Most in Senate Back Minimum Wage Hike

A solid majority of the Senate indicated support Thursday for increasing the minimum wage, but the margin of approval was not large enough to force Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to permit a vote on the politically charged issue.

Eight Republicans joined all 47 Democrats in the chamber in backing a procedural move that would have required Dole to schedule a vote on raising the minimum wage to $5.15 from $4.25 an hour in two increments over the next two years. Five more votes were needed to force Dole to permit the vote.

Senate Democrats, who have earmarked a minimum wage hike as a key issue in their campaign to retake control of Congress and retain the presidency, vowed to continue to press Dole on the issue until they prevail.

“We’re very pleased with the vote,” Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the Senate minority leader, told reporters. “Sooner or later this will pass. . . . We hope it happens sometime in the next few weeks.”

Since Dole has given no indication that he would schedule a vote on the measure, Democrats will have to try to tack it onto other legislation. Their next target will be an immigration reform measure scheduled for debate after their spring break.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the House were thwarted in their attempt to bring the minimum wage up for a vote in that chamber. The 228-192 vote indicated that opposition to the minimum wage raise likely is unsurmountable in the House.

Nevertheless, the action Thursday in both chambers reflected Democrats’ determination to use the issue to demonstrate their differences from Republicans and to seek support among working-class voters.

“Our Republican colleagues cannot have it both ways,” Daschle said during the brief floor debate before the vote. “They express newfound concern for workers in a campaign but then manufacture reasons to oppose them when it is real.”

The votes also showed the extent to which Congress has become the central playing field for the 1996 elections.

Recent polls show that more than three-quarters of Americans support an increase in the minimum wage. But critics, including businesses that are strong backers of the Republican Party, charge that a higher wage would prompt employers to cut back jobs.

Holding a vote on the issue was such an uncomfortable prospect for Dole, his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, that he brought the Senate to a halt for three hours Tuesday while he sought a way to avoid one.

Dole was silent on the issue Thursday, but Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) quoted from previous Dole speeches over the years supporting the concept of boosting the minimum wage to keep up with inflation:

“Since the justification for the minimum wage is to ensure every working person a livable wage, periodic adjustments may be necessary,” Dole said in a Senate floor speech in 1977, according to Kennedy.

More than 12 million people earn the minimum wage. Supporters of an increase argue that if there is no raise, the standard’s buying power will drop to a 40-year low by the end of the year.

On the eve of the Senate vote, Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich plugged the effort for the Clinton administration during an outdoor press conference in front of the Capitol.

Reich said that opposition to the minimum wage hike reflects Republicans’ “social Darwinist ideology run rampant.”

But conservative economists argued that most Republicans now oppose it on the belief that it costs jobs.

“The vast majority are doing it because they understand it is not the role of government to control wages,” said Daniel Mitchell, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation research institute.

Republicans have supported such increases in the past, he said, because of the political appeal and because the measures were sure to pass the Democratic-dominated Congress.