Clinton Backs Plan to Hike Minimum Wage $1 an Hour

President Clinton, trumpeting his legislative agenda at a Capitol Hill love feast staged by hundreds of Democratic allies, on Thursday threw his weight behind a plan to give America’s minimum-wage workers a $1-an-hour raise.

“The economy will support it,” Clinton declared fervently, saying that 12 million workers stand to benefit from a proposal to raise the current minimum wage of $5.15 by 50 cents in each of the next two years.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a perennial advocate of minimum-wage increases, later said that 60% of the affected workers are women, and 9 in 10 are single parents.

A visibly elated Clinton embraced the increase at an unprecedented unity rally attended by about 100 Democratic members of Congress and several hundred of their aides. The partisan crowd repeatedly jumped to its feet in sustained applause as the president outlined the party’s 1998 legislative agenda.

The rousing welcome left Clinton jaunty and jubilant, and he lingered in a large meeting room to exchange handshakes and bearhugs with young congressional aides long after most of their bosses had returned to work.

Clinton was escorted into the pep-rally-styled meeting by Vice President Al Gore, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), all of whom spoke as well.

Gore delivered a fiery, full-throated campaign-style speech that left some in the audience chuckling with delight and wonderment, clearly surprised by the display of passion from a man often mocked as wooden and stiff.

“This is the first time that I’ve seen this kind of a meeting between the House leadership, the Senate leadership and the president on a legislative agenda in the 35 years that I’ve been in the United States Senate,” a beaming Kennedy said afterward.

Gore called the session a “remarkable demonstration of the dramatic unity that demonstrates the Democratic Party is back in a big way.”

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Although Democrats are the minority party in Congress, Gore said their ideas are “guiding America’s economic recovery and social recovery in every respect.”

Delivering the most partisan and barbed comments at the session, the vice president derided Republicans as being “very good with illusions and secondhand smoke and rear-view mirrors,” and said they seem so confused that “the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.”

Gore is considered a likely presidential candidate in 2000.

In his remarks, the president promoted the major themes of his State of the Union address and his budget proposal. Saving Social Security, extending Medicare to the “near-elderly,” providing new consumer safeguards for patients and hiring 100,000 new teachers are all part of “a great agenda” for Democrats, he said.

But Clinton also acknowledged that his party’s full agenda is unlikely to get through the GOP-controlled Congress, and he urged Democrats to seek consensus with Republicans where possible.

“I urge all of us to resist the temptation to have the whole agenda to take to them [Republicans] next November,” Clinton said, referring to this year’s congressional races. “Let’s pass every bit of it we can into law. Let’s make every bit of it we can real in the lives of our people.

“Believe me, we have enough honest disagreements with our friends in the Republican Party that some of this agenda is going to be left for us to take to the American people in November and debate about it.”

The White House and Kennedy have been discussing a minimum-wage increase for weeks. In his Jan. 27 State of the Union address, Clinton called for such a hike but did not specify the levels or a timetable he had in mind.

Kennedy and his congressional allies, including House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), had sought an hourly increase of $1.50, to be spaced out in three equal steps over three years. They also wanted to index the wage to inflation after the third year.

“We left the third year out. But as far as I’m concerned, we’ll be back in the year 2000 to battle for the next year,” Kennedy said.

Even so, he conceded, getting the Republican majority to agree to a $1 increase will be “an uphill battle,” albeit one that he said he expects to win.

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Congress last increased the minimum wage in 1996--another election year--despite the opposition of Republican leaders. Such increases are strongly opposed by small-business owners, a traditional reservoir of GOP support.

Kennedy told reporters after the Democratic rally that even if Congress approves a $1 increase, the purchasing power of the minimum wage still will not be at the level it was 20 or 30 years ago.

“We’ve seen this enormous prosperity take place in the nation--unparalleled in our history. And all we’re saying is, those people who are working hard ought to be a part of this prosperity,” Kennedy said.

The president made a similar, share-the-wealth pitch as he noted that unemployment is at its lowest rate in nearly a quarter of a century, with the creation of 14.7 million jobs since 1993 and inflation at its lowest in 30 years.

“Now, every time we have raised the minimum wage in my lifetime, there have been those who say if you do this, it will cost jobs. The last time we did it, it didn’t cost jobs; we continued to create jobs at a very brisk pace,” Clinton said.

A Kennedy aide said Kennedy and Bonior plan to introduce their bill shortly after Congress returns from its Presidents Day recess on Feb. 24.