Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007

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

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Mr. CORNYN. Thank you, Mr. President.

AMENDMENT NO. 101

Mr. President, I want to talk specifically about the second-look-at-wasteful-spending amendment which is pending and that we will vote on here in a few moments. I hope to come back later today, perhaps, and talk more generally about the minimum wage bill that is pending, the underlying bill, and talk about how I hope our goal would be to train and educate American workers to fill good, high-paying jobs that currently go wanting for lack of a trained workforce. I would hope we would spend at least as much of our efforts on training them, providing them the alternatives to earn those higher, good wages as we spend focusing on the 2.5 percent of the workforce who actually earn the minimum wage--generally people who are starting into the workforce: teenagers, part-time workers, and the like--and how, notwithstanding our best of intentions, some of our actions here, by Government actually setting a minimum wage, may actually put some of them out of work.

But I would focus on the second-look-at-wasteful-spending amendment and challenge our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in a good way.

Since we have come back after the election, and we have this new 110th Congress, we have heard a lot of very appropriate commentary on both sides of the aisle about the importance of our working together in order to solve some of the Nation's most serious problems. The President talked about that last night. One of the areas the President spoke about last night in his State of the Union Message--and I hear an awful lot about from my constituents--is concern about wasteful spending.

Indeed, a lot of what we did on a bipartisan basis this last week on lobbying and ethics reform was to turn the bright light of public scrutiny on the earmark process--special appropriations stuck in bills that frequently benefit individuals and groups--to turn the bright light on those, offer greater transparency, so the public can know how their tax dollars are being spent and, hopefully, people understanding that whatever they do will be exposed to public scrutiny, they will make sure their conduct in doing so conforms with the highest ethical standards they have a right to expect from us.

But the fact is that Presidents on both sides of the aisle--President Clinton, when he was President; now President Bush--have sought the authority of the line-item veto or, in this instance, what we are talking about is the so-called enhanced rescission. It is a process where the President, once an appropriations bill is sent over to him, highlights a concern he or she has about an appropriations bill, and sends it back over to the Congress to reconsider.

This is a way to provide the kind of laser-like focus we need to have on wasteful spending projects that occasionally--some might say more than occasionally--creep into our Federal appropriations process.

In the spirit of bipartisanism that I think the American people would like to see when confronting some of our biggest challenges, my hope would be that Members of this Congress--Members of this Senate--on a bipartisan basis, would support the very kind of bill this represents, and that they were advocating for when Senator Daschle, the Democratic leader, offered and sponsored with the support of at least 21 Democrats when President Clinton was in office.

I hold up a chart. I showed this yesterday, but I think it is worth looking at again. This chart is a comparison of the Daschle and Gregg expedited rescission amendments. You can see in all respects the Daschle amendment--here, again, Tom Daschle, the Senator from South Dakota, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, offered an amendment which in all respects, except two--I will talk about that in a minute--is the same as Senator Gregg is proposing, the so-called second-look-at-wasteful-spending amendment.

The only two ways they differ is that the Gregg amendment does permit rescission of new mandatory spending. If you look at the places where money is being spent fastest in the Federal budget, it is in mandatory or entitlement programs, which are going up at the rate of 8 percent or more a year, on autopilot. I applaud Senator Gregg for including a provision that permits rescission of new mandatory spending programs.

But that and permitting four rescission packages annually, those are the two areas where the Gregg amendment differs, albeit in a relatively minor way, from what Senator Daschle proposed in 1995.

You will see on this next chart, here is a list of the current Senate Democrats who supported the Daschle amendment in 1995. My hope would be, with this little refresher for our colleagues who actually supported this good policy back in 1995, that they would see fit to vote to close off debate and to actually have an up-or-down vote on the Gregg amendment.

As I said, if it was good policy in 1995, supported by these good Democratic colleagues, I think they would agree--I would hope they would agree--it is a good policy in 2007 or, if it is not, I would hope they would come to the floor and explain their change of heart because I think it would represent a change in position.

So this amendment goes to the heart of what I hear people express their concerns about most as I travel back in my State and as I read and listen to people's concerns, as expressed through the media, that Federal spending and our failure to be good trustees of the Federal tax dollar is one of their biggest concerns, along, obviously, with national security issues such as the war in Iraq. The other issue I hear a lot about--the President talked about it last night--is immigration reform.

Mr. President, I see the budget chairman on the floor, and I know he and Senator Gregg have committed to work on a bipartisan basis to try to deal with not just these issues, such as earmarks that abuse the public trust, and which somehow slip into our appropriations process, but to look at the larger picture and try to figure out how we can sustain some of the most important programs the American people have come to rely upon, things such as Social Security and Medicare, and that we not continue to spend in a way that imposes a financial burden for those programs on our children and grandchildren. That raises a profound moral issue that I believe we must confront.

So I do appreciate the efforts that are being made to try to deal with some of our hardest problems. I think there is a great opportunity provided here. Some might find this a little surprising for me to say being a Republican, but I think divided Government provides an opportunity for this body to do some very big and important and significant things. I do not think politics has to be a zero-sum game where Democrats win and Republicans lose, or Republicans win and Democrats lose in the public policymaking process. I think we can all win, and in so doing the American people can win, if we will simply come together in a commonsense, result-oriented sort of way and try to solve some of these problems.

I think Senator Gregg's amendment picks up on the wisdom of Senator Daschle's amendment back in 1995. And I frankly would be perplexed if we were unable to get the kind of bipartisan support to close off debate, to have an up-or-down vote on the floor, and demonstrate to the American people that, you know what, we heard the message on November 7, and you know what, we get it. We understand what you were telling us.

You wanted us to work together, and we are working together to try to solve some of our Nation's biggest problems.

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