I rise in support of the amendment to raise the minimum wage.

My colleagues, the case for an increase in the minimum wage is clear. America has enjoyed eight and one-half years of economic expansion. The economic boom that began in March 1991 is now the longest peacetime expansion in American history.

However, the rising tide of economic development has not lifted the boats of millions of American workers. Millions of Americans earning the minimum wage are rapidly becoming a permanent underclass in our society. This amendment is a big step forward for millions who are struggling to feed and raise a family, and rent decent housing, while earning the minimum wage.

At the same time that our economy is expanding, the distribution of income is becoming more and more unequal. As the charts prepared by the Senator from Massachusetts make clear, the earnings of average Americans have grown little, and the overall distribution of income has become increasingly unequal. Whether you examine the trend of U.S. income distribution or compare the wages of U.S. workers to those in other industrialized countries, the result is clear: the wages of the average American worker are stagnating.

While I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for championing this amendment, I am also grateful that his amendment extends the minimum wage to the only U.S. territory where minimum wage is not governed by Federal law. I am speaking of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

For my colleagues who are not be familiar with this territory, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is located 4,000 miles west of Hawaii. In 1975, the people of the CNMI voted for political union with the United States. Today, the CNMI flies the flag of the United States as a U.S. territory.

In 1976, Congress gave U.S. citizenship to residents of the CNMI. At the same time, however, Congress exempted the Commonwealth from the minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. As we now know, that omission was a grave error. Today's amendment will correct that longstanding mistake.

The CNMI section of this amendment stands for the simple proposition that America is one country and that the U.S. minimum wage — whatever amount it may be — should be uniform. Common sense dictates that our country must have a single, national law on minimum wage.

Throughout the United States, Federal law requires that minimum wage workers be paid $5.15 per hour — everywhere, that is, except the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In the CNMI, the minimum wage is $3.15 per hour, 40 percent less than the U.S. minimum wage.

You would have to go back twenty years, to January 1980, to find a time when the statutory minimum wage was that low in the United States. Today, workers in the CNMI are being paid wages that are 20 years behind the times. And the numbers I have cited do not account for the effect of inflation.

Once you adjust the CNMI minimum wage for inflation, you would have to go back to the 1930s — the Depression years — to find a time when the wages of American workers had the same buying power as minimum wage workers in the CNMI today. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in the CNMI — which I remind my colleagues is U.S. soil — is the equivalent of less than ten cents an hour. Ten cents an hour! You can't even buy a pencil for 10 cents. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in this territory is 60 years out of date.

This situation is a disgrace. In Guam, ninety miles from the CNMI, they have been paying the minimum wage since 1950. It's time to end this embarrassment and reform the minimum wage in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. That's one of the important things that this amendment would do.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.