[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 58 (Wednesday, May 1, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4380-H4387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                A DEBATE ON INCREASING THE MINIMUM WAGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mica). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Fields] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to also thank the 
gentleman to my right for their special order tonight, Mr. Speaker. I 
want to thank

[[Page H4381]]

them for their colloquy, and I want to thank them for such a great 
expression of the issues in terms of bringing this body to a level that 
this body should be at.
  I am very encouraged by the gentleman's pledge, and want to pledge to 
the gentleman that I will be one gentleman who will sign his pledge, 
and I thank the gentleman for bringing it to the floor tonight to talk 
about it in a special order.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman, my fellow 
colleague from Louisiana [Mr. Fields] and I go back a long way to his 
first days in politics. I want to say something publicly, Cleo, that 
needs to get said, I think.
  You have made an incredible and enormous contribution to politics in 
Louisiana, and to government, and to this body, and I want to thank you 
for joining and signing this pledge. You and all of us, I think, 
signing it and being a part of it can help make it real and help make 
this place a better governmental institution. I know that was one of 
your goals when you came here. Thank you for that, Cleo.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his 
words of encouragement. I want the gentleman to know that I want to 
continue to work hard to remain in this body and to remain a force to 
change not only the conditions of this country, but the way we do 
business as Members of Congress.
  I also want to expressly thank the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. 
Dickey] who has agreed to be a part of this colloquy tonight on an 
issue that is very important to me and an issue that is very important 
to people all across this Nation, and also the gentlewoman from Georgia 
[Ms. McKinney] who is going to be joining in this colloquy tonight on 
the issue of minimum wage.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about the minimum wage, and 
why I feel that we should raise the minimum wage. There are people, 
Americans in this country who work hard every day. They wake up early 
in the morning, they go to work, they work a 40-hour work shift every 
week, and they go home. At the end of the day they are still poor. It 
is not because they are lazy, but it is because we must raise the 
minimum wage.
  I am here tonight to offer a plea to this Congress and to you, Mr. 
Speaker, on behalf of the millions of Americans who cannot afford to 
buy the food at the restaurant that they work at on a day-to-day basis, 
they cannot afford to sit at the tables that they clean, they cannot 
afford to sleep in the beds that they make up in hotels, because they 
cannot afford to check in that very hotel.
  They cannot even afford to go to colleges and universities and send 
their kids to colleges and universities that they work at as custodians 
and janitors. I am here tonight to offer a plea for those millions of 
Americans, who come in all shapes and all sizes and all colors.

  Let us take this Congress. We as Members of Congress, we make about 
$550 a day. To have the audacity to come on the floor of this House and 
say that people who make $680 a month do not deserve an increase to me 
is wrong. Tonight I offer a plea for those millions of Americans, 
because I do think that they deserve a minimum wage increase.
  I call upon Members from both sides of the aisle to look at this 
issue and give it some serious consideration, because in all frankness, 
Mr. Speaker, these people have not had an increase for 5 years. If we 
look at the history of the minimum wage when it was passed, the act 
when it was passed in 1938, when this Congress passed the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, the wage was set at 25 cents. Then this Congress came 
back and changed the minimum wage 17 times. Seventeen separate times 
this Congress voted to raise the minimum wage. Now it has been since 
1991. The last time the minimum wage was raised in this country was in 
1991, so this country has gone 5 years without a minimum wage increase. 
I think it is long overdue.
  If we look at the history of the minimum wage, we will find that the 
minimum wage was increased on an average of about every 3\1/2\ years. 
We are now at 5 years, which means we are a year and a half late on 
raising the minimum wage. Why do we raise the minimum wage in the first 
place? Why did this Congress raise the minimum wage, or even start a 
minimum wage in 1938? It is because it is no more than fair to give 
people the opportunity to earn a decent wage.
  No one would sit or stand before this podium or any podium tonight on 
this floor and suggest that inflation has not gone up in the past 5 
years. It would be a bit crazy, for lack of a better word, for us to 
think that a person can buy a loaf of bread in 1996 at a 1991 price. It 
would not be fair for us to even assume that a person can buy a gallon 
of milk in 1996 for a 1991 price. If inflation is moving up on an 
average of 3 percent a year, then it just makes basic sense to give 
those working people the opportunity to earn a decent wage.
  The other thing I want to talk about is welfare reform. People talk 
about it, that we need to put people on payrolls in this country and 
get them off of welfare rolls. I think they are right. There is not a 
Member of this Congress who does not want to get people off of welfare 
more quickly and sooner, in a compassionate way, than I do. But we are 
saying, ``Get off the welfare rolls and go on the payrolls,'' but we do 
not want to pay people for the work they do. The best way to decrease 
the welfare rolls, in my estimation, is to pay people for the work they 
do.
  People need to make a decent wage in this country. Think about it; 34 
cents a day. We have decent Americans, good Americans, who wake up. 
They want to provide health care for their children. They want to send 
their kids to school. They work in restaurants. They bus tables, they 
make beds, they mop floors, they work at gas stations, and at 40-hour 
work shifts a week, because they want to be productive. They do not 
want to be on the welfare rolls. We criticize these people because we 
do not want to even give them an opportunity to be paid for the work 
they do.
  I am happy that the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey] is here, who 
will talk about some of the reasons why we should not raise the minimum 
wage, and I am going to yield to the gentleman in a minute, but before 
we do, I am going to yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. 
McKinney] who has joined us to talk about the minimum wage increase as 
well.

  I notice that the gentlewoman earlier tonight was on the floor 
talking about the need to raise the minimum wage. I want to thank her 
for her tenacity, and I want to thank her for her commitment to try to 
give people a decent wage in America, because in my opinion, that is 
just no more than fair. If we want people to get off of the welfare 
rolls and go to payrolls, then the very least we can do as a Congress 
is to make sure that they get paid for the work they do.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney].
  Ms. McKINNEY. First of all, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
securing this time so we could have this discussion about raising the 
minimum wage. I have a quote here: ``A living wage for a fair day's 
work is a hallmark of the American economic philosophy.'' I do not know 
if the gentleman knows who said that. It was not some left-wing person, 
it was not a person who is out of left field. These words were spoken 
by Bob Dole in 1974: ``A living wage for a fair day's work is a 
hallmark of the American economic philosophy.''
  Yet, Mr. Speaker, in 1996, we have the House majority leader saying, 
``I will resist an increase in the minimum wage with every fiber in my 
being.'' We have the House Republican whip saying, ``Working families 
trying to get by on $4.25 an hour don't really exist.''

                              {time}  2130

  And then more recently we had the Republican Conference chairman say, 
``I will commit suicide before I vote on a clean minimum wage bill.''
  Now, we have had some folks who have come to us with an economic 
argument and they have said that this is bad for the economy. Well, we 
have 101 economists who have signed on to the call for a higher minimum 
wage. Among those 101 economists are 3 Nobel prize winners. Those 
economists range from Henry Aaron at the Brookings Institution to 
Kenneth Arrow at

[[Page H4382]]

Stanford University to David Blanchflower at Dartmouth College; 
Lawrence Klein, University of Pennsylvania; James Tobin of Yale, John 
Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard. We have got people who have received the 
world's highest honor and they have said that the minimum wage increase 
is the right thing to do. At the same time that we were talking about 
not raising the minimum wage, not even allowing the vote to come on the 
floor, at one time there were even proposals to cut the earned income 
tax credit.
  So I believe that this is the right thing to do and I am pleased to 
join with my colleague from Louisiana, and I am anxious to hear my 
colleague from Arkansas who is my good friend, and maybe I should not 
say that out loud, but this is the hour of civility, so I ask my 
colleague from Arkansas to join us.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentlewoman for her 
presentation.
  Before I recognize the gentleman from Arkansas, who is a 
distinguished gentleman for whom I have the utmost respect, as a matter 
of fact he and I have shared planes on a number of occasions. As a 
matter of fact, as recently as this last week, we took the same route 
here to Washington. I want to thank the gentleman because it is very 
honorable of the gentleman to stay as late as he is staying to talk 
about an issue that certainly I feel very strongly about and, of 
course, the gentleman feels very strongly about, as well.
  I want to talk a little bit about, and then I want to yield to the 
gentleman from Arkansas, because I think he may be able to shed some 
light on this. Because I have heard those who are against raising the 
minimum wage assert the argument that it would in fact decrease jobs 
particularly among young people. That it would also have an adverse 
effect on the economy because people will in fact lose jobs.
  My assertion and my belief is people did not lose jobs when we raised 
the minimum wage the 17 times that we did raise the minimum wage in the 
past, and young people were not thrown out of the work market, which, 
and I will be quite honest here, as one of the youngest members of 
Congress, I fight for and advocate for every time I walk on this floor. 
They did not lose their jobs then, and I suggest that they would not 
lose their jobs now.
  If we look at the economy, and I am no economist. The gentleman has 
been around a lot longer than I have been around, and he has read many 
more books than I have read because he has been around a lot longer. 
But I can tell you, it just makes practical sense to me that if you 
give a person more buying power, then that person will probably buy 
more.
  So to say that people will lose jobs as a result of raising the 
minimum wage to me does not make much sense because if you raise the 
minimum wage and give a person more buying power and give those 
producers the opportunity to come in and then take advantage of the 
products that we have to offer, the goods and services that we have to 
offer instead of at $4.25, at $5.15, then it just makes sense that that 
will in fact generate more money in the economy.
  I have heard the argument, also, that you will also cause prices to 
go up. Well, I believe in the free enterprise system, and I think that 
our consumers are smart enough and wise enough to know where to shop 
and where not to shop. At hamburger stand X, if we have enough insight 
to raise the minimum wage, if this Congress raises the minimum wage, if 
hamburger shop X decides to send the price of a hamburger from 90 cents 
to a dollar, I just fail to understand the logic of hamburger X raising 
that price of a hamburger without assuming or making the assumption 
that every hamburger stand in that location or locality will raise the 
price of hamburgers as well.
  As a former businessman it would just make sense to me to keep my 
hamburger at the same price provided that I can and if I have as good a 
burger as hamburger stand X, then I would suggest that people would 
come and buy my burger and if enough people buy my burger then 
hamburger stand X will reduce its burger to a reasonable price. We talk 
about how we let the free enterprise system grow and work and give 
consumers the opportunity to make decisions. I just cannot see how 
people are going to lose jobs if we raise the minimum wage.
  Let us take it another step. Let us say the hamburgers go up, the 
price of goods and services go up. You are still going to have to have 
people who are going to produce these products, who are going to be in 
these service jobs, to cook the hamburgers, so forth and so on. So 
people are not going to lose jobs. And if you give a person $5.15 
versus $4.25, and you raise the burger by a penny, then that money goes 
into the economy.
  I am going to yield to the gentleman because I know the gentleman 
would like to shed some light on why this will cause an adverse effect 
on the economy. At this time I yield to my distinguished friend from 
the State of Arkansas.
  Mr. DICKEY. Thank you, Mr. Fields.
  On the question of congeniality, as you started your statement, I 
would like to go back to that a second.
  The race you ran for Governor and the respectful way that you did not 
trash your opponent, you did not bring issues out that would demean the 
voting populace was a credit to our Nation and I want to thank you. I 
am your neighbor on the north. I heard about how you handled yourself 
in that race and I think it was just absolutely wonderful and it is an 
example of congeniality. You lived it, you did it in a race. And I 
think what the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] was talking about, 
you really contributed. I want to thank you for that. I also want to 
thank you both for letting me get in this discussion with you. I think 
you just kind of want to pick on me, though, particularly Cynthia, the 
gentlewoman from Georgia, Ms. McKinney.

  But let me try to bring a perspective, if I can, to this, and when I 
run out of time, you just tell me that, if you will.
  This is really an issue, and let me tell you this. I am an employer. 
I have two restaurants, and most of the people I hire are first-time 
employees when they come to work for me. I have been in that business 
since 1962 really. I had an ice cream shop and I now own two Taco 
Bells. I do not sign the payrolls now, my son does, but I do know the 
issues. If you all could do this, please do not completely draw 
conclusions until you think about what it is like to sign a payroll, 
what it is like to sign the front part of a check. It is a difficult 
thing to do in this world today, in America, with all the regulations, 
with all the forces and everything else, and it does come down to where 
you have to make some decisions, and it is not a decision that is based 
on greed or trying to make so much money most of the time, even though 
we do have excesses.
  What I am saying to you is what is happening is that we are not 
taking the view of that person who is the payroll signer, that person 
who is battling all the issues. The insurance can go up, taxes can go 
up, real estate taxes, regulations, and I know regulations about just 
taking grease out requires an enormous amount of paperwork. If you look 
at the perspective there, you are going to see what the problem is when 
the Federal Government comes in and says, ``Though productivity is not 
an issue, we want you to give a raise. We want you, because we decide, 
we want you to give a raise to these people who are working for you now 
but we're not going to give you the money to do it. In fact, we're 
going to charge you more taxes than you had before because you're going 
to have to pay the payroll taxes on a higher amount for those people 
who are just coming into the work force.''
  Now, this may be a statement that you do not agree with, but there is 
not a person who I hire who has ever had a job at $4.25 who is worth 
$4.25, not one person. Either they have worked somewhere else and you 
have to untrain them from what they are doing and train them for your 
way or you have to start them on a pattern of training and you have to 
put somebody with them, you have to attach somebody with them. So they 
are not worth $4.25. Where they reach the point that they are worth 
$4.25 is up to them.
  So what we are saying is if in fact they are entitled to a raise, it 
will happen, not by what the employer says, not by what the government 
says, not by what some politician says but what the consumer says.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Will the gentleman yield on that point?

[[Page H4383]]

  Mr. DICKEY. Sure. It is your show.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the gentleman would just answer a few 
questions for me so I can understand exactly what mode of operation the 
gentleman is in in terms of his philosophy on the minimum wage.
  Does the gentleman believe that there should be in fact a minimum 
wage irrespective, and let us not get into whether or not we should 
raise it now or in the future. Does the gentleman believe that this 
country should have a standard in terms of what is the minimum wage for 
an individual when they enter the work force?

  Mr. DICKEY. Are you asking me as an employer or as a politician?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I am asking you as a human being. As either. 
As a human being, do you think that this Congress should have a 
standard in terms of a wage when a person enters the work force?
  Mr. DICKEY. If you want an answer from the politician's standpoint, 
we are past the point of debating that. It is behind us. We must have a 
minimum wage.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the gentleman would agree to that, then 
let me just go to first base. The gentleman knows that this country, 
the American workers, have not received a minimum wage increase since 
1991, and I am sure that the gentleman would agree with me that the 
cost of living between 1991 and 1996 did not go down but it went up. As 
a matter of fact, inflation is on the average 3 percent a year. So if 
that is the case, then the gentleman would have to agree with me, or it 
appears to me that the gentleman would have to agree with me that is 
just makes basic sense that those low-paid workers, those minimum wage 
workers deserve the opportunity to have their increase, not 
commensurate with inflation but in 5 years they are overdue for an 
increase. Would the gentleman not agree to that?
  Mr. DICKEY. What I need to do is I need to keep going. Let me go 
through this whole thing if I can from the perspective. Let me say 
this. As a politician, the minimum wage exists and we have to have a 
minimum wage.
  Now what I am saying to you as far as the economy is concerned, it is 
destructive of the economy's best interests. As an employer, I would 
say that I could take the case that employees are worse off with a 
minimum wage, whatever it is, than they would be if we did not have it 
at all.
  Let me see if I can explain the whole thing before you gang up on me, 
okay? Can we do that? What I am saying to you is from the perspective 
of the employee, the problem with the minimum wage is that we are 
giving them an idea that that is the maximum wage. If an employee stays 
in the employ of an employer to a certain point and does not reach 
higher productivity than the minimum wage, they probably should be 
terminated.
  Because what is going to happen is the consumer, and you all are not 
looking at it probably from the standpoint of the consumer, the 
consumer does not want somebody who is not trying to improve, who does 
not want to try to reach a higher level of achievement and does not 
want to please them. If someone is working for a minimum wage and 
waiting for politicians to come in and give them their raise, if they 
do, then you are going to have poorer service and you are going to have 
a lackluster type of performance.
  What we are not doing is discussing the productivity of the employee. 
That is where the problem is. The minimum wage gives that employee some 
problems because it says, ``You don't have any more incentive than 
that.'' On this segment of this, there should not be one employee who 
says, ``That's all I'm going to get.'' They should think about it as 
being, ``This is the way I'm going to learn, I'm going to get a 
reputation, I'm going to move on to something else or I'm going to move 
up in this particular operation.''
  Let me go further. Let me tell you about the employer. The employer 
is the one who is taking the risk and he or she is the one who is 
paying the tab. After the consumer decides to buy from them, then the 
employer is paying the tab.

                              {time}  2145

  The employer for too long has been put aside in the wings and the 
employee is put at center stage. We have got to start considering the 
plight of the employer in this particular exercise or discussion, 
because they are looking at taxes, taxes, taxes; regulations and 
regulations and regulations. They are thinking about retiring sooner. 
They are thinking about getting out of this business about helping to 
meet a payroll.
  What is going to happen is if we do not start paying attention to the 
employer, we are not going to have any employers, and the employer is 
looking at their taxes and what they are going to right now. The money 
is being taken from them, they are having troubles with trying to 
improve or to expand, the money is being taken and given to politicians 
and then given to people who will not work.
  But the problem is that we are now putting the employer in 
competition with the Government. We have to go and say to somebody to 
come to work, will you come to work for us at whatever wage it is, and 
they say I can get paid more by staying at home.
  I will be glad to step down and leave, but what I am saying to you is 
we need to bring the attention to the employer, he is competing against 
the Government, the Government is taking taxes from him to give to 
people, not to work, so that he cannot get them to compete with other 
employees. So what we have here, if we have a minimum wage increase and 
if you will agree it is going to cost jobs, we are going to have the 
workers who are working at that job with less fellow workers, their 
stress level is going to be higher, their fatigue is going to be 
higher, they are going to have the demands of the consumer and the 
employer at the same time, and we lose in the process. The employees 
lose.
  So what I am hoping that you all will see is that the plight of the 
employer has to be taken into consideration because that middle class 
employer has been neglected for years and years and years, and he or 
she has been given promises of tax relief, of regulation relief, and 
been given promises for years and years and years, and all that really 
has happened from Government is you are making a profit and you should 
give that profit to somebody else. We are going to have people getting 
out of that business, not paying into the Government, but getting money 
from the Government if we continue to negate that person and not have 
compassion for that person.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentleman. I certainly do not 
want the gentleman to leave. I just wanted a colloquy among all of us. 
But let me just make a couple of comments before I yield to the 
gentleman from Illinois.
  The gentleman stated that he did not believe or feel that we should 
have a minimum wage at all. That being the case, you take some of these 
countries across the world that this Congress has passed legislation to 
even try to censure. You have countries that make Nike tennis shoes at 
the cost of paying employees 50 cents and shipping them to the United 
States of America and selling them for $80 to $110 a pair. Certainly 
the gentleman would not suggest we ought to have that type of slave 
labor right here in the United States of America.
  First the gentleman said he was in favor of a minimum wage. Then the 
gentleman said we should not have a minimum wage at all. I would only 
suggest to the gentleman that I think a minimum wage is the right 
thing.
  Now, lastly, finally, the gentleman stated that it gives employees 
some sense of knowing that the Government will reward you for an 
increase versus the increase being dealt with on merits. Let us be 
realistic. I do not think if we increase the minimum wage that 
employees for some reason or another are going to sit back and wait for 
the Government to pass another minimum wage in 6 months or 1 year after 
that in order to get an increase in salary. We know that all these jobs 
are on a competitive basis and merit. That is not going to take away 
the merit system from the private sector. Employers will give increases 
based on the productivity of that worker.

  You are a businessman. You own several restaurants. You have had to 
operate under the minimum wage. It was the law when you had your 
business. You had to pay employees, you could not pay them below that 
minimum wage. You gave employees, I am sure, an increase, and it was 
not based on the Government saying you had to do

[[Page H4384]]

it. You gave the employees an increase based on their self-worth, their 
ability to do the job. The Government had nothing to do with that. To 
suggest that is going to take away that now, it did not take it away 
then, to me is not a fair assumption.
  Mr. DICKEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, how much 
minimum wage do you think we ought to have? $5? $10? Why would you 
stop? If there is a profit in the business under your theory, why stop 
at $25 an hour? I am serious about this. Where do you say, OK, I am not 
going to take any more from the employer, even though I have compassion 
for the man working 40 hours a week, where, say between $5 and $25? Why 
would you stop going up to $25 if you really had compassion for the 
employee?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Realistically speaking, you have to do it 
based on inflation. You have to take inflation into account. I would 
never say that the minimum wage of this country should be $25 an hour 
now, henceforth and forevermore. That would not even make basic sense. 
The reason why is because a loaf of bread 20 years from now may cost 
$50. So that would not make economic sense nor would it make basic 
sense.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois who has been waiting so 
patiently. I want to yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the distinguished 
gentleman from Louisiana for being kind enough to allow me the 
opportunity to participate in this special order. I also want to thank 
and indeed indicate it is a privilege to have the opportunity to serve 
with the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas in this body. I can 
assure him as we engage in this colloquy on the minimum wage that we 
are not going to gang up on him.
  Mr. Speaker, I heard the debate taking place from my office and I 
wanted to come down and try and put, at least as I see it, the minimum 
wage in a particular context, a context that all too often we do not 
discuss in this Congress.
  Let me say the very first thing, I think it is important for the 
purposes of our colloquy that we need to be aware that half of all of 
the financial assets of our Nation are owned and held by the top 10 
percent, and the richest 1 percent of that 10 percent owns almost 40 
percent of the Nation's wealth.
  Are we aware that nearly 80 percent of the assets of the top 1 
percent are owned furthermore by the richest one-half of 1 percent, 
about 500,000 families? The distinguished gentleman from Michigan, 
Representative Obey, not long ago indicated, and he certainly has the 
documentation, that the holdings of those 500,000 families was worth 
$2.5 trillion in 1983. By 1989, it had risen to $5 trillion. To put 
that into perspective, the holdings of those families grew by almost 
three times as much as the national debt grew during that same period.

  You want to talk about reducing the deficit and the debt? Those 
50,000 families could have paid off the entire national debt, not just 
its growth, and still have owned 10 percent more wealth than they did 
in 1983. Remember, that does not include the increase in their wealth 
due to a doubling of the stock market since that time. Now we are 
talking about cutting even more from the poor so they can provide more 
tax breaks for the wealthy and do not want to give poor working people 
a raise in the minimum wage.
  Let us put the minimum wage, Mr. Dickey, in this particular context: 
The Federal minimum wage was signed into law by President Roosevelt in 
1938. The Democrats' current proposal would increase the minimum wage 
from $4.25 to $5.15 over 2 years through two 45 cent increases. The 
last increase passed overwhelmingly by bipartisan vote in 1989 and was 
implemented in 1990 was also a 90-cent increase in two 45-cent stages.
  Full-time, minimum wage workers earn $8,500 a year, and a 90 cent 
increase would raise their yearly income by only $1,800, as much as the 
average family spends on groceries in over 7 months, to $10,712.
  Currently the purchasing power of those earning the minimum wage is 
at a 40-year low. In discussing the minimum wage, we are not talking 
primarily about high school and teenage workers. We are talking about 
12 million people who will benefit from a 90-cent increase in the 
minimum wage, two-thirds of whom are adults over 20 who bring home half 
of their family's earnings, and the majority of the minimum wage 
workers are women.
  For example, in the State of Michigan, 324,000 workers, representing 
11.9 percent of all hourly workers in the State, will benefit from an 
increase in the minimum wage. Even Henry Ford understood that his 
workers had to earn a livable wage that would allow them to buy the 
cars that they built so they could even build more so that he could 
even make more money. Certainly the Henry Ford example is certainly 
indicative of how employers should certainly see an increase in the 
minimum wage.
  Let me put this in one last context and then engage in the colloquy 
along with the gentleman from Arkansas and the gentleman from 
Louisiana. A 90-cent per hour raise to 12 million people will add $10.8 
million an hour to the purchasing power of workers. It will add $432 
million a week in consumer power to the economy. It will add $22.5 
billion a year to the spending growth of our Nation's economy. And even 
though we contemplate this whole notion of raising the minimum wage so 
that more Americans can provide for their families, indeed take care of 
the kind of basic necessities that families indeed need, I am just 
taken aback when I think about the debate in this Congress, about 
raising the minimum wage to provide more security for American 
families.
  And then I think about the auction last week. Imagine this, according 
to Time magazine, pearls, not even real pearls, estimated at $500 to 
$700, they sold for $211,500. A rocking horse, a little horse, 
estimated at $2,000 to $3,000, sold for $85,000. Even the Terminator 
purchased five McGregor golf clubs, just five of them, $772,500. Three 
pillows worth about $50 to $100, $25,300. Pearls estimated at $75,000 
sold for $250,000.
  So I think when we talk about the minimum wage, we also have to 
recognize that there is a group and a facet in our society that is 
enjoying tremendous luxury and tremendous wealth, and they are, quite 
frankly, not paying enough taxes. Any time we can pay golf clubs for 
$772,000 and there will only be five golf clubs, you cannot even get a 
good game out of 5 golf clubs, that certainly suggests the kind of 
inadequacies that this body must address by allowing working people who 
work in stores, who drive taxicabs, to be able to work their way out of 
their conditions.

  Not all of us can afford a big movie. Not all of us can afford the 
opportunities that have been afforded Members of this body. The only 
way we can change that is to have some legislation that is sponsored in 
this body to change the conditions of working people. I thank the 
gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman 
for his comments. As the gentleman pointed out, many of these minimum 
wage workers are women. I mean, almost 60 percent, about 57 percent of 
the people who earn minimum wage, are female. These are the people who 
wake up every morning and go to work.
  I think we also, whenever we talk about the minimum wage debate, if 
you are for getting people off of welfare, then I just cannot 
understand how one cannot be in the same breath for raising the minimum 
wage. One of the best ways to get people off of welfare is to pay the 
people for the work they do.
  We have been joined by the distinguished gentleman from New York, the 
gentleman who has advocated the raising of the minimum wage long before 
I was elected to this Congress, a gentleman who is a strong advocate of 
not only the working people of this country, but of educators, who was 
an educator himself. I would like to yield to the gentleman from New 
York [Mr. Owens] for as much time as he may consume.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for taking this special 
order. I serve on the Committee on Economic and Educational 
Opportunities as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workplace 
Protections, which is directly responsible for the minimum wage, so I 
have quite a file on the minimum wage and have been living with it for 
some time.

[[Page H4385]]

  The bill that is presently out, sponsored by Minority Leader Gephardt 
and the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Economic and Educational 
Opportunities, Mr. Clay. That bill calls for an increase of 90 cents 
over a 2-year period, and I must say that I am awfully sorry that at 
its last count we only had about 125 people who are cosponsors of the 
bill. I hope we will have more cosponsors, not only from the Democratic 
side, a complete cosponsorship, but also some of the Republicans who 
have decided that this is the humane and sensible thing to do will also 
join us and will get on with the business of giving the lowest paid 
workers in America a 90-cent increase over the next two years.
  It is a very conservative approach. We have an economy right now that 
is booming. From Brownsville and Brooklyn in my district, to Mapleton, 
GA, from California to New York, we have an economy that is booming. 
Most of the workers in this economy are not paid minimum wage. They are 
paid above minimum wage. Yet the businesses that these workers work for 
are thriving. Everybody wants to get into the American business 
climate.

                              {time}  2200

  We appreciate that our entrepreneurs and small businesses make up a 
tremendously large segment of the economy. Small businesses employ more 
workers than anybody else, but they are doing quite well from coast to 
coast.
  And restaurant businesses in the parts of the country where the labor 
supply is less, it is a matter of supply and demand. Where you have 
more labor, they can afford, the businesses can afford to get away, or 
they can get away with paying lower wages. That is what happens. They 
have a lot of people who want jobs, so they pay the lowest wages.
  Yet the restaurant businesses in the areas where they are paying the 
lowest wages, they are able to survive. And they cry, if we talk about 
increasing the minimum wage, that they will have problems, they may go 
out of business. And yet the same kind of restaurant business in 
another part of the country, where they are paying higher wages, is 
thriving also.
  When the wages go up in another part of the country because the 
supply of labor is not plentiful and they have to pay more, they 
continue to profit. Businesses do not stay around if they do not 
profit. Nobody stays in business if they are not making a profit.
  The size of the profit and whether or not a business stays viable or 
not is not dependent on just the wages paid. McDonald's and Burger King 
and a number of fast food restaurants are able to supply fast foods at 
tremendously low prices. In fact, there is a lady in my district that 
says she finds it cheaper to feed her kids at McDonald's. She cannot 
buy beef at the prices they pay for their beef, and she cannot feed her 
kid hamburgers at that price.
  Mr. DICKEY. Will the gentleman yield, just for a question?
  Mr. OWENS. No, I will not yield now.
  There are some other factors that are involved that drive the prices 
down so low, as there is in many businesses. There are many other 
factors involved than the wages paid. We have a thriving economy, and 
we owe it to our workers to try to get a fair wage for them in those 
areas where the supply of labor is so great until the entrepreneurs, 
the business owners, are able to exploit that. They can get labor 
cheap, so they get it cheap.
  Most people in the country are in areas where the labor supply is not 
so cheap and they have to work for a minimum wage. There are about 13 
million people who still work for minimum wage, unfortunately, because 
they are in situations where they have to compete in a labor supply 
pool where they cannot get higher wages; or, in some cases, they may 
have a situation where if they were organized, they might be able to 
demand high wages because the supply of labor is not so much greater 
than the demand.
  But the organization of workers has been thwarted in this country by 
our poor labor laws. Of all the industrialized nations, we have the 
worst labor laws. We make it more difficult for people to organize and 
for people to bargain than any other industrialized nation in the 
world. So we keep down the wages. And by having a minimum wage, a 
floor, we are only protecting ourselves as a Nation.
  The Constitution talks about promoting the general welfare. Well, 
promoting the general welfare means the welfare for everybody, not just 
the entrepreneurs or businesses, or people who make a lot of money, who 
keep crying crocodile tears about taxes and about regulations. They are 
quite well off. And there are whole cadres of business people from all 
over the world who want to get into this economy and into this business 
environment, who think they can make a lot of money. I do not know why 
we have so many crocodile tears being cried by entrepreneurs in this 
business environment which is so favorable toward entrepreneurs. It is 
not favorable toward workers.

  And one way you help workers on the very bottom is by having this 
much needed increase in the minimum wage which, when you look at 
inflation, we are still at an all time low in terms of the wage level 
of people on the bottom.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Since each of the gentlemen and the 
gentlewoman have made their opening statements, at this time I am going 
to allow Members to enter into a colloquy, and I notice the gentleman 
from Arkansas had a question of the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. OWENS. I have been listening to the gentleman bemoan the fact, as 
a businessman, he is persecuted in America by taxes, by paperwork; he 
has to make out paychecks, and that is a painful experience. You should 
live the experience of the people that do not have any money to make 
out checks for. There are large numbers of people who would love to 
have your pain and your grief in terms of the difficulty of making out 
checks for payroll.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. DICKEY. Let me ask the question now. Let me ask the question, if 
in fact we are going to accuse people who have been successful, of what 
you just accused.
  Mr. OWENS. I am not accusing anybody of anything. We need 
entrepreneurs and people to be successful.
  Mr. DICKEY. I am just trying to ask a question, that is all.
  Mr. OWENS. You are a good lawyer. You said I accused. Who did I 
accuse?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. DICKEY. I am asking a question, and any of you all can ask it. I 
won't ask the gentleman from New York; I will ask any of you: If we are 
to set up a role model for people to work toward in a capitalistic 
society, and if we are trying to get that message down to the lowest of 
the people in the economy and say, if you will work hard, this is what 
will happen, how can we encourage those people to get to where they can 
get in America? If they work hard, and that is the promise, you can do 
whatever you want to do in America and you can make it. How can we do 
that if we take the people at the top rung and say we are going to 
regulate you to death, and we want these people down here to know that 
you are the reason why no prosperity gets to you?
  You see what we are doing? We are doing just exactly the opposite. We 
should be saying to people at the lower rungs, you can get there at the 
top. Look at what got them there. Use that as a role model and let the 
government stay out of the process of drawing attention.
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from 
Arkansas for that question, and at any point in time, my distinguished 
colleagues are more than welcome to try to answer that question.
  Let us take a case study. Let us say a college student, who is 
working at McDonald's or Burger King, or at any particular minimum wage 
paying job, earning $8,500 a year, assuming they are working full time, 
from 9 to 5. And, obviously, they are not because they are a college 
student. $8,500 a year is not enough money to even pay off one's 
student loan to go to a 4-year, 1 year on a full academic scholarship 
costs more than $8,500 at a State-run institution.
  So no matter how hard that student is working, and that we are 
promoting them because of their education, and that they have a serious 
work ethic, the reality is no matter how serious their work ethic is or 
their educational advancements or the opportunity that we provide for 
them, they are not able to work their way even to meet their

[[Page H4386]]

current obligations, which include their loans.
  Let me say to the gentleman from Arkansas, I think that it probably 
makes sense, and I would like the gentleman from New York to possibly 
respond to this, why not look at the minimum wage and index it to 
inflation so that we do not have to engage in this debate every year 
and a half.
  Mr. OWENS. We would have to go up to $6.25 an hour. If we put it on 
an index inflation now it should be at $6.25 instead of $4.25.
  Mr. DICKEY. It is $7.18, I believe, is that it is.
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I would make the argument that we can avoid 
this debate and we can avoid rehashing this every 3, 4, or 5 years, 
since we are 1\1/2\ years past due on increasing the minimum wage, by 
attaching the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation so that the 
cost-of-living for working people, and we are not talking about people 
who are lazy and not working, we are talking about people who are 
working but at the end of a hard day's work they cannot change their 
economic situation.

  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I will 
yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I just want to make a few points in closing, and I will 
yield to the gentleman here who want to dominate the debate.
  The gentleman from Arkansas made some reference to productivity 
gains, and there have, indeed, been productivity gains experienced by 
our economy, except that in the past those productivity gains accrued 
to the community at large. Now those productivity gains are not 
accruing to the community, perhaps to stockholders and CEO's, but 
certainly not to the low-wage workers. And that is one argument in 
favor of protecting the interests of our low-wage workers.
  I think we have also seen that the gentleman from Arkansas shares the 
opinion of his colleagues in the Republican leadership that he also 
fights the increase in the minimum wage or the concept of the minimum 
wage with every fiber in his being as well.
  Mr. DICKEY. I did not say that.
  Ms. McKINNEY. The gentleman has said that we need to take care of the 
employers. I would posit that Congress is doing just that. When 
McDonald's can get $200,000 to advertise chicken nuggets, then I think 
we are taking care of employers. When AT&T can get $34 million, we are 
taking care of employers.
  We have not begun to talk about corporate welfare yet. This Congress 
wants to repeal the alternative minimum tax, build more stealth 
bombers, defend Americans who renounce their citizenship in order to 
avoid paying taxes, and yet they want to deny poor folks, working folks 
a 90 cent increase in the minimum wage. Now, you know, you have to be a 
little bit less heartless than that.
  Mr. DICKEY. Is that a question?
  Ms. McKINNEY. Well, it is a statement.
  Mr. DICKEY. I understand you are saying I am heartless, and you know 
better than that. What I am trying to say, what I want the question to 
be answered is, why not encourage these people to improve rather than 
to say this minimum is the maximum? Why not do that? Why not give them 
a role model that means achievement and improvement?
  Mr. OWENS. We are encouraging them to improve by saying we are going 
to pay you what you should be paid in this economy. In this economy you 
cannot live on $8,400 a year. You need more than that. You cannot live 
off $4.25 an hour.
  So we are going to pay you for your work. We are not going to have 
you work at the level of a peasant or just above slavery just because 
the supply and demand is such that your employer can pay you that 
because he can always get more people. We want to have enlightened 
employers.
  Mr. DICKEY. But where is the role model?
  Mr. OWENS. We need employers who understand that it is better for 
them, like Henry Ford understood at a certain point that he had to pay 
his workers a decent hourly wage so they could buy the cars.
  Mr. DICKEY. Would you please yield a second, the gentleman from New 
York, for a question?
  Mr. OWENS. No, I will not yield. I will yield in a minute.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mica). The gentleman from Louisiana has 
the time.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I yield to the gentleman from New York and I 
will then yield to the gentleman from Arkansas for a response.
  Mr. OWENS. An enlightened employer would know that paying the minimum 
wage helps the economy as a whole. These are very poor people and every 
dollar they make they are going to spend in this economy. They are not 
like the CEO's, who make millions of dollars and travel around the 
world spending their money somewhere else.
  An enlightened employer would know that the effort we made in the 
last Congress to pass health care legislation would greatly help them 
in their woes. They would not have to moan so much if we had a health 
care plan which took care of everybody's health care.
  We did not ask for a minimum wage 2 years ago because we were 
concentrating on a universal health care plan, which meant that the 
poorest person would also be able to have a health care plan and maybe 
he would not need an increase in the minimum wage.
  Here is an opportunity where you might have helped yourself and 
helped the Government and helped the people who work for you if you had 
supported a health care plan. But most employees are not enlightened. 
they can only see tunnel vision, and we need to give them some help in 
understanding how the economy really works in the rest of the world. 
The economy works for everybody. The workers at the lowest level----
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time.
  Mr. DICKEY. Teacher, can I ask a question?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I 
have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Louisiana has 8 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the distinguished gentlemen from 
Arkansas, New York, and Illinois, and the distinguished gentlewoman 
from Georgia would allow me to now operate on a controlled time basis, 
at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arkansas.
  Mr. DICKEY. All right, this is the question I want to say in 1 
minute, and thank you, teacher, for letting me.
  If this plan that you have for raising the minimum wage, if, just 
give me that, if it, because of the increased costs of the wages and on 
the payroll and the taxes that comes, if this causes a taco to go from 
89 to 90 cents, 1 penny, proportionately who suffers the most?

  What I am saying to you all is that we have increased costs and 
inflation because of this, because all of the elements come into an 
operation, the delivery costs, the costs of the goods that come in are 
increased, everything is increased. It is an incremental thing. It 
comes up.
  The harshest thing you all are doing when you do this is penalizing 
disproportionately the lower people on the rung of the economic scale 
because they have to go. If that is the case, how do you answer the 
question that inflation is going to hurt those people? When you say you 
are going to help them and you use them, in my opinion, to try to 
increase taxes and try to balloon the size of Government, you use that 
argument, they, in fact, will be suffering the most by inflation. What 
do you say about that?
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming the time, I yield to the 
gentlewoman from Georgia for 1 minute.
  Ms. McKINNEY. The bottom line on what I say about that, we all know 
that crime doesn't pay, but if you happen to work for Congressman 
Dickey  your work doesn't pay either.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Reclaiming my time, let me try to respond to 
the gentleman's question.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I am just playing.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. The gentleman has a very legitimate question 
and my response is very simple. I know that the gentleman would agree 
with me that most countries across the world try to pattern themselves, 
all of them, most of them, admire the work

[[Page H4387]]

that we do in the area of business. Would the gentleman not agree with 
that?
  The gentleman does agree. He is shaking his head.
  Mr. DICKEY. That is correct.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. That is a yes. They in fact look at us as 
role models for the most part. Is that not correct?
  Mr. DICKEY. That is correct.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. The gentleman would agree. We do not have 
companies and workers across the world looking at America saying we do 
not do our business correctly. For the most part, think we do a pretty 
good job at it.
  Let me take the gentleman through the history of minimum wage for a 
second. It did not hurt then, and I would suggest to the gentleman it 
is not going to hurt now because, first of all, it is not going to take 
away the competitive angle of the work force. Individuals must still be 
competitive. They will be rewarded based upon their merits.

  Public Law 75-718 was the first minimum wage law, 25 cents. Then in 
1939 it moved from 25 to 30 cents. In 1945 it moved from 30 to 40, 40 
cents. Then in 1950 it moved to 75 cents. It was still competitive 
then. Employees were still working and getting their just due in the 
merit system, and it did not have a devastating effect on the economy 
and certainly did not have a devastating effect on the American 
workers.
  Let me ask the Speaker, inquire in terms of how much time the 
gentleman has remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mica). The gentleman from Louisiana has 
4 minutes remaining.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Because I would like to yield 1 minute to 
each of the gentlemen and gentlewoman before I leave, before we close.
  It moved from, I will put it in the Record, up to 1991, it moved from 
25 cents in 1938 to $4.25 in 1991. And certainly the gentleman is not 
suggesting that employees are coming to work waiting for the Government 
to raise their wage and not working hard, not trying to be promoted on 
jobs and waiting for this Congress to raise their wage. The gentleman 
is not suggesting that.
  Mr. DICKEY. I am.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. If the gentleman is suggesting that, I would 
suggest that the gentleman is wrong.
  I am going to yield 30 seconds to each of the gentleman and the 
gentlewoman for closing. I first yield to the gentleman from New York.
  Mr. OWENS. It is an insult to workers who make the minimum wage to 
say that they are there because they are no good, they cannot improve 
themselves. My father is one of the smartest men I ever knew. He worked 
in the Memphis furniture factory all his life, never paid more than the 
minimum wage. He went to school to the sixth grade. He was the smartest 
man. When the machines broke down, he made them operate. He understood 
the mechanics. They had to come get him when they laid him off because 
of the fact the machines could no be run by anybody else, yet they 
still never paid him more than the minimum wage because the supply and 
demand was such that they could get people who would work for the 
minimum wage.

  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Arkansas.
  Mr. DICKEY. Mr. Speaker, I would yield my time.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Illinois.
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Let me thank the gentleman from Louisiana 
for this opportunity. I want to make sure that we are focusing and keep 
the minimum wage debate in a particular context. The context is, once 
again, the top 500,000 families, their net worth in 1983 in this Nation 
was $2.5 trillion. By 1989 it had risen to $5 trillion.
  Those families, those business people, they witnessed an increase in 
their standard of living. They have witnessed an increase in their 
earnings and in their wage earnings. That is a crowd that paid $700,000 
for golf clubs, $300,000 for fake pearls. They need to pay more taxes, 
which is good. It is American because they are benefiting from America.
  At the same time, we need to raise the minimum wage of people who do 
not have the same opportunity that those 500,000 families do.
  Before I yield back the balance of my time, I just want to show this.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. The gentleman has no time.
  Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. The distinguished majority leader has 
indicated he will resist a minimum wage increase with every fiber of 
his body. In light of the fact there are working people in our country 
that we upset about this, we ought to change that.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished 
gentleman from Illinois, and I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I say we need to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage. We need 
to protect workers' rights and jobs. We need to decrease taxes on 
middle and low income families, and we need to encourage not just 
personal responsibility but corporate responsibility, too.
  Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from 
Georgia. I thank all the gentlemen and the gentlewoman for being here, 
and I want to especially thank the gentleman from Arkansas for being 
here tonight to participate in this colloquy. The gentleman certainly 
showed a lot of statesmanship and character in being part of this 
debate tonight, and I thank the gentleman.
  In closing, Mr. Speaker, I simply say that Members of this Congress, 
all who I serve with and all who I have a great deal of respect for, 
when we go home each day we take in $550. Each day we work we get $550. 
A person on minimum wage only makes $680 a month. I just cannot see why 
we cannot give them a small 40-cent increase 1 year and another 40 
cents the next year, so that they can buy bread and milk for the same 
price that we buy bread and milk.
  I want to thank the Speaker and I want to thank the gentleman and the 
gentlewoman.

                          ____________________