[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 47 (Monday, April 15, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3255-S3257]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MINIMUM WAGE

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we will be dealing with some interesting 
and very important issues here in the U.S. Senate this week. This 
follows a break during which, in the intervening couple of weeks, most 
of us spent time in our States. I was in North Dakota, and I met a 
wonderful man in North Dakota who was our State's oldest citizen, 110 
years old. His name is Nels Burger. He is a wonderful Norwegian man who 
grew up and lived on a farm in North Dakota. He has a vivid 
recollection and memory of farming in North Dakota all those many 
years.
  I was thinking, as I was preparing to come to the floor today, of the 
things

[[Page S3256]]

that have changed during the lifetime of Nels Burger. It you think of 
what has changed in 110 years in this country, it is really quite 
remarkable. Nels was born in 1885. There was once a story about an old 
fellow being interviewed by a radio interviewer, and the interviewer 
said to him--he was 85, 90 years old--``You must have seen a lot of 
changes in your life.'' The old fellow said, ``Yep, and I was against 
every one of them.'' Well, there are people like that. They are against 
every change as it is proposed. Yet, a series of changes have made life 
better in this country.
  We are going to talk this week about the minimum wage. Some say, 
well, we ought not have the minimum wage at all. Others say we ought to 
have a minimum wage. For those that are working at the minimum wage, 
they ought to at least be able to keep pace with inflation.
  We will have all kinds of economists weigh in on this subject. We 
have economists on one side and economists on the other side. It makes 
you yearn for the old days when Roman priests in ancient Rome were 
called augurs, performing something called augury, which was the body 
of knowledge we now know as economics. Augury. They would read the 
entrails of sacrificed cattle, or read the flights of birds, and from 
that portend what the future may or may not hold. Actually, the science 
of economics or the field of economics is probably not much more 
accurate than augury, but we will have plenty of economists weigh in on 
both sides of this issue.
  It seems to me that the issue of the minimum wage ought to be simple 
for this Chamber. It ought to ask two questions: One, should there be a 
minimum wage? Some will answer no, but I think the prevailing mood in 
the Congress would be yes. We have had a minimum wage in our country 
for a long time. It has benefited those at the lower end of the 
economic ladder. Should we have a minimum wage? If the answer is yes, 
then the question is, What should it be? We now have a minimum wage 
that is about $4.25 cents an hour. Eleven States have a higher minimum 
wage than the Federal Government has. There are a few States that have 
a lower minimum wage. Most of the States have a State minimum wage that 
is exactly the same as the Federal minimum wage.
  If one thinks there ought to be a minimum wage in our country, then 
the question is, What should it be? Or, should it ever be changed? 
Should we decide that the minimum wage shall remain where it is, while 
others on the economic ladder in this country move up? During the past 
year, there was a story in the newspaper that said CEO's at major 
corporations got a 23-percent raise in 1995. The average salary has 
increased to $991,000, but that was only a quarter of their earnings. 
The average stock option was $1.5 million. The average bonus was $1.2 
million. So, they received a salary of $991,000, a stock option of $1.5 
million, and a bonus of $1.2 million. That is a 23-percent jump in 
compensation in 1 year. These are the folks at the top of the economic 
ladder.
  Now, the question is, What about the people at the bottom of the 
economic ladder? It is interesting, when we discuss topics here in the 
Chamber, that there is a room off the Chamber called the reception 
room, where visitors come and where people who are interested in 
legislation will congregate. I can recall when we passed the 
telecommunications legislation, it was full. It was a traffic jam in 
the reception area in the hallway outside the Chamber of people who 
were interested in this legislation and of companies that had an 
interest in this legislation. When we passed the defense authorization 
bill, the hallways were jammed with people who had an interest in that 
legislation. Even when Senator Bumpers and I brought to the floor a 
proposal to eliminate the National Endowment for Democracy, we had a 
``Who's Who'' in corporate America, a ``Who's Who'' in the Republican 
Party, a ``Who's Who'' in the Democratic Party, a ``Who's Who'' in the 
chamber of commerce, and the AFL-CIO all sitting out there trying to 
kill our amendment because they all got money from the National 
Endowment for Democracy. So, there was a traffic jam outside this 
Chamber. All kinds of people who had an interest in the legislation 
were hanging around.
  It is interesting, when we talk about the minimum wage, there is no 
one outside this Chamber. No one is waiting, no one is lobbying--except 
against it--no one is out there saying, ``We have some people who get 
up in the morning and make breakfast for a couple of kids, and then 
work for 8 or 10 hours at $4.25 an hour, and come home and try to 
figure out how far that stretches, how much milk can you buy with 
that.'' Will it pay for the medicine, the milk, and the diapers? They 
do not have time to come out here and lobby. They do not have the 
capability. They do not have the money.

  So, there is not a traffic jam out in the hallways when we talk about 
minimum wage because no one is speaking for the people who do not seem 
to have much of a voice in this system of ours. At least, not many are 
speaking for them. We have people in this Chamber who would not know 
the price of diapers or milk or bread who tell us $4.25 is just fine. 
Never mind the fact that inflation means that $4.25 purchases less than 
it did 6 years ago. It does not matter to us, they say. Never mind the 
fact that the top of the economic ladder gets a 23-percent pay raise. 
Let us freeze the bottom of the ladder, they say. Well, it may not 
matter to some people in here, but it matters to millions of people 
around the country who are trying very hard to go to work and to care 
for their families.
  The vast majority of the people working for minimum wage are adults. 
Sixty percent of them are adult women. Forty percent of the people on 
minimum wage are providing one-half of their families' income, and 
there are more than 1 million working for the minimum wage who are 
providing the sole support for themselves and their children.
  I know some who will say minimum wage is for kids. That is not true. 
We ought to at least debate the facts. There are kids working for the 
minimum wage. I understand that. I accept that. But there are plenty of 
people who have nothing who are out there trying every day in every way 
to make a living on $4.25 an hour, and after 6 years their wages have 
been decreased because $4.25 an hour buys less. The question is, Who 
will speak for them? Who will stand up for their interests? This is our 
job.
  Our responsibility is not to decide that the market system does not 
work. The market system does work. This is a wonderful country with a 
market system that has produced the richest capitalistic society that 
very few people could ever have imagined. I pay great tribute to the 
men and women who risk their resources, who work long hours in the day 
and night to start a business and try to make a go of it. I understand 
that as well. We have also understood that part of this system requires 
some rules and that we are the referee in this system.
  Someone stood up at a luncheon meeting I attended the other day and 
said, ``How do you justify speaking on behalf of the minimum wage?'' I 
said, ``Do you not support a minimum wage?'' He say, ``No.'' I said, 
``Do you think there is not a minimum at all?'' He said, ``That is 
exactly the case.'' He said, ``I don't think you ought to interfere 
with the market system in any way. There should be no minimum wage in 
America.'' Then I asked, ``Should you be able to hire 12-year-olds and 
work them 12 hours a day? Should you be permitted to do that?'' The 
Government has said with child labor laws that there are certain things 
that are not appropriate. We used to have 6-, 8- 10-year-olds working 
in textile mills in this country. We said, ``That is not appropriate.'' 
So we passed child labor laws. Even then we had people that said it is 
not appropriate for us to interfere with the market system, that 
children ought to be able to work, that people ought to be able to 
employ 10- or 12-year-olds in the mill. But we thought through that 
issue a little bit as a country and we decided no. The better part of 
judgment was to decide that there are certain rules within this market 
system which represent basic fairness. And among those rules was the 
minimum wage.
  I am not here to suggest that there is anyone in here that does not 
care about people at the bottom of the economic ladder. I do not want 
to be judgmental about that. I do hope, however, that all of us in the 
Senate--and in the House--will understand a little

[[Page S3257]]

bit about what it is like to be on the bottom of the economic leader.
  I encourage everyone in the Senate to some morning before we vote on 
the minimum wage again to get up and go downtown to a homeless shelter 
and talk to a young woman whose husband left her, who has two or three 
children, who has no skills, who has no money, and who has no place to 
live. Talk to her about her experience working at minimum wage. When 
she works she loses AFDC. When she works she is told she cannot save 
any money to prepare for her first month's rent and 1-month security 
deposit. There is not any way she can save money to try to get an 
apartment to shelter her and her kids. After you have talked to her for 
a bit, think, ``If it were me, how would I get out of this 
circumstance?'' I will bet you that you would have, as I did, a 
difficult time understanding how you pull yourself up and out of that 
kind of circumstance.

  I ask everybody in this the Senate as they think about the minimum 
wage to think about the people who are struggling to try to make a 
living every single day and who find now that their $4.25 an hour buys 
a whole lot less than it did 6 years ago. We are now near in terms of 
purchasing power a 40-year low in the minimum wage. And we ought to pay 
as much attention to the needs of those at the bottom of the economic 
ladder as we seem to day after day to pay for those at the top of the 
economic ladder. My hope is that we will--Republicans and Democrats--
understand that there are people who have no voice out there, or who 
feel they have no voice, and that we should raise our voices on their 
behalf. There are people out there who work hard but still feel they 
have no hope. We ought to offer hope to those people. That is what we 
ought to be about.
  The easiest thing in the world is to be negative. The easiest thing 
in the world is to oppose and reject. The hardest thing in the world is 
to be a builder and to try to understand what is right and what 
improves life in this country. I hope we can decide in a bipartisan way 
to do that in the coming day or two, or week, when we discuss once 
again the minimum wage.

                          ____________________