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News :: Labor |
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NOT News In The News-Gazette: Senate GOP [Again] Blocks Minimum Wage Hike |
Current rating: 0 |
by Helen Dewar
(No verified email address) |
18 Jul 2003
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Democrats argued that a minimum wage increase, last approved by Congress seven years ago, is long overdue and complained that Republicans were refusing to allow the Senate even to consider the issue. |
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Senate Democrats yesterday launched a new drive to raise the minimum wage but ran into a roadblock from Republicans, who sidetracked a major foreign operations bill so it could not be used as a vehicle for votes on the wage proposal and other Democratic initiatives.
Democrats argued that a minimum wage increase, last approved by Congress seven years ago, is long overdue and complained that Republicans were refusing to allow the Senate even to consider the issue.
Republican senators contended Democrats were trying improperly to piggyback their own domestic agenda onto an important and broadly supported bill authorizing diplomatic and foreign assistance operations.
The Democrats' proposal would raise the hourly wage floor from $5.15 to $6.65 in two annual steps: by 75 cents immediately after the bill is signed into law and by another 75 cents a year later.
The impasse cast a cloud over prospects for legislation that Democrats had targeted with their proposals: a bill to authorize $24 billion over the next year for State Department operations, foreign aid and international programs and President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account to help countries committed to democratic reforms.
The Senate has not passed a foreign aid authorization bill since 1985 and has sometimes not gotten around to reauthorizing State Department programs, relying instead on year-by-year spending bills. Both Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) had made passage of the combined measure a high priority for this year.
When Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) tried to offer his minimum wage proposal as an amendment to the bill yesterday morning, he found that the bill was no longer there. Apparently under pressure from a conservative colleague, whom Democrats identified as Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), Frist put the bill aside and scheduled the 2004 defense spending bill as the next order of business for the Senate.
"Until we can work this out, we won't bring it back up," said Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson.
But Kennedy and other Democrats vowed to keep pressing for the minimum wage increase and other Democratic initiatives, including legislation to strengthen federal hate crimes laws, until they prevail, although suitable vehicles are scarce. Kennedy has used such tactics in the past to force a vote on minimum wage proposals.
Another proposal, aimed at blocking the Labor Department from redefining who qualifies for overtime pay, could be offered as an amendment to a domestic appropriations bill next week. It was not clear when the other proposals might be brought up.
The minimum wage was last increased in 1997 under a two-step process approved by Congress in 1996.
In a speech to the Senate, Kennedy said that minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earn $10,700 a year, or $4,500 below the poverty line for a family of three. The value of the increase that Congress approved seven years ago has eroded to the point that their wages are worth less now than they were before the last increase, he added.
During those seven years, members of Congress have raised their own pay by $21,000, Kennedy said. "It's shameful that members of Congress have raised their own pay . . . without giving the nation's lowest-paid workers any increase at all," he added.
Kennedy said nearly 7 million workers would benefit directly from the proposed increase.
Republicans did not respond publicly to Kennedy but have argued in the past that hard-pressed employers will eliminate jobs to offset the cost of minimum wage increases.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45193-2003Jul11.html |
