Clinton Weighing Minimum Wage Hike

President Clinton is mulling the possibility of proposing another increase in the minimum wage to give the working poor a bigger stake in the vibrant economy, White House officials said Monday.

“It’s being looked at,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said. “I don’t think there’s been any decision at all one way or the other.”

Other White House officials confirmed that the issue is being discussed. But they cautioned that no consensus has yet emerged about the potential benefits and drawbacks of revisiting one of the biggest political fights of recent years.

Still, advocates for the working poor interpreted the development as an initial step toward presidential action. And McCurry’s statements, while vague, appeared to set the stage for an argument to raise the $5.15 hourly minimum.

“There are a number of ideas the president has under examination, including what he can do with a minimum wage that has lost some of its economic power relative to what it has been in the past,” McCurry said. “The increases that we did in 1996 did not bring it up to the full value it had, for example, 20 years ago.”

White House officials want to carefully analyze the potential impact of a wage hike on the economy before deciding whether to proceed, McCurry said. Some officials argue that the economic expansion, which has created 14.3 million jobs in five years, is already giving low-wage workers opportunities to increase their incomes.

Any effort by the White House to boost the minimum wage would almost certainly meet with fierce opposition in Congress. The last increase, approved in 1996, raised the hourly rate from $4.25 to $5.15 in two increments. But its approval required months of political struggling by supporters, first to win the president’s support, then to pressure the Republican-led Congress to go along.

Opponents and supporters alike, however, said they believe that Republicans who traditionally oppose raising the minimum wage would have a tougher time killing it now because of the robust economy.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who spearheaded the last effort to raise the minimum wage, has proposed increasing it by 50 cents a year in each of the next three years, bringing it up to $6.65.

The minimum wage in California is scheduled to increase to $5.75 in March because of Proposition 210, so the first stage of Kennedy’s proposal would have no direct impact on workers in the state.

“I am optimistic that we will succeed because Republicans have learned that it is dangerous to resist a Democrat increase in the minimum wage in an election year,” Kennedy said in announcing his proposal last month. He added that the country has “actually fallen back in giving low-income workers their fair share of extraordinary economic growth.”

Kennedy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education and Labor Committee, was encouraged by a meeting he had with Clinton last week in which they discussed increasing the minimum wage, according to an aide.

“When Sen. Kennedy talked to President Clinton last week, the president’s initial response seemed positive,” said the aide, who requested anonymity. “The senator is very hopeful that the president will support it.”

The aide acknowledged that the senator has received no indication that the White House has reached a decision. Kennedy’s plan is to try to press the measure through Congress whether or not he has the White House endorsement.

White House officials refused to specify the size of an increase the president might support. But one senior official suggested that it was unlikely to match Kennedy’s proposed $1.50 raise.

“My sense is there’s probably not much chance anybody is going to embrace Kennedy’s formula,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Although Republicans might find it politically difficult to kill an effort to boost the minimum wage in an election year, particularly when the economy is doing so well, they are sure to put up a fight.

Republicans traditionally side with economists and businessmen who argue that a minimum raise increase tends to reduce the number of low-wage jobs available to the working poor, and that the costs are inevitably passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

There has been scant evidence that the last minimum wage increase has caused significant job losses, and inflation remains at its lowest level in years. Still, Republicans are expected to devote considerable attention to assessing the impact of the last minimum wage hike, the second part of which only took effect in September.