ILW.COM - Sen. Kennedy's Recommendations for Senate Agenda for September

[Congressional Record: September 5, 2000 (Senate)] [Page S7978-S7980] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr05se00-30] AGENDA FOR SEPTEMBER Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, this afternoon, we are considering whether to proceed to legislation to establish permanent normal trading relations with China. That's an important issue, and it should be debated. But in the short time remaining this year, we also must answer the call of the American people for real action on key issues of concern to working families. I want to mention briefly and then talk for the few more moments that I have about three specifically. We must raise the minimum wage--with no gimmicks, no poison pills, and no bloated tax breaks for the wealthy. We are willing to consider some tax relief for small businesses to offset any burden of raising the minimum wage. But the minimum wage should be the engine for relief for low-wage workers, not the caboose on a massive train of tax breaks and antiworker legislation. The latest Republican scheme may raise the minimum wage. But it also reduces overtime payments for all workers. Workers all over America are saying that employers are requiring them to work too much overtime. Under the Republican scheme, not only can employers require workers to work more overtime, but employers can pay them less for that overtime. We must pass a real Patients' Bill of Rights--true HMO reform in which all Americans in managed care plans are protected--not just some, as our Republican friends propose. We must strengthen our hate crimes laws. The Senate has passed such legislation on the DOD authorization. It's now up to the Republican leadership to decide whether we stand up against hate and bigotry in America, or will this Congress just take a pass. We must invest in education in ways that will make a real difference for our children. That means helping local schools hire more teachers so we can have smaller class sizes, and a quality [[Page S7979]] teacher in every classroom in America. It means partnering with local schools to modernize school buildings and build more schools. It means increasing Pell Grants so more young Americans have a chance to go to college. It means more pre-school and after-school help for parents and schools. We must adopt sensible gun controls that keep our communities and our schools safe. We should require child safety locks on all guns, and we must close the gun show loophole. We must adopt urgently needed immigration reforms. We must expand the visa quota for skilled workers--the so-called ``H-1B visa.'' And we must adopt new laws to ensure equal treatment under our immigration laws for Latino and other immigrants. Last but not least, we must enact a prescription drug benefit as part of the Medicare program. Whenever a senior citizen signs up for Medicare, a comprehensive prescription drug benefit should automatically come with it. Senior citizens shouldn't have to battle HMOs and insurance companies to get the prescription drugs they need. Yet, that is what our Republican friends propose. Let's do it right--and do it now. Let's pass a prescription drug benefit as an integral and normal part of the Medicare program, just like hospitalization and doctors' visits. This summer, Congress voted tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and a pay raise for itself, but the Republican leadership has continued to block efforts to raise the salaries of America's most underpaid workers--those earning the minimum wage. While Members of this Republican Congress are quick to find time to increase their own salaries and cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, they have not yet found the time to pass an increase in the minimum wage to benefit those hard-working, low-wage Americans. The Republican leadership has insisted on doing nothing for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. It is an outrage that Congress would raise its own pay but not the minimum wage. I was pleased to hear during the recess that House Republicans are finally coming around to our way of thinking. Last week, after three years of foot-dragging, Speaker Hastert offered the President a plan to raise the minimum wage. This is a positive development, and it gives us real hope that we can raise the pay of the lowest paid workers this year. These low income working families deserve a raise. Their pay has been frozen for three years. Since January 1999 alone, minimum wage workers have now lost $3,000 due to the inaction of Congress. If we fail to increase the minimum wage this year, it will lose all of the value gained by the last two increases. Minimum wage earners should not be forced to wait any longer for an increase. But we can't use this as an excuse to cut workers' overtime pay, as Speaker Hastert proposes. We can't raise the minimum wage on one hand-- and cut overtime pay for millions of Americans on the other hand. The typical American family is working more and more hours, according to a study released for Labor Day by the Economic Policy Institute called ``The State of Working America 2000-2001.'' Employees have increasingly been forced to work mandatory overtime--time they would rather be spending with their families--and they should be fairly compensated for that work. Several new studies further prove how important a minimum wage increase is. A recent report released by the Economic Policy Institute entitled ``The Impact of the Minimum Wage: Policy Lifts Wages, Maintains Floor for Low-Wage Labor Market'' reveals that 63 percent of gains from a $1 increase in the minimum wage would go to families in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. The study also finds that the higher wage raises the incomes of low-wage workers, with no evidence of job loss. In addition, the study reports that, among people who will benefit from an increase in the minimum wage, 1.75 million workers are parents with earnings below $25,000 a year. A June 2000 Conference Board report, ``Does A Rising Tide Lift All Boats? America's Full-time Working Poor Reap Limited Gains in the New Economy,'' found that poverty has risen among full-time, year round workers since 1973. Lower skilled workers have profited much less from the current economic boom. They have yet to recover from the serious erosion of their earnings from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. The number of full-time workers in poverty has doubled since the late 1970s--from about 1.5 million to almost 3 million by 1998. Millions of poor children are dependent upon these full-time workers. ``Minimum Wage Careers?'', an August 1999 study by two government economists, found that 12 percent of all workers have spent the first ten years of their careers within $1 of the minimum wage. 8 percent of workers, predominantly women, minorities, and the less-educated, spend at least 50 percent of their first ten post-school years in jobs paying less than $1 above the minimum wage. This research demonstrates that millions of workers stay at or near the minimum wage long after their entry into the workforce. The minimum wage is not just an ``entry level'' wage. As the study concludes, ``minimum wage legislation has non-negligible effects on the lifetime opportunities of a significant minority of workers.'' Raising the minimum wage is not just a labor issue. The minimum wage issue is also a family issue. Forty percent of minimum wage workers have families. Parents are spending less and less time with their families. Listen to this: 22 hours less a week than they did 30 years ago, according to a study last year by the Council of Economic Advisers. As reflected in a report released by the Economic Policy Institute last week, an average middle-class family in 1998 spend 6.8 percent more time at work then it did in 1989. These extra hours at work mean that parents have less time to spend with their children. Raising the minimum wage issue is also a children's issue. Thirty- three percent of minimum wage earners are parents with children under 18. Over 8 million children living in poverty live in working poor families. The Children's Defense Fund recently released a report called ``The State of America's Children 2000.'' A chapter on Family Income explains that if ``recent patterns persist, one out of every three children born in 2000 will have spent at least a year in poverty by his or her 18th birthday.'' The inadequate pay of these workers is the reason why 33 percent of all poor children, or 4.3 million children, in 1998 were poor despite living in a family where someone worked full- time, year-round. Children who grow up in poor families face a much higher risk of poor health, high rates of learning disabilities and developmental delays, and poor school achievement and they are far more likely to end up in poverty themselves. Raising the minimum wage is also a civil rights issue. A disproportionate share of minorities will be affected by an increase in the minimum wage. While African Americans represent 12 percent of the total workforce, they represent 16 percent of those who would benefit from a minimum wage increase. Only 11 percent of the workforce is Hispanic, but 19 percent of those who would directly affected by an increase in the minimum wage are Hispanic. Raising the minimum wage is also a women's issue. Sixty percent of minimum wage earners are women. The workers affected by an increase in the minimum wage are concentrated in female-dominated occupations. Above all, raising the minimum wage is a fairness issue. Minimum wage earners, such as waitresses and teacher's aides, childcare workers, and elder care workers, deserve to be paid fairly for the work that they do. They should not be forced into poverty for doing the work that is so important to the citizens of the Nation. In this period of unprecedented economic prosperity, the 10 million workers at the bottom of the economic ladder who will benefit from raising the minimum wage should not be forced to wait any longer for the fair increase they deserve. Each day we fail to raise the minimum wage, families across the county continue to fall farther behind. Two facts tell the story. The minimum wage would have to be $7.66 an hour today--instead of its current level of $5.15--to have the same purchasing power it had in 1968. If wages had kept pace with worker productivity gains [[Page S7980]] over the last twenty-five years, the minimum wage would have to be $8.79 today. We heard a great deal about opposition to the increase in minimum wage because we are not getting increases in productivity. No economy has ever had the dramatic increases in productivity as we have had, Mr. President. If we tied those increases in productivity to where the minimum wage should be, it would be at $8.79 instead of $5.15. These disgraceful disparities show how far we have fallen short in guaranteeing that low-income workers receive their fair share of the nation's prosperity. No one--no one--who works for a living should have to live in poverty. We are not going to go away or back down. We have bipartisan support for this increase. It is long past time for this Congress to pass a fair minimum wage bill. ____________________

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