Senate Approves Increase in Minimum Wage to $4.55

The Senate Tuesday approved a Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $4.55 an hour, setting the stage for a certain veto by President Bush--and a major confrontation with the White House over how far Democrats can push on key social issues.

The 61-39 party-line vote was followed immediately by a 58-41 vote to defeat Bush’s own proposal, which would have increased the federal minimum wage to only $4.25 an hour, from $3.35 an hour now. Final Senate passage of the bill, possibly including other amendments, is expected today.

Even so, it appears that the President is likely to emerge victorious in the stand-off. Neither Tuesday’s balloting in the Senate nor an earlier House vote on a similar measure produced anywhere near the two-thirds majority that Democrats would need to override a veto.

The margin leaves Democrats with the prospect of either having to accept a scaled-back version of one of their chief domestic programs for this congressional session or winding up with nothing at all. Bush proposed the increase reluctantly under pressure during the presidential campaign.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) led the fight for the Democratic version Tuesday, calling the vote “a test of whether we indeed are seeking a ‘kinder, gentler’ nation,” as Bush promised in his campaign speeches. “Human decency demands that we act,” Mitchell said.

White House political strategists have seized on the dispute over the minimum wage legislation as a way for Bush to reassert himself in the wake of the Senate’s rejection last month of Bush nominee John Tower as secretary of defense.

Some Republican strategists believe that unless the President draws the line on the minimum wage issue, Democrats will be emboldened to challenge him with more expensive versions of other key proposals, from child care and mandatory health insurance to broader budgetary issues.

If a compromise is reached on an increase, it would mark the first time since 1981 that the government has raised the federal minimum wage. The hiatus has continued so long that many states--including California--have enacted state minimums that are higher than the federal wage. California’s state minimum wage is $4.25 an hour.

Both the House and Senate included versions of a provision insisted upon by Bush that would allow employers to pay 85% of the new federal minimum to newly hired workers, as a way to encourage businesses not to cut hiring if employment costs increase.

And Senate leaders, hoping to win support from conservative Southern Democrats, had pared back an earlier, more generous proposal. Originally, they had sought a $4.65-an-hour minimum.

However, Administration officials reiterated Bush’s earlier contention that the higher wage-level would fuel inflation and discourage the creation of new jobs and reiterated his threat to veto it.

In a press conference Friday, Bush declared: “We fired our best shot and the last shot and the only shot first. . . . I have no intention of budging one inch on this--I have too much at stake.”

Both the Senate and House versions of the bill would raise the current $3.35-an-hour federal minimum wage by 40 cents a year beginning next Oct. 1 to a maximum of $4.55 an hour in October, 1991. Bush’s plan would boost it to $4.25 an hour by 1992.

However, although the Senate and House versions of the bill call for the same size increase, they differ on details of the so-called “training minimum” that each would prescribe.

The House measure would allow employers to apply the training minimum for a maximum of 60 days to anyone who has never been employed before. Under the Senate proposal, the worker would have to be paid the full minimum wage once he had held a job for 30 days or more.

The House passed its measure, 248 to 171, on March 23.

It was not immediately clear what form the minimum wage legislation might take if Bush vetoes the bill that is sent to him and if his veto then is upheld, as is expected.