Gop Resists Boost In Minimum Wage Republicans Prepare Own Alternatives To Help Working Poor
Backed by the White House, Democrats struggled in both houses of Congress on Thursday to force an election-year vote on raising the minimum wage. Republicans refused to yield.
Instead, Speaker Newt Gingrich said House Republicans were crafting an alternative to “create more jobs and … increase the take-home pay for the working poor” as well as others, a reference to the $500-per-child tax cut the party advocates and other proposals.
The House GOP leadership prevailed, 220-200, when Democrats tried to muscle a measure to the floor to boost the federal wage floor from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour over two years.
In the Senate, the parliamentary particulars differed but the results were the same: By late afternoon, Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., had been unable to offer a minimum-wage amendment to a pending immigration bill.
On the lawn outside the Capitol, Vice President Al Gore presided over a news conference at which two women described life at $4.25 an hour.
“My daily financial problems are not whether I can buy my kids the latest videotape,” said Cathy Wilkinson, a single mother from Wheeling, W.Va., who works part-time as a lab assistant and as a math tutor to support her two daughters. “It’s whether I can put shoes on my kids’ feet.”
At a news conference, President Clinton called on Congress to act, and said, “As I have said so many times, you simply can’t raise a family on $4.25 an hour, but millions of Americans are trying to do that.”
Republicans denounced the Democratic effort as election-year campaigning. “It is crass politics. It is mean politics,” said Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., adding that Democrats had not brought minimum-wage legislation to the floor in 1993 or 1994, when they controlled Congress and the White House.
Supporters of an increase say the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 1989, and it soon will be at a 40-year low in purchasing power.
Opponents say an increase will hamper job creation.