A battle over whether to raise the minimum wage is spilling into the hard-fought congressional races, with several Democratic challengers staging campaign events on the issue and Democrats promising to increase the wage as one of their first acts should they win control of Congress.
Democrats have already crafted a campaign message attacking Republicans for accepting annual cost-of-living increases in their own salaries while denying a raise to about 6.6 million workers who have not seen a federal minimum wage increase in nine years.
The fight heated up Wednesday as the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to boost the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. The vote was 52-46 in favor of the higher wage, with eight Republicans joining Democrats to back the change, but that left proponents eight votes short of the 60 necessary to prevail under a parliamentary deal between the two parties.
Democrats have tried several times to raise the minimum wage since the last increase in 1997, and they are portraying themselves as allies of ordinary hard-working Americans.
“This battle will continue all across America until at long last justice is done,” Kennedy said. “It’s time for the Republican leadership to stop its obstruction and get out of the way.”
While business groups are opposed to raising the minimum wage, the GOP is stressing that, contrary to what Democrats assert, doing so would hurt workers. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he would “probably not” allow the issue to come up for a vote on the House floor, adding that whenever the wage is raised, the poorest workers with the least skills wind up losing their jobs.
“I have had every rotten job there ever was,” Boehner said. “I could sit here for 20 minutes and carry on about all the bad jobs I ever had, and I was glad to have every single one of them. And you raise the minimum wage, you take away the first rung of the economic ladder because, particularly, people who are making minimum wage do not have skills.”
LaHood breaks with GOP
Nevertheless, seven House Republicans broke with party leaders and voted for a wage increase last week when Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered an amendment to one of the annual spending bills in the Appropriations Committee. That amendment is expected to be stripped from the Labor, Health and Human Services bill before it reaches the House floor.
At least two of the seven Republicans, Reps. Ray LaHood of Illinois and John Sweeney of New York, have asked GOP leaders to let the House vote on a separate Republican-crafted bill increasing the minimum wage.
“After a decade, it’s time,” said Sweeney, who faces a difficult re-election bid in his upstate New York district.
LaHood said Congress has a responsibility to raise the minimum wage periodically.
“I think our party should show a little heart and compassion and fairness to people who haven’t had an increase in nine years,” LaHood said. “If the minimum wage is the law of the land, then we have a responsibility to raise it once in a while.”
Whether GOP leaders will have a change of heart remains to be seen.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said “no comment” when asked if he supports the wage increase. When asked whether he would allow a separate minimum wage bill to reach the floor, he said, “Look it, it could happen. That’s not on my top priority list today.”
For lawmakers, $35,000 more
Meanwhile, Democrats have begun attacking Republican lawmakers for accepting annual cost-of-living increases while denying a raise to ordinary workers. Since 1997, the last time the minimum wage was raised, congressional salaries have risen by about $35,000.
In North Carolina, the state Democratic Party complained that Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.), “one of the richest members of Congress, … cares little for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.” Taylor voted against raising the minimum wage as a member of the House Appropriations Committee on two occasions.
A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has hardened Democrats’ resolve to highlight the minimum wage. When asked if they would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who favored raising the minimum wage to $6.65 an hour, 54 percent said more likely and 25 percent said less likely. Independent voters favored raising the wage 55 percent to 23 percent, and even 52 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who backed raising the wage.
Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the minimum wage is just one more issue that Democrats have unsuccessfully seized upon while trying to damage GOP prospects in the 2006 elections.
“The Democrats are still struggling to find something that will work,” Forti said. “They’ve tried Social Security, ethics, . . . stem cell, gas prices and now they say it’s going to be minimum wage.”
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jbzuckman@tribune.com
