[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 22, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4685-S4688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 2538
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, Senator Kennedy and I are going to be
involved in a colloquy for a couple of minutes as we await another
amendment. It pertains to the minimum wage. I will have a unanimous
consent request that I will propound in a moment.
As we are debating new trade practices, we must not forget important
protections for America's workers. Many of these protections are
addressed through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, but for the last
60 years there has been another important protection for workers, and
that is the minimum wage.
It has now been over 6 years since Congress voted to increase the
minimum wage. In that time, the cost of living has increased 12 percent
while the real value of the minimum wage has steadily declined. In
fact, by 2003, all of the gain achieved through the last increase will
have been wiped out.
Today, minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year
earn only $10,700--more than $4,000 below the poverty line for a family
of three.
In the last 6 years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has
deteriorated to near record low levels. Teacher's aides and health care
workers are among the hard-working Americans who are unable to make
ends meet on a $5.15 per hour wage.
In fact, the current minimum wage does not provide enough income to
allow full-time workers to afford adequate housing in any area of the
country. In my State of South Dakota, the minimum wage is hardly enough
for a family to make ends meet.
According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, a minimum
wage earner can afford a monthly rent of no more than $268. In South
Dakota, a worker earning the minimum wage must work 79 hours a week in
order to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment. In fact, estimates
show that for a worker to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in
South Dakota, they would have to earn $10.12--nearly 200 percent of the
present minimum wage.
That is why we need to pass Senator Kennedy's new minimum wage
legislation. It would provide a $1.50 increase over the next 2 years.
This is the least we can do, and it is long overdue.
By increasing the minimum wage by $1.50, working families will
receive an additional $3,000 per year in income. While this increase
would not be enough to lift the family of three above the poverty line,
it would provide the resources to buy over 15 months of groceries, 8
months of rent, 7 months of utilities, or tuition at a two-year
community college. The reality is that American workers are working
harder and harder for less and less.
It is time for Congress to address the needs of America's working
families. It is time to act and raise the minimum wage.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wonder if the majority leader would be
kind enough to yield for a few questions.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I would be happy to yield to the Senator
from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, now we are dealing with the trade bill
which will provide benefits, obviously, to many corporations. We also
ought to think of the workers, especially those workers at the bottom
rung of the economic ladder.
I listened with interest to the Senator from South Dakota. As the
Senator pointed out, if we fail to increase the minimum wage, which has
not been increased in 6 years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage
will near an all-time low.
All we are trying to do is bring it up a little bit, which would be
generally below what the average has been over recent years.
Is the Senator aware that if we fail to act with an increase in the
minimum wage, it will be virtually at an all-time low if we don't act
this year?
Mr. DASCHLE. It is not as well known as I wish it were. But how
ironic it would be if in the same Congress that passed tax breaks for
those at the very top--tax breaks worth $50,000 a year to those in the
top 1 percent--we could not do something to address the needs of those
at the lowest end of the income scale.
I certainly appreciate the graphic depiction of the trend of the
minimum wage which the Senator from Massachusetts has outlined. That is
the whole idea behind this legislation.
Mr. KENNEDY. I would like to ask the Senator a further question. Does
the Senator not agree with me that for years this body--Republicans and
Democrats--thought that people who worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of
the year should not have to live in poverty in the United States? Does
the Senator understand now that the minimum wage is well below the
poverty line for working families?
Some will say we have an earned-income tax credit. But still the fact
is for a single mom, or even for families of three, they are still well
below the poverty line.
Does the Senator not agree with me, as I believe most Democrats do,
that work ought to pay and that those individuals who work 52 weeks of
the year, 40 hours a week should at least be at a poverty line, not a
living wage even, but a poverty line?
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, the answer to that would be emphatically
yes, especially given the stated desire of Members of Congress who have
passed welfare reform. The whole idea behind welfare reform was to make
work pay, to make work more palatable than welfare. But it is hard for
me to understand how a head of household can see how work pays when
they are working for the minimum wage, 52 weeks a year, 40 hours a week
and earning only $10,700 a year.
That is why we have people in South Dakota--and I am sure in
Massachusetts--working two and three jobs. That is why we are concerned
about the pressures on families these days. It is hard to raise
children, and it is hard to address all of the other familial
responsibilities if you are working two and three jobs a week in an
effort to rise above that poverty line that the Senator's chart
illustrates.
Mr. KENNEDY. Of course, I believe the increase in the minimum wage is
a women's issue because the majority of those earning the minimum wage
are women. It is a children's issue because so many of those women have
children. It is a civil rights issue because great numbers of those who
receive the minimum wage are men and women of color, and it is a
fairness issue.
In looking over the historic increases that have been enacted by the
Congress since 1956, the proposal is an increase of $1.50--60 cents the
first year, 50 cents the next year, and 40 cents. This represents in
the bar chart what the percentage increase would be going back to 1956.
It will be actually one of the lowest over the period of the next 3
years.
When the Senator propounds his unanimous consent request, we will
probably hear those who will say this is new legislation when we talk
about an increase in the minimum wage. We haven't had a chance to study
it. This is something that sort of takes us by surprise.
Will the Senator not agree with me that this issue is as old as the
1930s, effectively, when we first enacted the minimum wage, and that
this proposal of $1.50 over 3 years is actually a very modest proposal
indeed?
Mr. DASCHLE. The Senator is absolutely right. Not only is it modest
but it is overdue.
[[Page S4686]]
As I noted in my opening comments, it has been 6 years since we
passed an increase in the minimum wage. During that time, as the
Senator's chart illustrates, the minimum wage has dramatically
declined. The number of hours people have to work goes up and the real
value of the money they receive goes down.
More and more people are faced with the prospect of taking two and
three jobs in order to climb above that poverty line, at the very time,
ironically, when we say that we want work to pay to ensure that they do
not go back to welfare.
So I compliment the Senator from Massachusetts for his leadership in
this effort and, again, reiterate that the moderate increase that he is
proposing is one that is in keeping with past precedent here in the
Congress; and it certainly recognizes the need to do something this
year.
Mr. KENNEDY. If the majority leader will yield, I thank the leader
for the excellent presentations he made this evening on this issue, as
well as the excellent speech he made earlier today.
He mentioned that $3,000 may not mean a lot to Members of Congress
who have had four pay increases since the last increase in the minimum
wage, but for a minimum wage worker it means 15 months of groceries, 8
months of rent, 7 months of utilities, or full tuition for a community
college.
This is, as the majority leader pointed out, a family issue. It
represents, to those children, the value of work. And it is a fairness
issue.
I thank the majority leader. I hope there will not be objection to
the proposal he is about to make.
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask, therefore, unanimous consent that
the majority leader, after consultation with the Republican leader, may
turn to the consideration of S. 2538, the minimum wage increase bill;
that the Senate proceed to its consideration no later than the close of
business, June 24; and that it be considered under the following time
limitation: That there be one amendment for each leader, or their
designee, dealing with minimum wage/taxes; that no other amendments or
motions be in order, except possible motions to waive the Budget Act;
and that no points of order be waived by this agreement; that upon the
disposition of these amendments, the bill be read a third time, and the
Senate vote on final passage of the bill, without any intervening
action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. GRAMM. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Texas.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, first of all, we are here debating the
trade bill that is all about trying to raise wages. It is interesting,
in looking at Senator Kennedy's charts, that in the period where the
minimum wage was not raised, the number of children living in poverty
declined by 20 percent in America.
How did that happen? The Government did not raise the minimum wage.
Yet we had, in a decade, a precipitous decline in the number of
children and people living in poverty.
How is it possible for people to escape poverty without the minimum
wage being increased? It is possible because of economic growth. There
are many people in this Chamber who have worked at the minimum wage--
but they didn't work at it long. A minimum wage job is a steppingstone
toward economic progress and success in America.
The plain truth is, we are debating a bill that is more important to
working people making low incomes than any minimum wage law that has
ever been adopted by any legislative body in history. This bill is
about trade, which creates jobs. The average job generated through
trade pays wages that are almost 20 percent higher than wages in the
other jobs in the American economy.
In dealing with this pro-high-wage bill, we are asked to consider a
measure we have never seen; that is not on the calendar; that, as far
as I know, has never been introduced; that is not relevant or germane
to this debate.
So I have to say, it is hard for me to take this request seriously,
though I would say to Senator Kennedy that we would love to stay and
hear him speak on this at length. If he would like to have time set
aside from this debate to talk about minimum wage, it is a subject
where certainly we have people who are interested in it, who could
always be enlightened, who would enjoy hearing Senator Kennedy talk
about it. I would like to do something about wages by passing this
trade bill because I think it will do more for people making low
incomes than any wage law we could pass.
Let me also say, I have never understood minimum wage laws. If they
really work, if we could just pass a law and make wages what we want
them to be, why not make wages $1 million an hour? Then people who need
many millions of dollars could work all week and be very rich, and
people who need only one million dollars could work 1 hour and be rich.
But there is a problem. And the problem is something you learned in
the third grade: anything times zero is zero. The cruel hoax of minimum
wage laws is, by setting artificially high wages, it prevents people
from getting their foot on the first rung of the economic ladder. It
prevents them from getting into the most effective training program in
history: on-the-job training.
I wonder, if we had the kind of minimum wage that the Senator from
Massachusetts is talking about when I was out trying to get jobs--jobs
with the Tom Houston Peanut Company, throwing the Columbus Ledger
Inquirer and working for Kroger Grocery Store--I might have been
protected right out of a job. I did not appear to have any skills, and
in fact I did not have any skills.
But I learned great things in those jobs. The most important skill
that I acquired was the knowledge that I did not want to do those
things for a living.
So we would certainly love to hear about this. My colleague is here
from Utah. I think he would like to have something to say about it. But
we would be perfectly willing to debate this subject tonight at any
length that the Senator from Massachusetts would like to talk about it.
But at the end of the talk, we want action. And the action we want is
passing this trade bill because it is going to create new jobs at high
wages, with great futures. It is going to share the American dream with
more people than have ever had it before, with people who missed it the
first time around. We are excited about it. And it is going to happen
since we have a certain amount of time that has to run off the clock
now. So if people want to debate minimum wage, we do not object to
debating it. We just want to deal with this trade bill first because we
believe it will do more good.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.
Mr. KENNEDY. Well, the Senator, as I understand from his comments, is
prepared to debate it, but he is going to object to any consideration
to give the Senate of the United States an opportunity to act on it
prior to the July recess, as I understand it.
Am I correct in understanding the Senator's position, that he would
welcome the discussion and debate, but he objects to any action on the
bill--the Senator was glad to ensure that there was going to be voting
on the questions of the trade bill in support for the cloture earlier
today to make sure we were going to vote on a trade bill. But, as I
understand the Senator's position, he objected to the majority leader's
request to permit the Senate to vote on the issue of the minimum wage?
Mr. GRAMM. Reclaiming my time, let me say his problem is not with me
but with the fact that we are on a trade bill of which almost 70
Members of the Senate voted for cloture, saying they want to get on
with passing this trade bill to create more jobs, more growth, more
opportunities.
The Senator has proposed a measure which we have never seen, that he
has never filed, that is not on the calendar, that is not relevant or
germane. We are being asked to waive the rules of the Senate and delay
the creation of new jobs from trade for an amendment that is not in
order today.
Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator will yield for a point, this is not being
offered as an amendment. It is just a unanimous consent request. We
take action on it later on in the session. It was not an attempt to
offer it as an amendment tonight.
[[Page S4687]]
Mr. GRAMM. Let me say that----
Mr. KENNEDY. But I understand the Senator has objected to that as
well.
Mr. GRAMM. We are in the minority here. You control the flow of
legislation. I don't understand why you are asking us for permission to
bring up bills. All I know is we are here trying to pass a trade bill,
and you are talking about another subject. The point I was making is
that thanks to the wisdom of our Members, we now have some--how many
hours do we have postcloture?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three hours.
Mr. GRAMM. Twenty-two hours?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Twenty-three hours.
Mr. GRAMM. Twenty-three hours. So we have ample time, if the Senator
wants to talk about this issue, to do it. I know the Senator from Utah
wants to say a word about it.
So I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Texas. I would say
to the Senator from Massachusetts if he were still in the Chamber, I
would be happy to take action on his bill. The action I would seek to
take would be to kill it. That is effectively what we have done with
our objection. But if the Senator from Massachusetts can get the
majority leader to bring it up in another place, I will be happy to
vote to kill it in that place, too.
I do so not because I am hardhearted, not because I think the people
who are at the bottom of the economic ladder don't need help, not
because I want to hurt them, but because I want to help them. I have
often said that if I could control what we carve in marble around here,
along with the Latin mottos and the other statements we have, we should
probably have before us at all times the statement: You cannot repeal
the law of supply and demand.
We keep trying in government to repeal the law of supply and demand.
We keep trying to set prices or wages at a level different than the
market. Well, I don't have the Ph.D. degree in economics my friend from
Texas has, but I learned in Economics I that when government sets a
price different from where the market would set it, you get one of two
things: either a shortage or a surplus. If government sets the price on
a commodity and says, this is what we will pay for this commodity
because everybody ought to have access to it, and they set the price by
law too low, you get a shortage of that commodity because no one wants
to produce it at that artificially low price.
We have seen that. Remember when there was price control on natural
gas and there was an insufficient supply of natural gas. You got a
shortage. When Ronald Reagan became President, he said: We are going to
remove price controls on natural gas, and many people--I was not in the
Chamber so I can't tell you whether there are some who are still here
who were there at the time--said: Without price regulation, the price
of natural gas will go through the roof.
Guess what happened. When we removed the artificial restraint on the
price of natural gas, it went up temporarily enough to get a lot of
people producing natural gas, and then it came down, ironically, to a
price below the price the Government had set, once the market forces
took over and people started producing natural gas. You can get a
shortage or you can get a surplus.
I remember when my father was on the Banking Committee and the
Government set the price of silver for silver coinage. It was higher
than the market would pay for silver, and the Government stockpile of
silver got bigger and bigger and bigger because people were producing
silver, not for the market but for the Government, at an artificially
high price.
What does that have to do with the minimum wage? Simply this: If you
set the price of unskilled labor by Government fiat at a place where
the market would not put it, you are going to create a shortage of
jobs. If Government guarantees a price of labor higher than the market,
you will get a surplus of people applying for those jobs. It is as
simple and as inexorable as that. You cannot repeal the law of supply
and demand.
What segment of our economy has the highest level of unemployment? It
is the inner cities, among African-American males of teen age. They
have the highest level of unemployment of any group measure in the
country. Why? Because jobs in the inner city for teenagers who don't
have skills have been priced out of the market by minimum wage
legislation.
The Senator from Texas talked about his first experience. I went to
work at 50 cents an hour when I was 14 years old, and I had the same
kind of experience the Senator did. I didn't need the money, but I
certainly needed the experience. It taught me the necessity of showing
up on time. It taught me the necessity of being dependable, of doing
the kinds of things my supervisor wanted me to do whether I wanted to
do them or not. It got me involved in a way that I have found valuable
all the rest of my life.
If the minimum wage, which was 40 cents an hour at the time--so I was
above the minimum wage by 10 cents--had been raised to 65 cents an
hour, I would have lost my job. I wasn't worth 65 cents an hour to my
employer. Frankly, I was barely worth 50. I would have lost my job.
I cannot understand why some people insist that the poor are better
off unemployed at a high rate than working at a slightly lower rate.
But that is what we have; that is where we are.
We are talking about this trade bill. We are saying it will help the
American economy. At the time when the economy was doing perhaps its
best, during the 1990s, and Alan Greenspan came before the Banking
Committee, a Senator asked him: In these boom times, Mr. Chairman, who
is benefiting the most from America's prosperity?
I could tell by the way the Senator framed the question that he
expected Greenspan to say ``the people at the top'' because the Senator
was particularly concerned about what he considered to be an improper
gap between the people at the top and the people at the bottom, and he
was going to use Greenspan's answer to make a case for raising the
minimum wage: The people at the top have gotten well, the people at the
top have gotten fat in this time of great economic prosperity; it is
the people at the bottom we need to help.
I could tell that was the attitude of the Senator as he asked the
question. He was disappointed in Greenspan's answer. Greenspan replied:
Unquestionably, Senator, it is the people at the bottom who have
benefited from this economic boom.
My memory tells me he said the bottom fifth because, being an
economist, he always has to quantify everything. So it was the people
in the bottom quintile, to use an economist's phrase, who had benefited
the most from the economic boom.
Then the dialog went back and forth between Chairman Greenspan and
the Senator, with the Senator saying: Yes, but the people at the top
have gotten these enormous financial rewards by virtue of the good
economy.
Chairman Greenspan said: Yes, that is true, if you measure the
benefit solely in dollars. However, if you measure the benefit in terms
of life impact, the people at the bottom, who have had a 40-, 50-, 60-
percent blessing in their lives by virtue of the fact that the economy
is creating jobs for them, their life has been impacted far more than a
millionaire who was at $2 million net worth and then saw his net worth
go to $3 million. His lifestyle doesn't change much. His life
circumstances don't change, if at all. He has more money to invest, and
we hope he invests it in a way that will further stimulate the economy,
but in terms of what happens in his life, nothing really changes by
virtue of his increase in net worth. But someone who could not get a
job or who couldn't see his job increase because the economy was flat,
now in these times of prosperity can get a job and can see his
opportunities increase.
I remember in those times when I talked to employers in the State of
Utah and I would ask them: What is your biggest problem?
They said: We can't find anybody to hire. The economy is so good that
everybody can get a job.
I had one employer say to me: We will hold a mass job interview. We
will advertise in the paper, and 15 or 20 people come in to listen to
our pitch as to why they should come to work for us. We will start
through our explanation of what this job is, and half of them will get
up and walk out because they
[[Page S4688]]
know they can walk down the street and hear somebody else's pitch and
they can pick and choose. Our problem is, because the economy is so
good and there are so many jobs, we are having hard times even filling
the entry-level jobs.
Right now, the economy is not so good. Right now, we don't have
employers who are complaining about that problem. And right now is not
the time to artificially price those entry-level jobs out of the market
by attempting to repeal the law of supply and demand.
Who will get hurt the most by an increase in the minimum wage? Ross
Perot won't get hurt. Donald Trump won't get hurt. The people at the
top won't be affected one way or the other. It is the person who is
working for today's minimum wage, whose economic benefit to his
employer would not justify the proposed minimum wage, who gets laid
off. That is who gets hurt. It is the people at the bottom whom we are
trying to help, who will, ironically, suffer the most if the minimum
wage goes through.
I can take you to employers in my State who laid people off the last
time the minimum wage went up. Employers said: I simply cannot justify
it anymore. I would like to pay them, I would like to have them working
for me. But, frankly, the economic return I get from them is not worth
it when the minimum wage goes up. I am going to lay them off. I can get
the same job done with mechanization or some other device, or I can
simply do without it in my business. It is just not worth it to me to
pay that much.
So those people walked off the job into the unemployment lines, with
the cold comfort that their nominal rate was now 50 cents or 75 cents
higher than it had been. They were not collecting it, but at least they
had the warm feeling of knowing the Government determined that was what
they were worth.
The market determines who gets hired. The market determines who gets
paid. We cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.
So I say again, the Senator from Massachusetts says he wants action
on this bill and he is disturbed that we are not willing to take
action. I would be willing to take action, and the action I would want
to take for the benefit of the people at the bottom, for the benefit of
the African-American teenagers in inner cities who cannot get work, for
the benefit of those who are just trying to start out, would be to say
let's kill this bill, let's take care of the people at the bottom the
best way we can, but one of the things we should not do is price their
jobs out of the market and put them in the unemployment lines.
I yield the floor.
____________________