[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 99 (Monday, July 8, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7355-S7358]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE MINIMUM WAGE

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I commend my colleague, the senior 
Senator from Massachusetts, for his excellent remarks this morning in 
discussing the important issue of the minimum wage.
  Harry Truman once said: ``Republicans favor a minimum wage, the 
minimum possible wage.'' I think that a lot of what was said in the 
1940's may be applicable today, with a 1996 twist, which is: The 
minimum possible wage for the minimum number of people to

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be affected. That, really, is the debate that we will have today and 
tomorrow with regard to the Bond amendment.
  I want to call everyone's attention to the Bond amendment for what it 
is and what it is not. The Bond amendment, in many cases and in many 
ways, could be described as a Swiss cheese approach to the minimum 
wage; Swiss cheese, because it has so many holes it does not provide 
for the kind of continuity, the kind of opportunity that everyone ought 
to have if the minimum wage is to be an applicable national wage.
  There are four very specific issues that it addresses in a very 
harmful manner, for those who are dependent upon the minimum wage. I 
want to discuss very briefly each of those four this afternoon. Suffice 
it to say, the Bond amendment is truly a vote against the minimum wage 
and against working families who depend upon it. It gives with one hand 
and takes with the other. It uses exemptions, denials, and delays to 
provide minimum wage increases to a minimum possible number of people. 
It is a more extreme version of this amendment than what was defeated 
in the House a couple of months ago.
  The Bond amendment, No. 1, effectively denies an increase to all 
workers for the first 6 months of employment. It does not matter 
whether you are young or you are old, whether you are working for 
summer earnings or have to feed a family, whether you are with or 
without any experience, that provision in the Bond amendment would 
simply deny, for 6 months of employment, any opportunity to benefit 
whatsoever from the minimum wage.
  The House-passed bill applies the subminimum to workers under the age 
of 20 for the first 3 months of employment. Already that is an extreme 
provision in some respects. The Bond amendment is even worse. The high 
turnover in these jobs is an inevitability, so many workers would never 
get an increase. I can see in some cases right now where someone will 
work for 5 months and 2 weeks and then find he or she is going to be 
left without work because to increase that person's wage would be 
something the small business owner may not want to do. So, in essence, 
you are going to get churning of people, regardless of what age they 
are; working for 5 months and 2 weeks or 5 months and 3 weeks, only to 
be denied a minimum wage job after that.
  I believe most employers are very honest, hard-working people who 
care a lot of about their employees. But how many unscrupulous 
employers will there be, people who will find ways in which to avoid 
the law, avoid paying the minimum wage, avoid living up to their 
responsibility and find a way to keep people at this extraordinarily 
low, subminimum level?
  The President feels so strongly about this provision alone that he 
said he would veto the bill if this provision is in the legislation 
when it reaches his desk.
  Second, the Bond amendment denies an increase for any employee of 
companies with less than $500,000 in annual sales. Mr. President, these 
companies employ 10.5 million people. They make up two-thirds of all 
workplaces today. They include not only retail and service 
establishments, but manufacturing firms as well. Their employees 
already are denied benefits of most Federal worker protection laws. 
They earn lower wages, get fewer benefits, and have less job security 
than virtually anybody in the country. They should not be stripped of 
their minimum wage protections as well.
  Over and above everything else, to say that a worker who only has the 
option of working in a company with sales less than $500,000, who 
probably does not get health insurance, probably does not get any other 
worker protection at the Federal level and probably has less job 
security, but at the same time now may also be denied even minimum wage 
protection is wrong. That is extreme, and that is something that we 
simply must oppose.
  A third provision denies any raise to waitresses or waiters or other 
tipped employees. Right now employers need to pay only 50 percent of 
the minimum wage, or $2.13 an hour for tipped employees. Instead of 
maintaining that 50 percent employer payment, the Bond amendment 
freezes it for all perpetuity at $2.13. We could be here 20 years from 
now, and if the Bond amendment were to be adopted, anybody who worked 
in a restaurant would be frozen at $2.13, dependent entirely upon tips 
for any kind of an increase in a living wage.
  This is especially a problem for women, because 80 percent of tipped 
employees today are women. In 1995, about half of full-time waitresses 
earned roughly $250 a week, less than the poverty level for a family of 
three. Just last year, half of the full-time people who worked on tips 
earned roughly $250 a week. So what we are going to tell all of those 
people, 80 percent of whom are women, is, ``You're going to have to 
live with a frozen minimum wage at $2.13 an hour for all perpetuity. 
There isn't any option for an increase. You don't have any opportunity 
to see your wages increase along with everybody else's. That $250 that 
you may be getting right now to feed your two kids, well, keep in mind 
we want to keep you off welfare, we're going to kick you off welfare, 
we're going to tell you to go get a job, go get child support, get 
health insurance, go find a way to clothe and house your kids, do all 
of that, but we're going to freeze your wage at $2.13 an hour.''
  Mr. President, I cannot believe that this body is prepared to say 
that. If we want to reward work, if we want to protect families, if we 
want to find ways to ensure the children are going to grow in an 
environment that allows a mother to be home at least part of the time 
instead of getting three and four jobs, staying at home with children 
instead of working at wages that pay $2.13 an hour, then it would seem 
to me that they, above and beyond just about anybody else, ought to be 
entitled to some increase in the minimum wage.
  The final thing is, this amendment delays the date of the minimum 
wage for another 6 months. When the House Members passed their bill, 
they said it was going to go into effect virtually on Independence Day, 
on July 4--actually, July 1, a couple of days before Independence Day--
in the hopes that maybe some families out there could declare some 
independence economically, some opportunity to be a little freer than 
they are right now.
  The Bond amendment says, ``No, no, that's too fast. If you earn 
minimum wage today, we're going to ask you to wait until after next 
Christmas before you're entitled to any increase in the minimum wage. 
You're not going to get it in July, you're not going to get it by Labor 
Day, the day we set aside to honor working families. No, we're going to 
make you wait until after next Christmas. We're going to wait until 
next January before this wage goes into effect.'' This is on top of 
months of delay caused by a Republican filibuster to the minimum wage.

  Mr. President, minimum wage workers have gone without a raise now for 
5 years. We have had raises. Most people have had raises in this 
country over the last 4 and 5 years. How remarkable it is that those 
same people who espouse welfare reform, who want to join with us in 
providing real opportunities for work, to encourage work, would say 
that the one thing that would probably encourage work more than 
anything else, an increase in the minimum wage, is something we just 
should not do. We should not do it for tipped employees, we should not 
do it for employees in businesses that have less than a $500,000 gross 
income, we should not do it for the first 180 days for anybody who is 
on minimum wage. Regardless of what else happens, we better not even do 
it until 1997.
  I must tell you, Mr. President, I have a hard time understanding the 
motivation for those who would want to say that to over 10.5 million 
people--actually close to 14 million workers--in this country. This 
delay equals the loss of more than $500 in pay, money that could go for 
the health care and the food and housing that kids are going to need.
  Every day on the floor somebody with good judgment and with good 
reason comes to lament the destruction of the family, comes to lament 
the destruction of this nuclear core that we think so much about and 
that we think really is the key to a civilized society. We cannot 
understand why there are teenagers out on the street making trouble for 
the rest of society. We do not understand why they lost their values. 
We cannot figure out why there is an increase in juvenile crime and 
truancy and all the other problems.
  Mr. President, I will tell you why. The reason is because more and 
more

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mothers and fathers are forced to leave their homes, unable to take 
care of their children, because they have three or four jobs they have 
to hold to make ends meet. That is what this is all about.
  So if we are ever going to get back to making sure that the family is 
protected, making sure those children have core values with which to 
ensure that they will be productive parts of society, then it seems to 
me we have to understand that it all starts with the paycheck and 
whether or not families have the dignity and the opportunity that they 
must be accorded to ensure that there is some paycheck security in 
their families.
  Minimum wage workers are not what many people think they are. Two-
thirds of them are adults; 40 percent are sole breadwinners; 60 percent 
are women. Minimum wage workers' earnings account for almost half of 
the families' total earnings today.
  So, Mr. President, this is going to be, of all the votes we cast, one 
of the most critical votes we are going to cast this year, because it 
sends a clear message out there that we hear you, we know how insecure 
so many people feel today because of their inability to pay their 
bills. Not that they are not working hard enough; they are working 
harder and longer than other families in history. They are making the 
hard choices about going out and finding another job or staying home 
and taking care of their children.
  America is going to watch this vote. They are going to watch to see 
whether we vote for the Swiss cheese Bond amendment, the one with all 
the holes in it, the one that devastates the minimum wage law for the 
first time in decades, or whether we are going to stand up and say, at 
long last, America needs a raise after 5 years.
  Those who are on minimum wage deserve it. If we want to keep them off 
welfare, they deserve at least a 90-cent increase. That is all we are 
proposing here. It is time we do it. Inflation has eaten away 95 
percent of the last increase. At the current level of $4.25 an hour, 
many minimum wage workers who work 40 hours a week do not earn enough 
to keep their families out of poverty. How sad that is today.
  So unless we act, the minimum wage is going to fall to the lowest 
level in 40 years. This does not have to be partisan. The last time we 
voted on this it was bipartisan. Six weeks ago, the House voted 
overwhelmingly in favor of it; 93 House Republicans voted for it. The 
vast majority, I am told, over 80 percent of the American people, want 
to see it increased.
  This is a chance to do something right. It is a chance for us to stop 
stalling, to send a clear message to people across this land that we 
recognize how important your paycheck and your long-term security is, 
we recognize how important your family is, we recognize that if we are 
going to urge you to stay off welfare and go to work, that you need a 
wage to do it. That is what this does. It is important we pass a 
minimum wage increase. It is important we defeat the Bond amendment. It 
is important at long last we sign the increase into law.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a very brief question?
  Mr. DASCHLE. Yes. I will be happy to.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I included in the Record the statement by 
the National Retail Federation that was put out on July 1. The National 
Retail Federation is the largest retail trade association in the 
country. In their front page they referenced the minimum wage fight in 
the Senate. They say President Clinton says he will veto the minimum 
wage increase if it passes, talking about this particular proposal. 
``Let him.'' ``It is our last chance and best hope for stopping the 
minimum wage increase this year,'' referring to the Bond amendment.
  So here is the largest retail association saying effectively that the 
best way to stop any increase in the minimum wage is to support the 
Bond amendment. I have concluded that was really a devious measure in 
the sense that people want to have it both ways.
  This is my question: Whether the Senator would think that the 
argument might be made to those who support the Bond amendment, well, 
you can vote for it; it is an increase in the minimum wage. But on the 
other hand, for reasons that the Senator has outlined so well this 
afternoon, effectively it gives with the one hand and takes away with 
the other hand.
  I am just wondering if this is really the purpose: Our best chance 
and best hope for stopping the minimum wage increase this year. Here is 
the largest retail organization making this clear statement. We ought 
to call a spade a spade and say that effectively the Bond amendment is 
really an effort to stop and halt any increase to the minimum wage. 
That would be the result of it were it to pass. So the vote would be 
very clear in terms of who is on the side of working families and who 
is not. I am just wondering what conclusion the Senator from South 
Dakota would reach on that.
  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, if I could--I will use whatever leader 
time I may require. I know our time runs out at 2 o'clock. Given the 
fact no one else is here at this point, I will use leader time to the 
extent necessary to respond to the distinguished Senator from 
Massachusetts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator may use his 
leader time.
  Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator from Massachusetts is absolutely right. In 
many respects, I think there are some of our colleagues who would like 
to have it both ways. They would like to say, ``Yes, I voted for a 
minimum wage increase,'' but then go tell some of their business 
constituents, ``But really I didn't. I really didn't. This is not a 
real minimum wage because we exempt virtually everybody.''
  I was home last weekend, and I just took my own poll. I asked 
retailers, I asked people in just about every line of business I could 
find in South Dakota, ``What do you think? What do you think about 
raising the minimum wage? Is this something that you oppose? Would this 
hurt you badly? What are your thoughts?''
  I was amazed, just amazed at the level of sophistication, about the 
compassion, about the recognition of the importance of this issue, 
about how troubled many of our employers are in watching their 
employees try to make ends meet by holding down two and three jobs, 
because they know that one job is not going to be enough.
  One employer told me, ``You know, Tom, I really don't know how these 
employees do it today. I go home and I watch the baseball game at night 
when I finish work. Some of my employees go to their second job. And 
their spouses are already at a second or third job. I don't know, but 
more and more I'm seeing their kids out in the streets because I know 
they're not home taking care of them.''

  I had an employee tell me the only dinner--the only dinner--they have 
together is after church on Sunday once a week. The whole family now 
gets together for dinner once, on a Sunday, because they have no time 
during the week, no time because everybody is working even harder 
carrying out second and third jobs. As a result, the kids cook for 
themselves. The kids are doing whatever they have to. Hopefully they 
are doing their homework.
  But, Mr. President, that is exactly what we are trying to talk about 
here. We are trying to address a real and growing problem. If we are 
serious about family, if we are serious about trying to keep them 
together and teach our youngsters values, who is to do it if the family 
is not together? Can you teach all the values that you have to share 
with a young person growing up on a Sunday after church? I do not think 
so.
  So, while some of our colleagues would like very much to be able to 
say, ``I voted for a minimum wage,'' but then secretly, ``I voted to 
gut it,'' let me tell you, there are a lot of business people, at least 
in South Dakota, who see it for what it is, who recognize that we have 
to do what is honorable here. It is time we recognized that people on 
minimum wage need more than just $4.25 an hour to survive if they are 
going to take care of their kids. So I appreciate very much the 
distinguished Senator's raising the question. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous agreement, the Senator from 
Georgia, Mr. Coverdell, is to control the next 90 minutes.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

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  Mr. COVERDELL. It is my understanding that for the next 90 minutes, I 
or my designee have control of that time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Very good.

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