[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2452-2454]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      INCREASING THE MINIMUM WAGE

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I came to the floor today to talk about 
the issue that has been in front of us all week--I assume it is going 
to be coming to a close early next week--and that is the debate and 
vote on whether we are going to increase the Federal minimum wage.
  I regret that previous Congresses have blocked any increase in the 
minimum wage. The Senate has rejected 11 attempts to raise the minimum 
wage since 1998--11 times. Last year, we had 52 Senators vote in favor 
of it, but we didn't have the 60 Senators to invoke cloture and get to 
a final vote.
  Scores of religious and antipoverty groups have called on Congress 
time and again to recognize the basic principle that Americans who work 
full time and play by the rules should not be consigned to poverty.
  In 1966, Martin Luther King, Jr., said:

       We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing 
     Congress today than the need to increase the Federal minimum 
     wage and extend its coverage. . . . A living wage should be 
     the right of all working Americans.

  I join with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and say it ought to be a 
right. According to the Congressional Research Service, the real value 
of the minimum wage today, if it had the same purchasing power as it 
did in 1968, the year Dr. King was so tragically assassinated, if the 
minimum wage had the same purchasing power today, the minimum wage 
would be $9.19 an hour. What are we talking about increasing it to? We 
are talking about increasing it to $7.25 an hour. But at least with the 
earned-income tax credit, which is new since that time, food stamps--we 
had food stamps then also, perhaps a little more generous now--that 
$7.25 an hour would at least get a family of four above the poverty 
line, and that would be a historic achievement for our Nation.
  It is simply immoral to tell working Americans that they ought to try 
to provide for their family's needs on $5.15 an hour. My colleagues and 
I who offered this bill respect work, we value work, including the most 
humble type of work. That is why we fought for years to try to ensure 
the minimum wage kept pace with inflation and updated periodically. But 
for 10 years, the

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 leadership has blocked us from increasing it.
  Again, I remind my colleagues that the Fair Labor Standards Act, 
which instituted the minimum wage in 1938, one of the primary aims as 
enuciated by Franklin Roosevelt was alleviating poverty. Yet now the 
minimum wage condemns workers to a life of poverty for themselves and 
their children no matter how hard they work.
  Minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earn 
about $10,712. That is $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of 
three. The current minimum wage would not even keep a single person and 
one child above the poverty line.
  The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has declined by 20 
percent since the last increase in 1997. I point out that since that 
time, Congress has raised its pay eight times, $31,600.
  Several of our colleagues have suggested all we have to do is 
increase the earned-income tax credit and that would address it. I am a 
supporter of the EITC, the earned-income tax credit. It makes a major 
difference for millions of Americans in poverty, but I don't see it as 
either/or. You make the earned-income tax credit and the minimum wage 
go hand in hand, and that really does alleviate poverty. There are a 
lot of people working in minimum wage jobs who don't understand the 
earned-income tax credit. Their employers may not inform them of it. 
They may or may not get a mailing. Maybe they can read it, maybe they 
can't. Possibly no one may inform them of it and they pass it by. That 
is why we have to raise their pay.
  There is another aspect. It is saying to someone: We value your work. 
Your work is valuable, whether you are cleaning a hotel room, sweeping 
up, waiting tables. No matter what it is, your work is valuable.
  When we erode people's pride in their work, we also erode their sense 
that they are a valuable, contributing member of our society.
  Those who suggest we just expand the EITC seem to be the same ones 
who say how great the economy was last year. The economy was pretty 
good last year for those in the top brackets. It is said that a strong 
economy is a rising tide that lifts all boats. What if you don't own a 
boat? Shouldn't those at the very bottom also get a raise? Shouldn't a 
college kid working part time, who is technically not counted as living 
in poverty, get a raise to help pay for textbooks? Why is their hard 
work valued at less than one-third of the median wage?
  We have heard the outrageous suggestion that a rise in the minimum 
wage is somehow a threat to the economy. That is nonsense. Just before 
signing the Fair Labor Standards Act, here is what President Franklin 
Roosevelt said. You can almost hear the echoes of his voice:

       Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of 
     $1,000 a day tell you that a wage of $11 a week is going to 
     have a disastrous effect on all American industry.

  Today, the average CEO makes a whopping 821 times more than a worker 
on minimum wage. That is what this chart shows. Back in 1965, 1968, it 
was about 51, 54--the average CEO made about 50 times more than a 
minimum wage worker. Today it is 821 times more. That means that the 
average CEO makes more on one day before lunch than a minimum wage 
worker makes all year.
  I remind my colleagues that corporate profits increased more than 21 
percent in 2000 and reached a 40-year high. Yet the minimum wage is at 
a 50-year low. As a result, people who work for profitable companies 
making the minimum wage, what happens? They are forced to use public 
health care. They are forced to get food stamps, another taxpayer-
funded assistance, to make ends meet. So are we subsidizing the huge 
profits that these companies are making, which then turn around and pay 
their CEOs 821 times more than the minimum wage worker because we are 
taking tax dollars from the middle class and helping to pay for their 
food stamps, health care, and other needs?
  Some business groups argue that raising the minimum wage would mean 
that some jobs would be eliminated. In the absence of Federal 
leadership on the minimum wage, many States have taken it upon 
themselves to raise the minimum wage. Currently, 30 States, the Virgin 
Islands, the District of Columbia, and, I might add, my own State of 
Iowa have a minimum wage higher than the Federal minimum of $5.15 an 
hour. Do you know what. It didn't hurt any of those States.
  The Fiscal Policy Institute has studied what happens to small 
businesses and job growth right after the minimum wage is increased. 
That is what this chart shows. It shows States that have higher minimum 
wages and those that don't. Then we see the growth rates. There is not 
much difference. Both are about the same. So it doesn't hurt growth, 
business growth, or anything else.
  People say: How can that be if they pay a higher minimum wage? How 
can their growth be the same or sometimes greater than a State that 
pays less in minimum wage? It is very simple. People who make a decent 
wage work harder when they get a good night's sleep. If they are 
working two jobs or have a sick kid at home, they may not get a good 
night's sleep, and they can't be as attentive to their job. If they 
sleep in a well-heated apartment instead of a cold flat, when they are 
able to eat decently and have a good nutritious meal a couple of times 
a day, they can be more productive. When they can get health care for 
an abscessed tooth that is driving them nuts rather than going to work 
and not being attentive to their job, they can be more productive. So 
when workers earn more money, they contribute more to society, and 
everybody wins.
  Our failure to raise the minimum wage is more than an economic 
failure. It is a failure of democracy. Again, we live in a society 
where we can afford to raise the minimum wage. We can afford to have a 
basic standard of living for anyone willing to work for it. Yet we fail 
to insist, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said, on this basic right.
  Unfortunately, it is hard to get people who earn the minimum wage to 
come here and lobby for it. They can't afford the time off, much less 
the airfare or even the gas to get here. Think about this: A worker 
making minimum wage can buy 2 gallons of gasoline for an hour of 
labor--an hour of her labor. I say ``her'' because 59 percent of 
workers who earn the minimum wage are women.
  But even people who won't directly benefit from this legislation 
overwhelmingly support it. A recent AP poll found that 80 percent of 
Americans of all income levels favor raising the minimum wage.
  This country desperately needs this increase. With declining 
employer-sponsored health care, the demise of other benefits, including 
pension benefits, with dramatic costs and other costs of living--
housing, for example--workers have to pay for more with less.
  The National Low Income Housing Coalition has calculated that the 
national housing wage--that is the hourly wage needed to pay fair 
market rent for a two-bedroom apartment--was $15.78 an hour in 2005. In 
other words, the average for a two-bedroom apartment, $15.78 an hour, 
was the minimum one needed to actually pay for rent and to provide food 
and other needs for a family. That is about triple the current minimum 
wage.
  Economists are all saying that we have to raise it, we should raise 
it. They know it will improve the lives of working Americans without 
increasing inflation or unemployment. But the average American doesn't 
need to hear from Nobel Prize-winning economists to understand the 
basic principle that people who work hard and play by the rules ought 
to be able to feed their kids, house them, and give them a good 
education. It is really basic fairness, and it is fundamental economic 
morality.
  America should not be a nation that favors the powerful and well-
connected at the expense of low-income workers and their families. It 
is time to do right by the least fortunate among us. It is time to 
value and honor the work of those at the bottom of the income scale. 
After 10 long years, it is time to raise the minimum wage.

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