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Guest Commentary July 12, 2003
Earning Minimum Wage Should Get You Above Poverty Level
The Honorable Tom Harkin
Increasing the minimum wage for the people of this country ought to be number one on our agenda. We ought to be doing this right now. ...
Many Americans are making the minimum wage which... is now less than the poverty level. It is about $4,500 below the poverty level for a family of three.
It is unconscionable that over the last seven 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 seven 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 seven years. That is what is unconscionable.
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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. ...
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. 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. ...
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, two 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 three 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.
Tom Harkin, a Democrat, is a U.S. Senator from Iowa. The above commentary has been adapted from a speech Sen. Harkin delivered on the floor of the Senate, July 11, 2003. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
