Democrats Use Minimum Wage To Get Maximum Political Gains

Democrats marked the fifth anniversary of the last minimum-wage rise by attacking Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole on Monday for blocking increases while supporting raises in his own salary.

“Bob Dole’s spent 35 years in Washington caring a lot more about getting the maximum wage for himself than he does about raising the minimum wage for working families,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler said at a news conference.

Aides to Dole, the Senate majority leader and President Clinton’s certain opponent in the November election, counterattacked, pointing out that Clinton did not propose an increase when Democrats controlled Congress.

Opponents of a higher minimum wage argue it will destroy entry-level jobs for poor and minority youths and Republicans cited a 3-year-old Clinton statement that raising the minimum wage was “the wrong way to raise the incomes of low-wage earners.”

“The Democrats are playing maximum politics. It’s hard to take their rhetoric seriously when President Clinton … suddenly proposes a minimum wage increase when the organized labor bosses offer him $35 million in support,” Dole spokesman Clarkson Hine said.

Clinton last year proposed a 90-cent increase, spread over two years, to bring the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour. Senate Democrats on Thursday sought to force a vote on the proposal. They fell just five votes short, 55-45, of the 60 needed to end debate.

Clinton criticized Republicans in his Saturday radio address, saying the purchasing power of the minimum wage will fall to a 40-year low this year if Congress does not act.

Dole, R-Kan., responded that Democrats were trying to slip a minimum wage increase into unrelated legislation rather than debate it as free-standing bill.

“It’s all politics. It’s unfortunate. We’ll take a look at it,” he said.

Fowler said Dole’s salary, from the time he entered Congress in 1961 until this year, has risen from $22,500 a year to $149,095 - a 37.5 percent increase when adjusted for inflation.

However, the minimum wage over that 35-year span increased from $1.15 an hour to $4.25. When adjusted for inflation, that’s a 23.3 percent decline.

Dole’s staff, however, pointed out that he supported raising the minimum wage in 1989 as part of a bipartisan compromise signed by then President Bush.

The Democratic National Committee’s focus on Dole includes a new television ad criticizing him for opposing Clinton’s version of the balanced budget.

“The president proposes a balanced budget protecting Medicare, education, the environment,” the ad says. “But Dole is voting no. The president cuts taxes for 40 million Americans. Dole votes no. … Dole says no to the Clinton plans. It’s time to say yes to the Clinton plans - yes, to America’s families.”

Dole has opposed most Clinton spending initiatives but the ad is somewhat misleading in suggesting Dole “is voting no” on Clinton proposals. It is true that Dole voted against the only version of the Clinton budget that was brought to a Senate vote. But what the ad doesn’t mention is that Clinton’s budget failed on a 99-0 vote - with every Democrat joining Republicans in voting against it.

A DNC spokesman said the ad was airing in selected markets nationally but would not disclose the markets or the cost of the ad buy.