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WASHINGTON, DC -- On a mostly party-line vote, the House of Representatives today rejected an effort by Representatives George Miller (D-CA) and Major Owens (D-NY) to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over a two-year period. Today’s action is the latest example of Congress’ intransigence on helping America’s most needy workers. The minimum wage, now at $5.15, has not been raised since 1997.
“It is no wonder that so many Americans think Congress and President Bush are out of touch,” said Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and a long-time proponent of raising the minimum wage. “The fact is that this Congress, under this leadership, simply refuses to help hard working people whose wages have fallen grossly behind. Once again, by rejecting the Democratic effort to raise the minimum wage, Republican leaders of the House are telling America’s workers that they are on their own.”
Miller and Owens offered their amendment during the House’s consideration of four Republican bills that would threaten workers’ safety by undermining the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The House voted 223 to 191 to refuse to consider the amendment.
“Real wages are declining for the first time in a decade. Gas prices hit an all-time high this week. Healthcare and educational costs are soaring. And in the face of all this hard news for workers, what does Congress do? It refuses to raise the minimum wage and it makes workplaces less safe,” said Miller. “When is Congress going to show American workers the respect they have earned?”
The amendment is identical to legislation introduced by Miller in May of this year, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2005. That legislation would raise the national minimum wage to $7.25 from $5.15 in three steps: to $5.85 two months after enactment; to $6.55 one year later; and to $7.25 one year after that. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has declined 20 percent since 1997.
The legislation, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), would also extend the minimum wage to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.
A report issued this spring by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that most minimum wage workers make significant contributions to their total family income. Half of them are between the ages of 25 and 54. Many workers find themselves trapped in minimum wage jobs; more than one-third of 25- to 54-year-old workers in minimum wage jobs are still earning the minimum wage after three years.
Another recent report, from the Children’s Defense Fund, shows that the annual income of a single parent working full-time at minimum wage covers only 40 percent of the estimated cost of raising two children, down from 48 percent in 1997. At $7.25 per hour, the minimum wage would cover 56 percent of the costs of raising two children, a significant improvement for working families.
Among the 7.5 million workers earning between $5.15 and $8 an hour – the people this bill is intended to help – 84 percent of them are adults over the age of 20. Nearly half of them are married or have children. Over half of them are women; 59 percent are white; 13 percent are black; and 23 percent are Hispanic. Sixty percent of them work full-time.
At $5.15 per hour, a worker who works 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year earns $10,712. In 2003, the poverty level for a family of two (a parent and a child) was $12,682.
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