The Decent Thing to Do

President George Bush can press ahead toward his “kinder, gentler nation” by signing a bill that would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $4.55 an hour. The increase--the first for the working poor in more than eight years--is long overdue.

Nearly five million Americans earn only the federal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, although 12 states, including California, have higher minimums. At the federal minimum, workers get paid less than $7,000 a year. Paychecks of that size virtually guarantee poverty for many families.

Congress has approved an increase to $4.55 an hour by 1991. The President--despite his campaign pledge to raise the minimum wage that was a sharp and welcome departure from the Reagan Administration--has promised to veto any bill where the minimum wage above $4.25 by 1992. Bush has argued, and not persuasively, that an additional 30 cents an hour will cost hundreds of thousands of poor workers their jobs. He has asked “for a reasonable compromise.”

Congress has provided just that. Democrats, led by Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in the Senate and Augustus F. Hawkins (D-L.A) in the House, have scaled back the proposed increase and agreed to a sub-minimum training wage for new workers who have less than 60 days of experience. The compromise, which attracted impressive Republican support, ought to satisfy the President.

Raising the minimum wage to $4.55 an hour would allow workers to make up for most of the losses due to inflation since 1981. The increased pay also would encourage more people to work, and it would make a paycheck worth more than a welfare check in more households.