House Votes To Increase Minimum Wage Moderate Republicans Break Ranks To Help Defeat Broad Exemptions

Moderate Republicans joined Democrats on Thursday to win House approval of a 90-cents-per-hour increase in the minimum wage, after defeating a Republican effort to exempt small businesses from all minimum wage and overtime provisions of federal labor law.

It was a rare and hard-won triumph for both groups. For nearly two months, they resolutely had sought to raise the wage for the first time in six years in the face of staunch opposition from most House GOP leaders and the dominant conservative House Republicans, who said the move would cost jobs.

“The center of the Republican Party is back,” Rep. Amo Houghton, R-N.Y., exulted after the vote.

Thursday’s 281-144 vote passing the measure, which would raise the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $4.75 on July 1 and to $5.15 a year later, marked the end of the first major partisan skirmish of this election year in the House.

But the minimum wage hike still faces an uncertain future in the Senate, which has been hung up for six weeks over Democratic efforts to force a vote on the issue. Majority Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi said Thursday that Republicans have not decided what to do. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, leader of the Senate Democrats’ effort, said if no deal is reached by the end of the Memorial Day recess on June 3, he will resume efforts to add the wage proposal to every bill that comes to the floor.

Following the House vote, President Clinton called on Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, to bring the wage measure to a vote in the Senate before he leaves office in early June. “That is the way to honor our values of work, family, opportunity and responsibility,” Clinton said.

During the House debate, Democrats sought to paint Republicans as uncaring about the plight of low-wage Americans. A majority of House Republicans opposed the minimum wage increase, which Rep. Martin Frost, D-Tex., head of his party’s House campaign committee, called “a defining moment in this election.”

House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, Tex., countered by charging that Democrats were pushing the minimum wage issue “just to appease labor unions in this election year.” Organized labor has pledged a $35 million campaign to bring Democrats back to power.

While public opinion polls show that a large majority of Americans favor raising the minimum wage, Republicans argued it would hurt workers by making them too expensive to hire. “The Democrat Party is to job creation what Dr. Kevorkian is to health care: A job-killer cloaked in kindness,” said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Tex.

The key vote came when 43 Republicans joined 185 Democrats and independent Rep. Bernard Sanders, Vt., to defeat the small business exemption-backed by the GOP leadership - on a 229-to-196 vote.

When the vote tally passed 218 - a majority of the House-Democrats erupted in loud, sustained cheers as they celebrated one of their few victories of this Congress.

The amendment, offered by Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee Chairman William F. Goodling, R-Pa., would have excluded businesses with $500,000 or less in gross annual sales from the minimum wage and overtime provisions of federal labor law. Workers now covered by those laws would have kept their right to overtime and be guaranteed at least the current minimum wage of $4.25 an hour.

Moderate Republicans led the fight against the provision, which was sought by small business groups including the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

“People who work a 40-hour work week ought to earn a livable wage,” said Rep. Jack Quinn, R-N.Y., the most outspoken of the moderates who defied their leaders to win the minimum wage increase. “This amendment would deny that … We would exempt the very workers we’re trying to help.”

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Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. WHAT’S NEXT? The Senate will begin debate after Memorial Day.

2. HOW THEY VOTED Here’s how Northwest lawmakers voted on an amendment to increase the minimum wage of $4.25 by 90 cents. The measure was made part of a broader bill on employers’ obligations.

Idaho Republicans Helen Chenoweth and Mike Crapo voted no.

Washington Republicans Jennifer Dunn, no; Doc Hastings, no; Jack Metcalf, yes; George Nethercutt, no; Linda Smith, yes; Randy Tate, no; Rick White, no. Democrats Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott voted yes.