Democrats to Propose Minimum Wage Boost
GOP, Business Opposition Expected

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006; Page B06

RICHMOND, Dec. 19 -- Democratic legislative leaders said Tuesday that they will seek to raise the state's minimum wage by more than $2 an hour when the General Assembly convenes next month.

Democrats propose to increase the minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, to $6.15 in 2008 and $7.25 by the end of 2009. Virginia has never set its own minimum, choosing instead to use the federal rate, which has remained $5.15 since 1995.



"It's not just about economics. It's about justice and fairness," said Del. Albert C. Eisenberg. (Courtesy Of Albert-c. Eisenberg)

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"How many CEOs have gone without a wage hike in the last 10 years?" asked Del. Albert C. Eisenberg (D-Arlington). "It's not just about economics. It's about justice and fairness."

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said he supports an increase, but the proposal is expected to face resistance from the business community and the Republican-controlled General Assembly. A House subcommittee killed a similar proposal this year.

"We have a long tradition in Virginia of adhering to the federal minimum wage rate," said Del. Harvey B. Morgan (R-Gloucester), chairman of the House Commerce and Labor Committee. "Virginia is constantly competing with other Southern states for businesses that provide jobs. . . . If we enacted a change at odds with our decades-long, bipartisan policy on this critical business issue, we'd jeopardize our competitive advantage."

Amy Hewett, director of governmental affairs and public relations for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, agreed that an increase would hurt business.

"We really believe it's a federal issue and should be addressed by Congress," Hewett said.

About 450,000 Virginians are paid the minimum wage, which works out to about $10,700 a year for those who work 40 hours a week.

"Working full time and raising a family should never be a ticket to poverty," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Alexandria), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Moran said it is time for the General Assembly to act because 29 states and the District have approved minimum wages higher than the federal rate. Voters in six states approved higher rates through ballot measures last month. The minimum wage became a key issue in several congressional races, which Democratic strategists say helped the party regain control of the House and Senate.

In Virginia, where the labor movement is not strong, Sen.-elect James Webb (D) campaigned hard on the issue during his successful bid to unseat Sen. George Allen (R). Webb repeatedly mentioned that Allen had voted to raise his own pay but voted against several bills to increase the federal minimum wage.

Virginia Democrats said they are hoping to use the issue to put Republican legislators on the defensive in 2007, when all General Assembly members are up for reelection.

In Congress, Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have indicated that they will push to raise the federal minimum wage next year.

But Kaine said he supports a state increase because he is not optimistic that Congress and President Bush can agree on a federal increase.

"I think we have learned that to complain the feds are not doing anything has not gotten us very far," he said.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

A Moral Minimum Wage

Peter Dreier & Kelly Candaele

Readers respond in the latest batch of webletters.

In two so-called "red" states that favored George W. Bush on November 2, voters also overwhelmingly approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage by one dollar, to $6.15 an hour. In Florida, where Bush beat John Kerry by 381,000 votes, voters favored the minimum wage increase by 3.1 million votes (a lopsided 71.3 percent to 28.7 percent), despite the opposition of the state's business community and Governor Jeb Bush. In Nevada, Bush narrowly beat Kerry by 21,500 votes, but voters backed the wage boost by 293,328 votes (68.3 percent to 31.6 percent).

The minimum-wage measures won in every county in both states. In conservative Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in the Florida Panhandle, where military bases and retired military veterans dominate the political culture, more than two-thirds of voters supported the wage boost, about the same margins they gave Bush. In Nevada's richest county, Douglas, near the Lake Tahoe resort area, where Bush garnered 63.5 percent of the vote, 61.5 percent of voters supported raising the minimum wage.

Obviously, many Floridians and Nevadans, including many middle-class voters (and certainly some evangelicals), who voted for Bush also voted to raise the minimum wage. Both states also saw a significant increase in turnout among low-income and working-class voters, thanks to grassroots voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns by coalitions of progressive groups.

"The minimum-wage campaign brought a lot of people out to vote who otherwise might have stayed home," explained Brian Kettenring, an organizer for ACORN, a community group that spearheaded the Florida effort. "Most of those new voters probably voted for Kerry, which narrowed Bush's margin. But we also found that lots of swing voters, who weren't sure how they were going to vote for President, enthusiastically supported raising the minimum wage."

But, although Democrats and their allies mobilized an unprecedented get-out-the-vote operation, they were outsmarted and out-hustled by Republicans. Kettenring believes that Kerry might have taken more votes away from Bush in Florida if he had embraced the minimum-wage campaign, as many labor and progressive activists urged him to do. But he inexplicably ignored the issue. It is imperative that Democrats and progressives start a nationwide debate that frames economic justice as a moral issue. Not only would this be the right thing to do. It would seem to be a winning electoral issue.

Bob Fulkerson, director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, says that the extensive door-to-door field operations on behalf of the minimum-wage increase by unions, community groups and environmental organizations increased voter turnout in target districts, accounting not only for the wage-increase victory but also for the Democrats' picking up three seats in the State Assembly and one seat in the State Senate. "The issue tugged at people's heartstrings," Fulkerson said. "They saw it as a basic matter of fairness."

Democrats and progressives are once again going through a wrenching self-evaluation about why they lost the White House again and how they can build a majority coalition to win it back. The minimum-wage victories in Florida and Nevada are a political neon sign blinking brightly. In January, when Bush is sworn in for a second term, the array of people and groups who worked to elect John Kerry (unions, environmentalists, community-organizing networks, civil rights groups, disaffected millionaires and religious organizations) should announce a nationwide moral crusade to raise the national minimum wage to the official poverty level--$9.50 an hour--which translates to $19,000 a year.

It has already become conventional wisdom that President Bush won a second term by defending the "moral" values derived from traditional religious teachings. According to a postelection analysis written by veteran pollster Stan Greenberg and political consultant James Carville, "downscale voters" (rural, blue-collar and non-college educated) responded to a conservative "cultural surge" toward the end of the election and tilted toward Bush.

But isn't it a moral issue when more than 36 million Americans live in poverty and more than 40 million people in the wealthiest county in the world lack health insurance? Many major religious denominations support raising the minimum wage. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says that Catholic social teaching regards work as a reflection of our human dignity, and that receiving poverty wages is an affront to individual self-respect.

And isn't it immoral that Congress--which has given itself a cost-of-living pay raise for the past five years in a row--has allowed the federal minimum wage to lose its purchasing power, so that minimum-wage workers today are worse off now than they have been in decades? At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was worth the equivalent of almost $7 an hour today. That was also the last year that the minimum wage was above the nation's poverty line. The effect of the last increase in the federal minimum wage, to $5.15 in 1997, has been completely eroded by inflation. That figure (which equals $10,700 a year) is now less than one-third of the average hourly wage of American workers, the lowest level since 1949. If the federal minimum wage were increased to just $7 an hour, at least 7.4 million workers would receive a wage boost. If the minimum wage were pegged at $9.50, millions more would be lifted out of poverty. The largest group of beneficiaries would be children, whose parents would have more money for rent, food, clothing and other basic necessities.

Business leaders still trot out economists to claim that raising the minimum wage will destroy jobs and hurt small businesses. But the evidence, based on studies of the effects of past increases in both the federal and state minimum-wage levels (twelve states have minimum wages higher than the federal level), shows otherwise. Because the working poor spend everything they earn, every penny of a minimum-wage increase goes back into the economy, increasing consumer demand and adding at least as many jobs as are lost. Most employers actually gain, absorbing the increase through decreased absenteeism, lower recruiting and training costs, higher productivity and increased worker morale.

The Democrats should give right-wing Republicans a taste of their own tactics. In a mere two years, Congressional elections will be held nationwide and a third of US senators will be up for election. Democrats and progressives could put pressure on Republican members of Congress, legislators and statewide officials who, as writer Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter With Kansas?, suggests, "talk Jesus" when they're running for election but "walk corporate" once they're in office.

Let's put President Bush and his Congressional allies, who gave the richest Americans a huge tax break, in the position of explaining that a nurse's aide with two kids can raise a family on $5.15/hour or that a worker in a poultry plant doesn't deserve a wage boost.

In addition to a national campaign targeted directly at Congress, ACORN and its labor allies are talking about mounting grassroots initiatives to boost the minimum wage in several key states in 2006 where Republican members of Congress, senators and state legislators are politically vulnerable. The strategy is designed to increase turnout among poor and working-class voters and to provide Democratic candidates with a clear economic justice issue. By doing so, they might also reach some of the God-fearing, church-going white Protestant males who live barely above the poverty line but give their votes to Republicans.

Those who insist on pointing out the widening economic divide in the United States are invariably accused by conservatives of fomenting "class warfare." Well, perhaps a bit of class warfare is just what's needed. There are thousands of new progressive activists who have emerged from this presidential election ready for the next battle. Engaging in a vigorous fight to raise our meager minimum wage is clearly the morally right thing to do. But it may also be the politically astute thing for Democrats to do.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Democrats: No raises for Congress until minimum wage is increased

From Ted Barrett
CNN Washington Bureau

Wednesday, June 28, 2006; Posted: 9:27 a.m. EDT (13:27 GMT)


Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, says he has the votes to block any congressional pay raise.
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.

"We're going to do anything it takes to stop the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference.

"They can play all the games the want," Reid said derisively of the Republicans who control the chamber. "They can deal with gay marriage, estate tax, flag burning, all these issues and avoid issues like the prices of gasoline, sending your kid to college. But we're going to do everything to stop the congressional pay raise."

The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Democrats want to raise it to $7.25. During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600, or more than $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In floor debate last week Republicans argued the raise for low-income workers would hurt small businesses. They offered an alternative measure to raise the minimum wage that was tied to tax breaks for small businesses.

The main proposal fell eight votes short of the 60 it needed to pass with 46 opposing; the alternative measure mustered only 45 votes in favor, while 53 senators opposed.

Reid wouldn't spell out the specific tactics he would employ to block the congressional pay raise -- which is triggered each year with the passage of an appropriations bill not by a vote on a stand alone bill to increase pay for members.

But he warned, "I know procedures around here fairly well."

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Democrats Will Continue the Fight for a Minimum Wage Increase


Hard-working Americans were denied a clean vote on raising the national minimum wage to $7.25 on July 29 when House Republicans chose to play political games by passing a minimum wage increase that stood little chance of passage in the U.S. Senate -- and was, in fact, killed in the Senate on August 3. Instead of a clean up-or-down House vote on the minimum wage, the Republican-passed bill would also have given massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 8,200 estates. Furthermore, unlike a Democratic measure, the GOP measure helped 1.8 million fewer minimum wage workers, could have lead to wage cuts for hundreds of thousands -- or even millions -- of tipped workers such as waiters, and would not have extended the minimum wage to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. territory where worker exploitation is widespread. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff fought for years to exempt the Marianas from basic labor protections, despite widespread labor abuses on the island.

Democrats and the Public Speak Out About a Need for a Minimum Wage Increase

Congressman George Miller:

September 28, 2006 phone interview:

Audio, Text

September 28, 2006 Floor speech:

Video, Text

September 27, 2006 Floor speech:

Video, Text

August 8, 2006 NPR interview:

Audio, Text

July 2006 floor speeches:

Video 1, Text 1;Video 2, Text 2.

June 26, 2006 interview on the minimum wage and the estate tax:

Video, Text

Special order speech:

Video, Text

Floor speech on the GOP's money mismanagement:

Video, Text

Kentuckians Tell House Democrats About Need for Minimum Wage Hike:

Kentucky lawmakers and community and labor leaders attended a roundtable discussion hosted by House Democrats on July 14, where a local single mother spoke about her struggle to make ends meet on a minimum wage.



Timeline: 2006 Efforts to Increase the Minimum Wage

For the first time since 1996, Congress could have the chance to vote to increase the minimum wage. Democrats value an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, and have been trying for several years to increase the minimum wage.


June-July: House Republicans voted five times to block a minimum wage increase vote.

June 13: Democrats succeeded in getting an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over two years in the FY07 Labor Health and Human Services appropriations bill. That measure, sponsored by Rep. Steny Hoyer, was based on the minimum wage bill proposed by Rep. George Miller. (more) The Republican House leadership has still not allowed a vote on this bill because of the minimum wage measure included in it.

June 14: House Democrats urged the Rules Committee to protect Hoyer's minimum wage amendment, so the House could vote on giving American workers a much-needed raise.

June 19: Senator Kennedy offered a similar amendment in the Senate to the Defense Authorization Bill. The proposal won votes from a majority of the Senate, 52 Senators, but fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage under a procedural agreement.

June 20: "I've been in this business for 25 years and I've never voted for an increase in the minimum wage," House Majority Leader Boehner said. "I'm opposed to it and I think a vast majority of our Conference is opposed to it."

June 22: In a blow to America's working families, Republicans pushed to give as much as one trillion dollars to less than one percent of the wealthiest Americans by rolling back the federal estate tax. (While the minimum wage has not increased since 1997, see what has. Note: This chart is not adjusted for inflation.)

July 12: A vote showed the growing bi-partisan support for a minimum wage increase. The House passed, 260-159, a motion sponsored by Rep. George Miller to instruct congressional negotiators to increase to $7.25 the minimum wage paid to workers who receive federal job training assistance. Every House Democrat and 64 Republicans supported the measure. The vote was non-binding, but it was a successful attempt by Democrats to demonstrate that a minimum wage increase has the support of a majority in the House. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership still would not allow a real vote on a real wage hike.

July 29: House Republicans chose to play political games by passing a minimum wage increase that stood little chance of passage in the U.S. Senate -- and was, in fact, killed in the Senate on August 3. Instead of a clean up-or-down House vote on the minimum wage, the Republican-passed bill would also have given massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 8,200 estates. Unlike a Democratic measure, the GOP measure would have helped 1.8 million fewer minimum wage workers, could have lead to wage cuts for hundreds of thousands -- or even millions -- of tipped workers such as waiters, and would not have extended the minimum wage to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. territory where worker exploitation is widespread.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Democrats Link Fortunes to Rise in Minimum Wage


By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 13, 2006
WASHINGTON, July 12 — Democrats, seeking to energize voters over economic issues in much the way that Republicans have rallied conservatives with efforts to ban same-sex marriage, have begun a broad campaign to raise the minimum wage and focus attention on income inequality.

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David Scull for The New York Times
Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Democrats, before a news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday urging a wage increase.
The Democratic argument is straightforward: it has been more than eight years since Congress last raised the minimum wage, to $5.15 an hour, and inflation has reduced its real value to the lowest level in more than 20 years. At the same time, Democrats say, executive pay has risen to ever-higher levels and Congress has regularly approved pay raises for itself.

With midterm elections less than four months away, Democrats have begun state ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage in more than a half-dozen states where Republicans are in danger of losing House or Senate seats.

The issue is playing a role in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona — all states where Republican senators are fighting for survival.

Pressure is so high in Ohio that Senator Mike DeWine broke ranks with fellow Republicans last month and voted for a Democratic bill that would have raised the minimum wage to $7.15 an hour. The measure received 52 votes, a majority, but not the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster.

Democratic leaders in Congress are closely coordinating their efforts in Washington with campaigns in critical races around the country. Democratic lawmakers say they will try to block what is normally an automatic pay increase for members of Congress until Republicans agree to raise the federal minimum wage.

“We are putting some skin in the game,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “We’re saying that there will be no pay increases for Congress until there’s an increase in the minimum wage. This separates us from Republicans.”

Last weekend, Mr. Emanuel held news conferences in five cities across upstate New York, with Democratic lawmakers and candidates signing pledges to oppose any increase in Congressional pay until the minimum wage is raised.

Republican lawmakers have repeatedly defeated increases in the minimum wage over the past eight years. Business groups, supported by many economists, have always fought such increases on the argument that setting wages above normal market levels will cause employers to cut back on hiring the very low-wage workers an increase would be intended to benefit.

“The minimum wage raises the take-home pay for some people at the expense of others,” said Kevin A. Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy group.

“It is wrong to redistribute money from the worse-off workers to other low-income workers.”

For the most part, Republicans have sought to avoid debates about the minimum wage and focus on the overall strength of the economy. They note that unemployment is down to 4.6 percent, that the nation has added about 5.4 million jobs in the last three years and that wages have been climbing this year. Though most economists are dubious about the benefits of a minimum wage, the evidence of a link between a higher minimum wage and higher unemployment is mixed.

The unemployment rate among teenagers, a big share of minimum-wage workers, has remained above 13 percent ever since 2000 even though the minimum wage has gone down in real terms, after adjusting for inflation. Unemployment among people 16 to 19 has hovered around 15 percent this year.

Opponents of higher minimum wages contend that prosperity is best generated by stronger economic growth rather than by mandated wage levels. And while the minimum wage has lost about 20 percent of its buying power since the last increase, average hourly wages have done better.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center economic research group in Washington, “real” average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have edged up to $16.52 in May of this year from $15.58 in 1997.

In general, hourly wages have climbed much more slowly than productivity. Largely as a result, corporate profits have increased rapidly over the past several years and account for an unusually big share of the nation’s total gross domestic product.

Senate Democrats, at a news conference here on Wednesday, said the minimum wage was long overdue for an increase and had lagged far behind prices for gasoline, health care and college tuition.

“We cannot sit by while minimum-wage workers see the real value of their wages decline,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. “We need to do right by hard-working Americans and raise the minimum wage.”

Mrs. Clinton, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, traveled through Ohio on Sunday and Monday and talked up the issue as she campaigned for Representative Sherrod Brown, who is trying to unseat Senator DeWine this fall. On Monday, she spoke specifically about the minimum wage before a crowd of community activists.

Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said: “The average American thinks that the minimum wage ought to be raised, even if they are making more than the minimum wage. Far more importantly from a political viewpoint, it appeals to certain groups of people who don’t usually turn out to vote.”

Democratic strategists systematically looked for issues on which they could start statewide ballot initiatives that would increase voter turn-out among groups that were likely to vote Democratic. “Minimum wage was at the top of the list,” Mr. Schumer said.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

You need help Rexs

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Rex you need some serious help man.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Rex---man you are really slipping into a dark place.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

This explains why you post the way you do. You had a miserable child hood.

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Trust me i can make a fool out of you without insulting you, but why should I you do just fine making a fool out of yourself.

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