Congress Enacts $4.25 Minimum Wage; Bush Praised for Backing Compromise

Congress completed action Wednesday on a compromise bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $4.25 an hour and sent it to the White House for President Bush’s promised signature.

The Senate, in a swift follow-up to overwhelming approval in the House last week, beat back proposed amendments that would have aided small business and agricultural interests and passed the measure, 89 to 8.

The bill provides for the federal minimum wage to rise from the current $3.35 an hour to $3.80 next April 1, then to $4.25 a year later.

Although Bush vetoed a bill last June that would have raised the basic pay rate to $4.55 an hour over three years, he was praised by Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) and others for his support of the compromise.

“The working poor are about to receive an increase, although it is not as much as they deserve,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee and chief sponsor of the legislation.

Kennedy said he would do his best to see that another increase, effective in the presidential election year of 1992, is passed.

Sponsors said that about 11 million workers would benefit from the increase. In a concession to Bush, the bill would also establish for the first time a lower “training rate” for teen-agers during their first 60 days of working. Employers could pay the lower wage for 60 days longer if their training programs are approved by the Department of Labor.

California, which already has a $4.25-an-hour minimum wage, would not be affected by the federal legislation.

The President at first proposed raising the base wage to $4.25 an hour over three years, with a lower rate for six months for all newly hired workers, regardless of age or previous experience. At one point, he said that he would veto any bill that differed from his proposal.

President Ronald Reagan successfully opposed any increase in the minimum wage during his eight years in the White House, on grounds that it would be inflationary and would price younger, unskilled workers out of the job market.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) made the same arguments Wednesday, but Bush’s endorsement of the bill ensured its passage through the House and Senate.

Proponents of the raise said that the average hourly pay for all rank-and-file workers has climbed to $9.70 an hour and that starting pay for even menial jobs is now $5 or $6 an hour in many parts of the country.

Mitchell, who has been a frequent critic of Bush in recent weeks, paid tribute to him during the closing debate.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to the President, who was willing to stand up and come out for a minimum wage increase, contrary to the previous Administration,” Mitchell said.

Kennedy took a more critical view, saying that the Bush-backed compromise “owes more to the ideological embarrassment of those seeking tax relief for capital gains than it does to any real commitment to the minimum wage.”

Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Hanford Dole praised the outcome in a statement, saying: “With the Senate passage of the minimum wage bill, the President’s commitment to a reasonable wage hike coupled with a meaningful training wage is finally fulfilled.”

At the $4.25 hourly rate, a person working full time would earn $170 a week, or $8,840 a year. That is below the federal poverty-level income of $12,100 a year for a family of four.