movement. Are we going to pretend that the
gains for America's workers came spontaneously? Did they come out of
the goodness of the hearts of managers or owners of the coal mines or
the steel mills or the railroads of this Nation? No.
Everybody knows the sacrifices that the labor movement had to make,
and that people lost their lives. People were shut out, people were
starved, people were hit over the head, knees were broken. People were
killed because workers had to fight for the right to be able to get a
decent wage. There was even a time, believe it or not--how amazing--
when people had to strike because they thought that they should not
work more than 8 hours a day. Remember the exploitation of child labor?
Remember the various diseases, the inhumane working conditions?
So through the years we have reached a point in America where we
thought we had a fundamental understanding about what was fair. Now you
have people working at the minimum wage who are earning only three-
quarters or half the level of poverty for their families. And we have a
party that believes that those of us elected to try to make these
choices in Washington should not have the right on the floor of the
Senate to have an up-or-down vote on a proposal to increase that
minimum wage. It is very simple. In this body, 51 votes is the measure
of what we do. In this case, 51 votes is the measure of whether
Americans working at the minimum wage will receive a raise.
The chief executive officers of this country have not had a hard time
getting raises. When 40,000 people are laid off at AT&T, the stock goes
up and the chief executive can walk away with millions of dollars in
additional compensation. What happens to those workers who were the
victims of the downsizing? Well, maybe they have a skill level where
they will break into another job. But for those people at the very
bottom rung of the ladder, they are not going to have a chance to reach
the next rung, or even to stay on the bottom rung, unless we lift their
living standard and give them a raise.
When one examines the ratio of salaries of chief executive officers
to salaries of their companies' wage earners, the ratio has moved from
50 to 1, where it remained for decades in this country, to over several
hundred to one today. It just seems incomprehensible to me, Mr.
President, that we should be even debating whether we should give the
workers on the bottom rung of the ladder a raise, especially when the
purchasing power of their current wage is at a 40-year low. That is
what this is all about. I hope that our colleagues will join with us in
our traditional bipartisan approach on this issue and raise the minimum
wage in this country.
Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Minnesota.

[[Page S2852]]

Privilege Of The Floor

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privilege
of the floor be granted to Paul Mazur during the duration of the debate
on this bill
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President.
I would like to thank both my colleagues from Massachusetts. Let me
just get back to basics. This amendment that I thought we were going to
lay down this morning is simple and straightforward. It would increase
the minimum wage, the Federal minimum wage from the current $4.25 an
hour to $5.15 an hour over the next 2 years. That is all. Mr.
President, 90 cents over 2 years, no indexing to adjust for the cost of
living, no other things to complicate the debate.

A straightforward proposition--raise the Federal minimum wage from
$4.25 an hour for working families in our country, to $5.15 an hour
over 2 years, and 90 cents over 2 years. For some reason my colleagues
on the other side of the aisle, at least as of this morning, do not
want us to be able to lay this amendment out on the floor of the Senate
and have the debate and vote for it up or down.
I would just say to my colleagues, that this is simple, this is
straightforward. My colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kerry, talked
about CEO salaries. Let me just be blunt. The U.S. House of
Representatives and the U.S. Senate sure as heck voted themselves a
huge raise, an increase from about $100,000 a few years ago to $130,000
a year. I heard my colleagues tell me that, you know, you have kids in
college and there is additional expenses and all of the rest.
Fair enough. But if the U.S. Senate can vote for a salary increase
from $100,000 to $130,000 a year--and the House took the action
earlier--do you not think it is about time we are willing to raise the
minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5.15 an hour over 2 years? Do you
not think it is about time that we would be willing to raise the
minimum wage by 90 cents over 2 years?
Mr. President, I do not know what the majority leader plans on doing.
But it does seem to me that we have now reached the point where
regardless of the strategies and regardless of whatever parliamentary
ruling there might be, it is going to be very difficult for Senators to
essentially finesse this issue. Because while we are putting off the
debate, at least for the moment, there are many Americans who have to
live with this minimum wage. We are putting the debate off on the
minimum wage this morning, while many Americans have to live with it.
For 200,000 working people and their families in Minnesota, this is an
extremely important issue.
Later on, Mr. President, when we get to the debate, I will talk about
people. I do not want it to be abstract. But let me just tell you,
whether it is a single parent working or whether it is two parents
working, this debate about the minimum wage, this effort to raise the
minimum wage, is absolutely key toward providing people with a ladder
to get into the middle class. This is a fundamental economic justice
question. I will just say one more time, I came to the floor about
10:30. I thought we had an understanding that we would go forward with
this amendment.
My hope is that after the caucuses meet at lunch we will be able to
do so, that we will be able to lay down our amendment, that we will
have debate on this amendment, and that Senators will be accountable,
Democrats and Republicans alike. Because I will tell you; in Minnesota,
the cafe discussion is whether or not your children are going to be
able to find jobs at a decent wage. The cafe discussion is whether or
not you can pay your mortgage payment or whether you can pay your rent.
The cafe discussion is whether you can afford to send your kids to
college. The cafe discussion is on the economic squeeze that families
feel.
The vast majority of people in Minnesota and the vast majority of
people all across this country want to see us take action on this.
I say one more time, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of
Representatives did not seem to have any problem in voting ourselves a
huge pay increase. Do you not think it is about time we vote for a pay
increase for working families in this country, and set some kind of
decent, humane, compassionate minimum wage floor for working men and
women and their children?
That is what this is about. I do not think anybody is going to be
able to hide from this debate. I do not think there is going to be any
way of maneuvering around this debate. I am just speaking for myself. I
am not even speaking for my two colleagues from Massachusetts. But I
intend to be a part of this effort to introduce this amendment over and
over and over again.

You cannot duck. You cannot hide. It is an important economic issue.
It is an important economic opportunity issue. It is all about working
men and women and their children. It is all about economic justice. It
is all about fairness. And it is time we get serious about these kinds
of issues in the U.S. Senate. I hope this afternoon after lunch we will
have the opportunity to lay down our amendment and then we will have
this debate. Then we will have a positive, affirmative vote for working
men, women, and children in the State of Minnesota. Mr. President, I
yield the floor.
Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I know the time is divided. I am just
wondering--I want to have a few more moments for a statement I want to
make between now and 12:30.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts, his side has 4
minutes remaining.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, why we wanted to have the opportunity to
address this issue is because, as this chart shows, between 1979 and
1993, this shows what has happened to real family income during this
period of time.
This body is familiar with what happened before 1979 from the postwar
period from 1949 up to 1979. Virtually each of these columns all moved
up together up to about 100 percent improvement in the family income
growth. Virtually at every level of the economy everyone moved up
together. We have gone through that in other debates on the minimum
wage and we may have a chance, if there is a challenge to this, to go
into that in some greater detail.
But what we have now seen is 1979-93, the bottom fifth of the
population has seen a real loss of 17 percent. I am always interested
in how we evaluate what has happened in the median, where the median
is. If you take the median as for the highest wages and the highest
profits and the highest growth of the wealthiest families and the least
you come out somewhere in the middle.
But the fact of the matter is that is not a good indication of what
is happening to those on the bottom rung of the ladder. They are the
ones that have fallen furthest behind from 1990 to 1993. This is the
group which would be most affected and most helped and assisted with
the increase in the minimum wage. It would be modest. It amounts to
about $3.4 billion that would go to that particular group.
We will hear a lot about this is very inflationary. That is $3.4
billion in a $5 trillion economy. That is $3.4 billion in a $5 trillion
economy. And they are going to talk about, well, it is inflation and it
is going to set off all of the economy? This demonstrates what is out
there in terms of our colleagues who are working in America.
The ones that are being affected by the minimum wage, as has been
pointed out, are the ones that are working full time, 40 hours a week,
52 weeks of the year. This chart shows what the real minimum wage is.
That is in the purchasing power. This continues to go. It will be the
lowest it was since 1989.
In 1989, as has been pointed out in this debate, at that level, of
Republicans and Democrats, there were only nine Members of the U.S.
Senate in 1989 that voted against it. And 32 Members of the Republican
Party voted for this increase. George Bush voted for that increase.
Effectively we are right back down to--Bob Dole voted for the increase.
We are right back to that level now. Plus, I think most would
understand that the economy is stronger

[[Page S2853]]

today than it was at that particular time.
Mr. President, this chart shows what is happening. The Dow-Jones
average, inflation adjusted, goes right up through the roof. Here it
is. It breaks through the roof. This is what is happening with the
stock market, the Dow-Jones average, right up through the roof. The
real minimum wage, inflation adjusted, the small increase here with the
90-cent increase, right back down again. And what we are talking about
with this amendment would be a 90-cent increase over the next 2 years.
Mr. President, as has been pointed out, these are the individuals who
are affected--16 to 19 years is 31 percent; over 20 years of age, 70
percent. We are talking about adults; 70 percent of the individuals are
over 20 years of age.
Mr. President, this is an indication, again, as I mentioned briefly,
about who in our society is going to be impacted. Men represent 40
percent of the wage earners from $4.25 to $5.14. These are the wage
earners that would be impacted by this increase. Again, 60 percent
would be women. Many of them are single women. Many of them have
children. That is why I believe that this is not just----
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 30 seconds remaining.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself the final 30 seconds.
Is not just a workers' issue; it is a women's issue and a child's
issue.
Mr. President, we will have the opportunity to go on and show about
what the impact has been on inflation and employment since the end of
World War II. We are glad to debate this issue, to take on issues and
go through them and let the Senate vote its will.
So, Mr. President, I hope that we will have that opportunity when the
legislation is going to come up under what was agreed to last evening
to be recognized. We will offer this amendment. We hope that we will be
able to work out an agreeable format so that we can have a real debate
on the issue and then have a final vote, find out who is on the side of
working families in this country.
My time has expired. I understand the remaining time will be
available to the Members of the other party and we will be back here at
2:15 to continue this debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from
Washington.
Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I did not come to the floor for the
purpose of discussing this issue, but having listened to this
discussion, I do want to remark on the bizarre nature of an argument
which emphasized so strongly the outrage of the last three Senators in
not being permitted to debate an issue which they were, of course,
debating, on which they will place an amendment, when each of those
three Senators has been visibly engaged in the last 4 weeks in
preventing the Senate from voting on an appropriations bill for the
District of Columbia with all of the positive impact that has on poor
people, law enforcement, and education in the District, and by
foolishly engaging at the same time in filibustering an attempt to
bring to conclusion--to extend and bring to conclusion--the Whitewater
investigation. We have not been permitted to debate these issues on
their merits or to vote on their merits. For the life of me, I do not
understand how that differs from the objection they are making today,
particularly since they will, of course, be able to bring up such an
amendment and have a debate on it.
I also point out, they neglected to state that all of their examples
relate to some 10 or 15 percent, a very small percentage, of minimum-
wage people who are the primary supporters for their families, and that
a proposal that would obviously benefit that small handful of people
will have a terribly damaging effect on first jobs for teenager and
welfare recipients attempting to build new lives and living for
themselves.
The compassion for those people, at the beginning of their careers,
seem to be remarkably absent in the debate we have heard so far.

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