The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“MINIMUM WAGE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S9288-S9290 on July 11, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MINIMUM WAGE
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I compliment Senator Kennedy on the statement he made regarding the minimum wage. I wanted to engage in a colloquy about that, but I was called off the floor on other matters.
I think Senator Kennedy has made it quite clear that, rather than this being one of the throwaway issues that maybe we will address as we go through the year, increasing the minimum wage for the people of this country ought to be No. 1 on our agenda. We ought to be doing this right now.
We had the medical malpractice bill up earlier this week. We spent a couple of days on it. Everyone knew it was not going to go anywhere. Even by their own admission, some Republicans, in the newspapers at least, said it was a political exercise--according to some, in the newspapers. Whether it was or not, everyone knew it wasn't going to go anywhere. Yet here so many Americans are making the minimum wage which, I am sure was pointed out, is now less than the poverty level. It is about $4,000-some less--I think $4,500 below the poverty level for a family of three.
It is unconscionable that over the last 7 years, the Congress--the Senate and the House together--has raised its own salaries, our salaries, by $21,000 a year. We have done that in the last 7 years. Yet a minimum wage in this country today is $10,500 a year, less than half of what we just increased our own salaries by over the last 7 years. That is what is unconscionable.
These are working people; they are not on welfare. They are working. They are getting the minimum wage. Yet they are earning less than poverty level in this country. If nothing else, at least the minimum wage ought to get you above the poverty level. That is what we ought to be about.
So I compliment Senator Kennedy for bringing this to the floor. I hope we can have this amendment on a bill here very soon, so we can express ourselves in a realistic way.
Another myth on the minimum wage I hear all the time is that so many of the people making minimum wage are just part-time earners; they are young kids just starting out, on and on. I hear that all the time.
The fact is that 70 percent of those affected by the minimum wage are adults, working adults; 35 percent--one out of three--are their family's sole earner. As Senator Kennedy pointed out, almost two-thirds of the time these are women. These are single mothers; they are working; they are making the minimum wage; and they are the sole supporter of their family. So these are not just young kids getting a minimum-wage job to supplement the family income. As I said, more than 60 percent are women, one-third are mothers of children.
So I thank Senator Kennedy for bringing this issue to our attention. I just find it unexplainable. How do you explain to people of this country we took all this time this year, we had this big tax break for the most wealthy in our country, yet we cannot even take a half a day, 2 hours to debate and pass an increase in the minimum wage?
President Bush has spent a lot of time talking about tax breaks, getting his tax break bill through--which helps mostly the most wealthy in this country, yet not one peep from this President in almost 3 years about increasing the minimum wage, not even one peep from this President on it.
So I am hopeful sometime before we break in August we can bring this up and pass it and get it to the President's desk. I know that is probably wishful thinking but hope springs eternal. I think that is what we ought to be doing here in the month of July.
One other thing: I said earlier we had the medical malpractice bill up. Really, what we ought to be talking about is the economic malpractice of this administration. That is what I call it--President Bush's economic malpractice. The victims of this malpractice are working Americans.
I just talked about the minimum wage and the need to increase that. Look at the unemployment rate. It is now 6.4 percent, the highest level since April of 1994. That amounts to 9.4 million people looking for work who cannot find any. Under President Bush's leadership, we have lost 3.1 million private sector jobs.
This week the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, offered an amendment to extend emergency unemployment assistance to the 1.1 million long-term unemployed. These are people who have been laid off since the recession began--early last year. They made futile searches for jobs that were not there, and then, unfortunately, we lost the job assistance amendment Senator Murray offered.
We are still losing jobs every month; 33,000 last month.
The economy is limping along. Now we are going to have a $400 billion deficit facing us this year.
I read in the paper this morning that we now have some estimates on what it is costing us in Iraq--$4 billion a month; $4 billion a month. I have to tell you, if history shows us anything, those figures are lowballed. If this administration--I say it about any administration--
comes up with figures this, you know they are lowballing it. I bet you when the facts are in and when all the costs are in, by the end of the year when we look back at the cost of our being in Iraq, it will approach $5 billion a month. That is somewhere between $50 billion and
$60 billion this year. That is not counting Afghanistan. Afghanistan is costing us somewhere over $1 billion a month.
Again, I think that is lowballing it. I think it is probably a lot more than this.
When you take Afghanistan and Iraq and put them together, you are talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of between $60 billion and
$75 billion this year on top of a $400 billion deficit.
What is the administration's response? Don't increase the minimum wage, pass record tax cuts for the wealthiest, and then they push through a sham Medicare prescription drug bill that is going to force seniors to pay more out of their pockets before they can get their prescription drugs.
Right now there is a rule being written and proposed by this administration that will take money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans. This has to do with the issue of overtime pay.
This spring, the Labor Department proposed a regulation that would exempt perhaps up to 8 million workers from overtime pay. Overtime pay means up to 25 percent of a worker's annual income. Who are we talking about? We are talking about nurses, police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, retail managers, journalists, medical therapists, paralegals, managers of fast food restaurants, among others who will now be put in a different category. Just by a new regulation they are going to be put into a new category so they will not be paid overtime pay.
Last week, 43 Senators sent a letter to the Secretary of Labor asking that the administration back off of this proposal. What does this proposal do? It expands the overtime exemptions by making it easier for employers to reclassify hourly workers and make them salaried workers, and then dramatically lowering the bar on which salaried workers are exempt from overtime pay protection. The result is millions of Americans earning--get this--more than $22,100 year--we are not talking about people making $100,000 $200,000 a year. We are talking about people making $22,100 a year and currently eligible for overtime who will be denied overtime pay under the proposed changes. What it means is the end of the 40-hour workweek. It means workers will spend more time away from their families because they will be forced to work longer hours.
But guess what. They won't be compensated for it. At least now, if someone is spending over 40 hours a week working and they are away from their family, they get time and a half overtime and compensated, which may help make up for a little bit of time they spend away from their families. Now they will be working more than 40 hours away from their families, and they will not be compensated for that.
It is not only bad economic policy, it won't create one new job. But it will also harm families by keeping the breadwinner away from their family for longer periods of time without giving them adequate compensation.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor estimates, the proposed rule changes would mean between 2.1 million and 3.3 million workers would face unpredictable work schedules because of an increased demand for extra hours for which the employers would not have to pay time and half. It just makes sense.
If you are an employer and the people working for you work over 40 hours, they are paid time and a half. You have to think about this. Does that justify keeping them on at time and a half? However, if by a little stroke of the pen you can reclassify them from hourly wage earners to salaried wage earners, you can get them to work 45 hours a week and not have to pay them one red cent more.
Again, with one stroke of a pen, I can get them to do more work and not have to pay them one additional penny.
Why wouldn't you do that? Of course, you would do that.
This regulation will open the floodgates for employers to help their bottom line by getting more work out of employees without paying them any more money. That is why we passed the 40-hour workweek. We are actually turning the clock back.
Senator Kennedy pointed out this morning that we passed the minimum wage bill in 1938. By exempting these people from overtime pay we are turning the clock back even pre-1938 in terms of working conditions.
According to the GAO study, employees exempt from overtime pay--
understand this--are twice as likely to work overtime as those covered by overtime pay. That is a GAO study. There you go. It makes sense. You are covered by overtime, and maybe you won't get that overtime. But if you are not covered by overtime, why not work a few hours extra every week because you are not being paid for your labor?
Yesterday, in the House of Representatives there was an amendment by Congressman Obey of Wisconsin that would block the administration's proposal to deny millions of Americans overtime pay. Sadly, that lost by three votes. I was watching the vote last night. I noticed that they held the vote open. Actually, the proposal by Congressman Obey won. The vote was held open, and I saw some switches being made. Finally, they got three people either to switch or something. So the vote, if I am not mistaken, was 213 to 210.
The proposal to block the administration from making these changes failed by three votes in the House.
I think one of the reasons it lost was there was a lot of misinformation about what the amendment would do. I have an amendment that is almost a mirror image of what Congressman Obey offered in the House. I will be offering it at the first opportunity we have to do so on the Senate floor.
Basically, my amendment would prohibit the administration from exempting more workers from overtime pay who are currently eligible under the law. That is it. It is very simple and very straightforward. I look forward to offering this amendment to protect the 40-hour workweek, and to protect hard-working Americans who sometimes are caught between whether they want to spend more time with their family or maybe work overtime. At least if they work overtime they get compensated for it. This amendment would protect them and their families.
The administration's proposal will not, as I said, create one additional job. It will not do anything to put money back into the pockets of working Americans.
Couple that with their intransigence on raising the minimum wage, and what you have is what I call ``President Bush's economic malpractice''--economic malpractice on hard-working Americans.
We need a real job growth plan in this country. We need to increase the minimum wage. We need to provide a real Medicare prescription drug benefit. We need to provide real incentives for businesses to create new jobs--not these kinds of incentives that will not create additional jobs but will allow employers to work employees longer than the 40-hour workweek without giving them just compensation. It is bad policy. It is economic malpractice.
I look forward to offering this amendment at the earliest possible time so the Senate can speak on this issue, and hopefully we will have enough votes in the Senate so the administration will back off this ill-timed and ill-advised proposal.
I would like to know who really came up with this idea that somehow we are just going to, with the stroke of a pen, exempt people from overtime pay who are now getting it; we are just going to reclassify them. Well, I would like to know who that misguided ``genius'' was behind that decision. And whoever it is ought to have no place in this Labor Department or in this administration or anywhere in government.
So I hope we can take this amendment up as soon as possible, and I hope the Senate will approve it.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
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