Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007

FAIR MINIMUM WAGE ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - January 24, 2007)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak against the line-item veto. This misguided proposal will hurt the communities we are here to represent. It will strip them of the voice they have today in Congress through each of us, and it will hand even more legislative power to the executive branch.

As I saw in my own experiences, both here in the Senate and in the Washington State Legislature, a line-item veto is subject to abuse, pressure and horse-trading, and it violates the delicate balance of power that the Founders so carefully designed.

Now I recognize that the idea sounds attractive. It suggests that we could cut spending and control the deficit without having to make any tough choices. Well, like a lot of ideas that sound good at first, once you look into it, the painful impact becomes clear.

More importantly, I think all of us need to do the hard work of crafting responsible budgets. We need to legislate and govern and take the needs of the country and our States into consideration. We need to make the tough decisions--not pass the buck to the White House.

I oppose the line-item veto today for the same reasons I opposed it in the 1990s. I voted against this gimmick when Congress handed that power to a Democratic President. And today I fight another attempt to hand that same power to a Republican President.

For me, it is not about the party of the Chief Executive; it is about making sure that the constituents I represent have a voice in the budget decisions that affect their lives. The line-item veto is the wrong approach for three reasons.

First, it would cede a tremendous amount of power from Congress to the executive branch. The Constitution is very clear that Congress has the power of the purse. The Framers of our Constitution carefully divided the powers of our Government between the three branches.

When Congress tried this before, it was ruled unconstitutional. This time around, the sponsors have tweaked the bill to try to address those concerns, but the underlying problem still remains. We should not be handing our legislative power over to the executive branch. I made that argument in 1995--and it is even truer today. We have seen the Bush administration aggressively try to expand Presidential power and limit congressional input and oversight. We should stand our ground as the Founders intended--not surrender our constitutional authority to the executive branch.

Second, the line item veto would hurt the constituents we represent. They rely on us to fight for their needs and priorities. Through the budget and appropriations process, we work to meet the needs in our local communities--needs that the administration would ignore. If we give up our ability to fight for our communities, our constituents will lose their voice because I can tell you, the communities we represent will not get fair consideration from a budget official sitting in Washington, DC.

Last week, a group of constituents came to see me about a local road that needs to be improved. The changes they are seeking will improve safety, support economic development, and provide access to critically needed housing. I represent that community, so I know firsthand those improvements are needed. That community has me fighting for them and pushing for their needs. The administration is not going to do that. They are not going to send someone from Washington, DC to check out the road and see that it is unsafe. In fact, these constituents had just come from a meeting with an administration official who basically told them that, in regard to the continuing resolution, ``Good luck, we will be making the decisions this year.'

That is just wrong. If we hand this power to the administration, we will surrender our voices, and our constituents will lose their voices in advocating for their communities. The families I represent know that if they have a problem, they can come and talk to me. But if you tell them that they have to track down someone at OMB and convince them to care about their local needs, our communities will suffer.

I came to the Senate to represent the people of my home State of Washington. They elected me to be their voice on a wide array of issues affecting everything from their safety to their health, education, and economic well-being. I am not going to transfer my ability to fight for the people of Washington State to this or any other President. That is what this bill proposal would do, and I strongly oppose it.

Third, experience has shown that the line-item veto is subject to abuse and may be applied unfairly by an administration. I have experience with line-item veto authority. I served in my State legislature and saw firsthand the kind of horse-trading that can occur when the Executive has this power.

When President Clinton exercised the line-item veto in 1997, we saw serious problems in the way it was applied. The White House put forward standards for deciding which projects would be targeted. But then it attacked projects that actually met the standards. In 1997, I stood here on the Senate floor and detailed the mistakes the Clinton administration made in unfairly targeting projects for elimination. I don't want to see a repeat of those mistakes.

Mr. President, crafting a responsible budget takes hard work. It requires tough choices. There is no gimmick or trick that will make the hard decisions go away. Handing our power and our constituents' power over to the White House certainly won't do it. So I say, rather than spending our time on a distraction, let's work on a real budget and on the real and difficult choices that are before us.

Let's do the job that voters sent us here to do--without gimmicks and without trampling the Constitution.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, America's workers deserve a raise, and that is why I rise in strong support of S. 2, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. America's workers have helped our country make tremendous gains in productivity and economic growth, and they deserve to share in the prosperity they have created. I am very proud to represent a State that has a high minimum wage, and I want to share some of the lessons we have learned about providing a living wage in the State of Washington.

We need to do the right thing and pass a clean minimum wage bill now, without any of the antiworker amendments that may be offered on the other side. As we have heard, it has been almost 10 years since this Congress last raised the minimum wage. During that time, the real value of that wage has fallen by more than 21 percent. At the same time, the costs of health care, energy, and housing have all gone up significantly. As a result, many of our middle-class workers have been squeezed. I can only imagine the challenges minimum wage workers face every day while trying to maintain their families and their dignity on $10,000 a year. We can be proud that America's businesses have prospered over the last decade, thanks to a 31-percent increase in worker productivity and a huge 47-percent increase in profits. Now it is time for the least paid of America's workers to share in those gains.

During this debate, we have heard the usual claims that raising the minimum wage hurts businesses. In my State, that has not been the experience. Washington State, in fact, has the highest minimum wage in the country. We are living proof that a livable minimum wage is good for our State economy, good for small businesses, and it is good for our citizens. In 2006, our State's average unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, the lowest since 1999. We created 79,000 new jobs. Our poverty rate is 11.9 percent, which is lower than the national average. And our median household income stands at $49,000, much higher than the national average.

Our State minimum wage, which is indexed to inflation, has helped make for good labor productivity and a healthy economy. We have heard from my esteemed colleague, Senator Kennedy, chairman of the HELP Committee, that States with higher minimum wages create more small businesses and more jobs. Last year, the Fiscal Policy Institute reported that States with a higher minimum wage created nearly 10 percent more jobs and 5 percent more small businesses. A May 2006 Gallup Poll found that 86 percent of small business owners thought that raising the minimum wage did not affect their businesses. I could cite statistics like that all day, but I think the best evidence is really what continues to happen in my State compared with a neighboring State that has a much lower minimum wage.

Washington State's minimum wage is $7.39 an hour. Right next door to us, Idaho has a minimum wage at the Federal level of $5.15 per hour. Since 1998, when our voters in Washington State passed our minimum wage law, Washington employers have been flooded with job applicants from Idaho. Now Washington companies can pick the best qualified workers from the entire region. On January 11, the New York Times reported that Washington State businesses have seen great benefits, while Idaho businesses have not.

I ask unanimous consent to print this New York Times article by Timothy Egan in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

Mrs. MURRAY. This article quotes Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business. He says that raising the Federal minimum wage is ``almost a no-brainer.' Washington's strong economy is proof that even with the highest minimum wage in the United States, as Mr. Brunell put it--and he is president of the Association of Washington Business--``Washington is a great place to do business.'

Some people predicted that small businesses would be hurt in my State. But instead, as the article notes, they have prospered beyond their expectations. So we have a lot of opportunity to do good here, not just for our workers but for our businesses and for our economy. But to do the most good, we have to pass a clean bill, one that is free from unrelated tax provisions and one that rejects antiworker amendments.

Historically, Congress has not found it necessary to pair a minimum wage increase with a package of tax giveaways. In fact, since 1936, Congress has raised the minimum wage nine times. But only once has such an increase been paired with a tax rollback. We should pass a clean bill that gives workers the raise they are long overdue.

In addition, we should not let this bill be used to weaken the rights of American workers. As the chairman of the HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, I am troubled by a number of the amendments being floated now by our Republican colleagues, proposals to attack the 40-hour workweek, to take away workers' overtime, and to force a pay cut on workers who earn their living from tips. There is also a deeply flawed proposal that would change the treatment of professional employer organizations under the Tax Code.

This week, while we try to raise the wages of one group of workers, we have to fend off the Republican attacks on working families and their right to earn overtime. We all know how the demands of work and family pull two-career parents away from their loved ones all too often. For parents getting their kids to and from school and to afterschool activity is not easy, especially when you are forced to work uncertain hours. The uncertainty of having to work, say, 50 to 60 hours this week and then 20 or 30 hours next week will put incredible strains on many of our overburdened families.

Taking away their workplace rights and their ability to collect overtime would be a cruel and unwarranted double hit on America's working families. The Senate should, once again, reject the Republican comp time and 40-hour work week proposals, because they would force a pay cut on millions of middle-class workers. We know, for those workers who are eligible, overtime can amount to as much as 25 percent of their yearly income. We should not undermine the ability of working parents to balance their lives and share in the American dream.

The Republican comp time proposal would force our workers to take comp time instead of pay. On top of that pay cut, workers would be at the mercy of their employer when it came to asking to use that accumulated comp time. We all know that comp time often disappears under employer pressures of deadlines and other productivity needs.

I believe it is important that this Congress protect the rights of these hard-working families from an erosion of their quality of life and their ability to spend time with their families. We have to stop these attacks on working families and start moving in the right direction, like expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act.

I hope we also work to protect our workers who rely on tips. As we have heard from my female colleagues on this floor already, nearly two-thirds of our minimum wage workers in this country are women. Many of them are single parents. Raising the minimum wage can give them a small measure of economic security and the ability to better support their families. Many of these low-wage workers are service workers, people such as hairdressers, maids, and waitresses. Many in Washington State rely on tips as a significant part of their livelihood. We should not support amendments that would undermine the tips our workers rely on. In my State of Washington, that would mean a pay cut of some $12,000 annually for over 120,000 of our tipped workers.

Finally, I want to say I am very concerned about the proposed tax changes for professional employer organizations. I fear that this change could undermine the fiscal stability of our State unemployment insurance and worker compensation fund. It would also put more burdens on our employers who are already playing by the rules.

Further, it would reduce worker health and safety protections by undermining incentives for companies to maintain safe and healthy workplaces. By the way, it could also provide an opening for those seeking to change the well-established rules of the employer-employee relationship under the Fair Labor Standards Act. I believe there should be serious thought and debate in the Congress before we make such fundamental changes in our labor laws.

In conclusion, we can do this right by passing a clean bill that finally gives American workers the raise they have earned. Over the last 8 years, Washington State has proven that a minimum wage increase is good for our State's economy and helps our economic development. It increases small business ownership and, of course, it helps our workers maintain their quality of life.

I join my colleagues to urge a vote in favor of this bill to increase the minimum wage so that we can finally, and importantly, give our low-income workers the raise they so richly deserve.

I yield the floor.

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