Raising the Minimum Wage

Raising the Minimum Wage

June 21, 2006

The buying power of the federal minimum wage is currently at its lowest level in 51 years. Eighty-three percent of Americans favor an increase in the minimum wage (nearly half "strongly support" it). Yet, the House conservative leadership hasn't allowed a full floor vote on the minimum wage since the last increase went into effect, in 1997. In the years since, Congress has managed to give itself plenty of raises. The Senate votes today on an amendment offered by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to raise the federal minimum wage, in three gradual installments over two years, from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. No doubt conservatives will try hard as they can to stop it.

• Conservatives are playing politics with millions of American’s livelihoods. The Senate conservative leadership is rallying opposition to Sen. Kennedy's minimum wage amendment by offering a "poison pill" measure that is meant to deter any debate on the issue. The alternative amendment, sponsored by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), would raise the minimum wage to $6.25, but would couple that raise with unpalatable "reductions in overtime pay and tax cuts for businesses." And this isn’t the first time Senate conservatives played politics with people’s wages. Earlier, the Senate leadership, led by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), floated the idea of trying to "sink the minimum-wage increase by linking it to an unrelated measure that would make it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion."
  
  
• It is a myth that increasing the minimum wage will hurt job growth. The right is furiously spreading the myth that raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses and job growth, increases poverty, and only benefits teenagers. The truth is, small businesses benefit from a higher wage. A report by the Center for American Progress and Policy Matters Ohio found that the "11 states with a minimum wage above the federal minimum of $5.15 per hour had higher rates of small business growth between 1997 and 2003." A 1998 Economic Policy Institute report found that unemployment and poverty rates fell after the 1997 increase in the federal minimum wage, and economists David Card and Alan Krueger noted that increases in the minimum wage in various states in the late 1980s and early 1990s did not result in increased unemployment.
  
  
• It is a myth that increasing the minimum wage only helps teenagers and increases overall poverty. The right is peddling the myth that poverty rates increase as the minimum wage increases. Historical evidence proves that wrong: Since President Bush took office, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 5.4 million, and evidence shows that increases in the minimum wage, by increasing the earnings of low-income workers without diminishing their employment opportunities, have historically helped to lower poverty rates. The conservative myth that raising the minimum wage only benefits teenagers is easily disproved. Thirty-five percent of minimum wage workers are their family's sole earner, and 61 percent of these workers are women.