[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2884-S2885]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              MINIMUM WAGE

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I come to this debate on the minimum wage 
from a different perspective than some of my colleagues here today. In 
January of this year, my State of Delaware decided to raise the minimum 
wage, after

[[Page S2885]]

a debate a lot like the one we are hearing today.
  We like to think that Delaware is a special place, Mr. President, and 
in many ways it is. But it is also a lot like the rest of the country. 
We have big businesses and small, we have world-class high-technology 
businesses in chemicals and pharmaceuticals, a cutting-edge financial 
service sector and--a lot of my colleagues are surprised when I tell 
them this--a major agricultural sector.
  With that kind of diversity, I think Delaware has something to teach 
the rest of the country. We are, after all, the first State to ratify 
the Constitution, so we think our example is worth following.
  The proposal we adopted in Delaware is much like the one before the 
Senate today. The proposal before us today would call for a two-step 
increase in the minimum wage, from the current $4.25 an hour to $5.15. 
In Delaware, we also chose a two-step increase, from $4.25 to $5.00.
  In my State, that increase will directly affect over 30,000 
Delawareans and their families, 9.5 percent of the work force, just a 
little below the national average of 11.5 percent who currently work 
for the minimum wage.
  So Delaware is like the rest of the country, Mr. President, just a 
little bit ahead of everybody else when it comes to addressing the 
problem of stagnant family incomes in general and the shrinking value 
of the minimum wage in particular.
  And that is what I would like to talk about today, Mr. President--the 
puzzle of why, in a growing economy, with rising productivity and 
rising profits, a full-time job for hard-working adults has failed to 
provide a rising standard of living.
  The minimum wage itself provides one important illustration of this 
disturbing trend. Since 1991, the last time we raised the minimum 
wage--with a bipartisan majority, Mr. President, and signed into law by 
President Bush--the real spending power of the minimum wage has dropped 
nearly 50 cents.
  If we fail to raise the minimum wage, it will drop to a 40-year low 
when this year is over. Right now, you can put in a full 40-hour 
workweek, 52 weeks a year, and take home just $8,840, just three-
quarters of the poverty level for a family of three.
  For those families, with a full-time worker, the current minimum wage 
is not even the minimum they need to stay out of poverty. That is 
something we cannot forget as we search for ways to convince more 
people to stay off of welfare and to turn away from crime.
  There are, unfortunately, other examples of the declining rewards of 
hard work for so many American families.
  It is not just those wage earners who are working to keep themselves 
and their families out of poverty who have seen their incomes stuck, 
who are running as fast as they can just to keep from falling further 
behind.
  Mr. President, the median wage--the real middle income statistically 
speaking--is actually 5 percent less this year than it was in 1979. 
This is happening in an economy that has been growing at about 2.5 
percent over the same time.
  Where has all that growth been going? Who has gained from the growth 
in the economy? Between 1977 and 1992, the lowest 20 percent of 
American families saw their incomes drop 17 percent. But the top 20 
percent enjoyed a 28-percent increase, and the top 1 percent saw their 
incomes shoot up 91 percent--virtually doubling.
  So there has been growth, Mr. President, but the distribution of that 
growth among working families has been increasingly unequal.
  Now, I for one do not think that human nature has changed all that 
much in the last 20 to 25 years. I do not think the richest 1 percent 
are suddenly twice as smart as they used to be, or that workers at the 
other end of the scale decided to become less productive.
  Something else is going on, Mr. President, something more fundamental 
and far reaching than a simple business cycle, perhaps something we 
have seen only a couple of times before in our Nation's economic 
history. There is a lot of evidence that the economy no longer 
functions the way it used to, that it no longer provides the stable, 
middle-income jobs that built America's middle class after World War 
II.
  As someone who has put his faith in the free enterprise system, Mr. 
President, I am inclined to see these changes as part of the way this 
system works--changing markets, changing products, changing skills have 
always been a key feature of the American economy.
  But while Americans have a strong tolerance--even an appetite--for 
the dynamic shifts that characterize our economic system, they have an 
equally strong sense of fairness. Americans expect that hard work will 
be rewarded--not with riches, maybe, but certainly with a little 
security and a little comfort.
  For far too many Americans, Mr. President, our system is providing 
far too much of those dynamic changes and far too little fairness.
  I don't want my colleagues to forget that the absolute, bedrock 
requirement of our democratic system is the belief by the majority of 
our people that they are being treated fairly. Because this is not just 
a free enterprise economy, Mr. President, that we have here in America. 
We are blessed to have a system of popular government that provides and 
protects the property rights that are the foundation of our economy.
  Take away that sense of fairness, take away the sense that at the end 
of the day, there is some justice in the way our capitalist democracy 
works, and people can start looking at other systems, other answers. 
The unhappy history of this century provides too many examples for us 
to blithely dismiss this problem.
  It is not too much to say that the real bottom line that we have to 
keep our eyes on is on the balance sheet of fairness. No amount of 
national wealth can buy that sense of fairness, no list of statistics 
can substitute for it.
  As an optimist, Mr. President, I do not believe we are facing an 
insurmountable crisis. In fact, by my reading, a large part of our 
history has been a pretty successful search for ways to balance the 
changing demands of a dynamic economy with the unchanging demand for 
some basic fairness, for some simple justice, in the way we reward 
work.
  We can make work pay, and make work a realistic alternative to the 
wasteful choices of welfare or crime, that will surely cost us more 
than the modest minimum wage bill before us today.
  So I urge my colleagues to follow the lead of my State of Delaware. 
Restore some of the historical value of the minimum wage, some of the 
justice that is the real bottom line in America.

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