Senate Opens Debate on Base-Wage Hike

The Senate opened debate Thursday on a politically sensitive bill to increase the federal minimum wage, unchanged at $3.35 an hour since the Reagan Administration took office nearly eight years ago.

An 11th-hour endorsement by Vice President George Bush for an unspecified raise in the $3.35 rate has strengthened its chances of passage, despite Republican complaints that consideration of the measure in the midst of the presidential election campaign is a Democratic ploy.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee, previously endorsed the legislation.

Senate Democratic Whip Alan Cranston of California predicted that approval by the 100-member Senate is all but certain, saying: “We have 53 votes for passage, and we’ll have more.”

Major Struggles Expected

But major struggles were assured over GOP efforts to establish a subminimum wage for young workers and the Democratic-backed proposal, approved by a Senate committee, to raise the hourly rate to $4.55 in three steps, starting next Jan. 1 and ending with a final increase on Jan. 1, 1991.

Unlike Bush, President Reagan remains opposed to any increase in the federal minimum pay rate and has threatened to veto an increase unless the legislation includes an acceptable “training wage” provision.

Some Republican senators, however, said that they see themselves as politically vulnerable if they oppose a minimum wage increase in the face of opinion polls showing that three-fourths of the American people favored the raise.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Labor Committee and floor manager of the bill, insisted that it should not be a partisan issue, because the minimum wage has been raised in both Republican and Democratic administrations since it was put on the books during the Depression.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), ranking GOP member of the panel, who is leading the opposition to the bill, argued that it is a “real fraud” to say that the legislation would help the working poor. Most of those who receive the minimum wage are members of families with incomes well above the poverty line, he added.

“It’s only at the end of a political year of a political Congress that this is brought up--it’s pure politics,” Hatch declared.

Offers Reminder on Bush

Kennedy, however, reminded him that Bush had announced his support for a minimum wage increase last week, adding with a trace of sarcasm: “I suppose that didn’t have any political motivation.”

Earlier, Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) offered a substitute bill that would raise the federal floor under wages to $4 an hour next Jan. 1 and provide additional tax-related payments to workers who head low-income families with annual earnings between $8,000 and $18,000.

Boschwitz said that his plan, targeting relief to the working poor, would not be as inflationary or have as adverse an effect on employment as the committee-approved bill. He said it would cost the federal government $2 billion a year, to be paid for with a 2-cent-a-gallon increase in the U.S. gasoline tax.

“It’s not clear to me what the vice president is going to come down with,” Boschwitz said at a news conference. “The political realities are that we’ve got to increase the minimum wage. You can’t hire anybody today at the minimum wage, even if you’re running a hamburger stand.”

Boschwitz said that his own family business, a chain of lumber outlets in the Midwest, has a starting wage of about $4.50 an hour for its employees, including sales commissions.

He complained, however, that Democrats are “demagoguing the whole issue” and said that it might be better if the issue were put off until the next session of Congress.