Kennedy Starts Talk on Raising Federal Minimum Wage
By Randy Trick
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2002–Standing in front of a chart featuring a caricature of an empty-pocketed man reminiscent of the 1951 board game “Boom or Bust,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy Wednesday denounced the congressional Republican leaders who are set to block his plan to increase the minimum wage.
Kennedy used a press conference to unveil his proposal to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.65 an hour over the next five years for the workers who “work hard and play by the rules.”
“The Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives still have time to pass a minimum wage increase,” Kennedy said. “We have seen our Republican friends in leadership object to it and oppose it, but we haven’t given up.”
In 1996, when the minimum wage was increased from $4.25 an hour over two years, Kennedy was the main mover of the legislation. He and his fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John F. Kerry ground floor action to a halt to confound then-Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan. After much partisan wrangling, Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues pushed the increase through.
Since then, the buying power of the minimum wage has decreased with inflation. The $5.15-an-hour minimum wage set in 1997 is worth $4.60 in 2002 and will be worth only $4.49 in 2003, according to Kennedy.
A modest rate of inflation, currently 1.24 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, gradually decreases how far a dollar can be stretched. Some states, such as Alaska and Washington, annually increase their state minimum wage as inflation increases.
On the federal level, Congress would have to vote to increase the minimum wage. Kennedy said he is seeking to do what should have been done years ago – bring the minimum wage up to a level where families can make it.
“Our increases in 1996 and 1997 will virtually be eliminated because of the gradual creep of inflation if we take no further action this year,” Kennedy said.
With the senator Wednesday were representatives of the National Urban League, an advocacy group focused on conditions for blacks in the nation’s large cities. Hugh B. Price, president of the group, said increasing the minimum wage would help pull 1.4 million urban families out of poverty.
The $3,000-a-year increase would give full-time workers the equivalent of 15 months of groceries, eight months of rent, seven months of utilities or ay a year’s tuition at a community college, according to Kennedy.
“This issue is really all about the dignity of the men and women that earn the minimum wage,” Kennedy said. These wage earners are janitorial workers, service employees, hotel and restaurant workers and childcare workers, he said.
The senator also said the minimum wage is a women’s issue because many minimum-wage earners are women, a children’s issue because many minimum-wage earners are single mothers and a civil rights issue because many earning the minimum are minorities.
Kennedy faced fierce opposition from a Republican-controlled House and Senate in 1996, and indications are that he may face it again. While Republican leaders have looked favorably at tax cut ideas that Democrats proposed Tuesday, increasing the minimum wage is a decidedly partisan issue.
Published in The Lawrence Eagle Tribune, in Massachusetts.
