[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3702-H3703]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my 
colleagues some words that come from a 67-year-old woman who works at 
the minimum wage in Santa Ana, CA:

       Dear Congressman--she wrote me recently--I strongly advise 
     you not to raise the minimum wage. In my working career, I 
     have had a lot of under, slightly over and straight minimum 
     wage jobs. As a single parent, I managed to raise my son 
     without any handout from the government. Although raising the 
     minimum wage may should like a great humanitarian idea, it 
     really isn't.
       In the past every time minimum wages were raised, the 
     entire national work force, plus welfare recipients, also 
     demanded and received raises. The cost of goods and services 
     rose to meet the higher cost of labor, and you forced me to 
     work a lot of overtime to maintain the same buying power I 
     had before my ``generous'' raise.

[[Page H3703]]

       I am now 67 years old and consider myself extremely lucky 
     to have an employer willing to hire elderly people like 
     myself. My employer is a small businessman. Recently because 
     of the economy he was forced to raise his prices and cut his 
     overhead just to stay in business. I took a Small Business 
     Administration class in college, and I know that he has to 
     match my Social Security payments, pay higher State 
     disability and workers compensation. He and others like him 
     will have no alternative but to close their doors and I will 
     be unemployed.
       When I lose my job, because my employer can no longer 
     afford to stay in business, what is the government going to 
     do about me, someone who is willing to work? How is the 
     government going to help support me? Who is going to pay for 
     this?
       Very truly yours, Joanna B. Menser, Santa Ana, CA.

  That is a personal story, but how about the big picture? How about 
macroeconomics, and how about the views of such institutional stalwarts 
of the liberal point of view as the New York Times? Some time ago the 
New York Times ran an editorial on the minimum wage. The headline was, 
the right minimum wage, zero. By that the New York Times did not mean 
that people should actually work for nothing. Rather, what they meant 
is that wages, the cost and the price of labor should be determined in 
a free market and in fact no one should be held to a so-called minimum 
wage but, rather, everyone should have the opportunity to make an 
increasing wage in return for higher skills and higher productivity.

                              {time}  1830

  Let me read from that editorial in the New York Times which was 
titled, ``The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.''
  ``Anyone working in America,'' the New York Times says, ``surely 
deserves a better living standard than can be managed on the minimum 
wage.''
  I think we can all agree with that.
  But there is a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum 
wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a 
substantial amount would price poor working people out of the job 
market, people like Joanna Menser, whose remarks we just heard.
  ``An increase in the minimum wage,'' the New York Times wrote in 
their editorial, ``would increase unemployment.''
  Let me repeat this line from the New York times editorial: ``An 
increase in the minimum wage would increase unemployment, raise the 
legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least 
skilled worker, and fewer will be hired.''
  ``If a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs, why does it remain on 
the agenda of some liberals,'' the New York Times asked.
  ``Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum wage would be young 
poor workers who already face formidable barriers to getting and 
keeping jobs.''
  They conclude their editorial in the New York Times as follows:
  ``The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, 
honorable, and fundamentally flawed.''
  This is the New York Times now. This is not Congressman Chris Cox 
from California.
  ``The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, 
honorable, and fundamentally flawed. It's time to put this hoary debate 
behind us and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work 
very hard for very little.''
  Finally, the New York Times of Friday, April 19, just last Friday, is 
worth noticing here on the floor in this debate among our colleagues. 
Three factoids from the New York Times, Friday April 19, 1996, I 
commend to all of my colleagues:
  Number of times in 1993 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress, 
that President Clinton mentioned in public his advocacy of a minimum 
wage increase: zero. Number of times he has done so in 1995 and 1996, 
when Republicans have controlled Congress, 47. Number of congressional 
hearings Democrats held on the minimum wage in 1993 and 1994: zero.

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