Increase the National Minimum Wage . . .

Last week, The Times reported that people in Los Angeles County who earn the minimum wage can barely keep a roof over their heads. Unless they have two or more jobs, many are forced to live in overcrowded apartments or slum housing.

The article cited a recent study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which shows that a minimum-wage worker in the Los Angeles area would have to work 88 hours a week to afford a typical one-bedroom apartment. The situation is even worse in San Francisco, where a person would have to work 138 hours a week for a similar apartment. Clearly, the minimum wage is not enough to support a person living in California, much less a family.

About 760,000 Southern California workers earn the state’s minimum wage, which is now $5.75 an hour--less than $12,000 a year. The purchasing power of this wage is about $2 per hour lower than the purchasing power of the minimum wage in 1968.

Low-wage jobs have put a new face on poverty in California and across the nation. The new working poor aren’t just seasonal or marginal laborers. They are full-time workers who labor long and hard for inadequate wages.

They are the people who serve us our morning coffee, who clean our office buildings and work with our kids at day care. They empty hospital bedpans, guard banks and airports and staff many retail stores.

They are doing their share to make America prosper, but they aren’t prospering--not even close. A recent study of the nation’s food banks states that 40% of all households seeking emergency food aid had at least one member who was working--that’s up from 23% in 1994.

This shouldn’t happen in the richest nation on Earth. People who are willing to work should not have to take their children to a soup kitchen at night in order to feed them.

One obvious way to address this problem is to raise the minimum wage so that every working American gets a fair wage for an honest day’s work.

U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and I soon will offer legislation to raise the federal minimum wage, which is now $5.15 per hour, by two increments of 50 cents each over the next two years, bringing the national minimum wage to $6.15 per hour.

This proposal is a modest effort to help those Americans who are at the lowest rung of the income ladder. It still would leave a minimum-wage earner far below the poverty level, but it would allow many more working people to afford better housing and nutrition for their families.

Raising the minimum wage would directly benefit 1.4 million California families. And it would stimulate economic growth for everyone by allowing minimum-wage earners to purchase more goods and services.

America’s prosperity is based on having workers who can afford to buy the products they make. If we want to maintain that prosperity, we must do all we can to end poverty among working Americans. Raising the minimum wage is a small but vital step in that direction.