[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 102 (Thursday, July 11, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7682-S7683]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             MINIMUM WAGE AND HEALTH INSURANCE LEGISLATION

  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I think our business is relatively easy here, or 
ought to be. I really think there are

[[Page S7683]]

only two things we ought to do from the side of the aisle that I 
represent. We are interested in paycheck security, health care 
security, retirement security. Those have a variety of things that go 
along with them which we think are important for family values, for 
family safety, and obviously family security.
  I think there are two pieces of legislation that ought to be signed 
into law by the President, ought to be passed out of this body. There 
is no reason why they cannot be. I stand here this morning as the 
junior Senator from West Virginia in some sense of frustration and 
wonderment, really putting myself in the place of American citizens 
wondering why it is not more certain and why there is not a more clear 
course.
  I think if either of these bills fails to pass this session of 
Congress, both Houses, and on to the President, then I think the 
American people have real reason to wonder why they put us here. I 
speak, of course, of two pieces of legislation which we have already 
passed. The first one was passed the other day, the minimum wage 
increase. There was a 74 to 24 vote on that. Some might say, well, that 
was not as strong as it appeared because minimum wage was encased in a 
small business package, had that title. But there cannot be any doubt 
about the fact that the minimum wage increase did pass. It has passed 
the Senate. So has the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance bill, more 
properly the Kassebaum-Kennedy health insurance bill that passed by 100 
to 0.
  I really think it is embarrassing to our body, to all 100 of us, that 
there is a real cloud of uncertainty as to whether or not these are 
going to become law. They have passed through here. The plot keeps 
thickening as we hear about efforts to delay, to entangle these pieces 
of legislation, to complicate them. Each of these pieces, of course, 
have enormous benefits for millions of hard-working American families. 
Therefore, it seems to me incontrovertible that the good will on both 
sides should prevail.
  On our side, we talk about putting families first. I think they are 
three good words, it is a good phrase. It is clear. It is what we mean. 
It means enacting the minimum wage increase and it means enacting the 
Kassebaum-Kennedy bill.
  In West Virginia tens of thousands of wage earners, in fact, 24 
percent of all our wage earners in the State, will benefit from the 
minimum wage law. I am not necessarily happy to say that that many of 
them would be affected, but that is what I have to say because that is 
the fact. Over two-thirds of them are adults, and most of them are 
women, many of them, most of them, have responsibilities for children.

  I had a remarkable conversation, at least to me, last week with one 
of these people who is a graduate, lives in a small community in West 
Virginia, who is a graduate of the University of Indiana, has a B.A. 
from the University of Indiana, and moved to West Virginia because she 
liked the lifestyle. She works as a waitress. She has a 10-year-old 
girl, her husband has left her, and child support is minimal. She can 
now earn $2.13 an hour because of the tipping matter under the present 
law we have passed here in the Senate. So her salary--as she said, tips 
do make up the difference. If you do allow that to happen, then, in 
fact, she could go from $8,500 a year to $10,700 a year. When you add 
on top of that the earned income tax credit for which she is eligible, 
she could make $3,000 plus from that, which would put her above the 
poverty level.
  Now, that is a momentous fact, taking a program already existing, and 
the minimum wage which we passed, that we take a woman who lives in 
poverty, officially, a proud person, well-educated, interested in the 
arts, with a brilliant 10-year-old daughter, who I had a chance to talk 
with, who is an exceptional gymnast, for whom she can do nothing 
because there is no margin whatever in her life financially, being able 
to help her. She brings to mind, and many others who I have talked to 
who are working, who are not on welfare, who are working because of 
their desire to achieve self-esteem through work rather than being on 
welfare.
  I cannot understand why there would be any reason to either block the 
appointment of conferees, or whatever it would be, to keep the minimum 
wage bill from passing. It means an enormous amount to people in my 
State and every single State, most of whom are adult, most of whom are 
women, most of whom have children.
  Then, I think, finally, there is no excuse if the Congress fails to 
pass the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill. We said from the very beginning, after 
the failure of the Clinton health care bill, that we should concentrate 
on what we can agree on. That is what we started out with on Kassebaum-
Kennedy, concentrating on what we can agree on. We have to do it 
incrementally. I understand that and I applaud that. This is a bill on 
which we so agreed. In fact, the vote was 100 to 0.
  Then MSA's, medical savings accounts, was put in in the House and put 
in over here in a rather odd manner at the last moment. That we did not 
agree on. Everything else we did agree on. Now that is being, I think, 
sort of relegated to the possibility of a bill that will not pass this 
Congress because of the disagreement on that. On the other hand, there 
was an agreement at the beginning. The whole spirit of everything was 
that we would agree with what we could agree on, and we did so in such 
a magnificent form that we passed it 100 to 0 here.
  We should do that, putting families first, which means getting back 
to the basics of the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill and getting this bill into 
law. If it means we have to take a moratorium on our August recess, I 
do not care what it takes, we ought to be able to pass the minimum wage 
bill and the Kassebaum-Kennedy health insurance bill.
  It is a ``no brainer,'' Mr. President. I submit that with all 
sincerity, two pieces of legislation, and there are many more that I 
have in mind, but here are two pieces of legislation, both of which 
have passed by overwhelming margins in this body, both of which can be 
conferenced successfully, if we only have the will to do so, both of 
which would enormously help put American working families first.

  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Is it 
appropriate for me to begin 20 minutes, which was to be under my 
control?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.

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