Kerry Calls for Raising Minimum Wage

Sen. John F. Kerry called Friday for raising the federal minimum wage to $7 an hour, saying the move would help millions of Americans, particularly women, “break out of poverty.”

Kerry, winding up a week focused almost entirely on his appeal to the middle class, contrasted his wage proposal with the tax cuts that President Bush has made a centerpiece of his reelection effort.

Speaking to nearly 100 guests at a labor-union forum in this Washington, D.C., suburb, he said Bush “put wealth ahead of work” with tax cuts skewed to rich Americans who don’t need them.

“The wealthy folks are the ones who walked away with the biggest grab bag for nothing, while the people who are trying to work hard are doing worse,” Kerry said. “They’ve put something-for-nothing ahead of responsibility.”

The Massachusetts senator has long advocated a higher minimum wage, a Democratic Party staple. But on Friday, he announced that one of his first acts as president would be to push to raise it from $5.15 to $7 an hour by 2007.

The federal minimum wage would rise at the rate of inflation after that, Kerry spokesman David Wade said.

A dozen states have already enacted higher minimum wages, including California, where it is $6.75 an hour. The last rise in the federal minimum wage was in 1997, when it went from $4.75 to $5.15 an hour.

At the labor forum in Alexandria, Kerry lamented the decline of living standards for the poorest working Americans. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage has sunk to its lowest level since 1949, he said.

“Don’t you think ... that if a president could go out and fight for four years to provide over a trillion dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America, we can fight for a few months to raise the minimum wage for the poorest people in America?” he asked.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the president was “willing to consider any reasonable proposal that phases in an increase over an extended period of time -- provided it would not place unreasonable costs on small businesses or other job creators.”

Business and labor groups were predictably split on the merits of Kerry’s plan.

Increasing the minimum wage to $7 “is the equivalent of a pink slip for the small business men and women who are leading the way in America’s job creation and economic growth,” said Dan Danner, senior vice president for the National Federation of Independent Business.

He said it would reduce employment for those with the least skills and do little to spark economic growth.

Bruce Raynor, president of the garment workers’ union UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), called Kerry’s proposal for a minimum wage increase “a great step forward and a stark contrast to Bush.”

Kerry’s announcement concluded the first of two weeks of campaign events designed to cast the Democrat as more attentive than Bush to the struggles of working families.

At a “Women for Kerry” fundraising lunch in Washington, D.C., Kerry told 2,500 donors and guests that his proposal would help women “break out of poverty, have healthcare, take care of children and access adequate child care.”

He invoked the women’s suffrage movement, mentioned that his mother was a Girl Scout leader for 50 years and pledged to protect abortion rights through appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I will not appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States someone who will undo in any way whatsoever the right of choice or privacy in the United States of America,” he told the cheering crowd.

Female voters are a pillar of Kerry’s political base. A Los Angeles Times Poll this month found that they favor Kerry over Bush 53% to 40%. Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, said Kerry’s emphasis on the minimum wage fits his broader effort to build on that gender advantage.

“He is speaking about the kind of issues -- and in a low-key kind of way -- that plays very well among women,” particularly at a time when Bush’s position on Iraq and terrorism is more appealing to men, Jacobs said.

At the women’s lunch, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate’s wife, told the crowd that her husband “feels at ease dealing with the complexities of this world.”

“We’re not going to fight terrorism with missiles,” she said. “We’re going to fight terrorism with ideas.”

Kerry and his wife plan to fly today from Washington to Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, where they have a waterfront vacation home.

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Times staff writers Nancy Cleeland and Susannah Rosenblatt contributed to this report.