The 30 Cents Gap

The issue was not whether to raise the minimum wage but by how much. Last week the effort faltered because neither Congress nor President Bush would give ground on a 30 cents-an-hour difference of opinion. On Tuesday Congress sent legislation to the White House calling for a $1.20-an-hour increase, to $4.55, by 1992. Less than an hour later, 35,000 ft. over Wyoming aboard Air Force One, the President vetoed the bill. Bush has insisted that $4.25 an hour is enough.

Minimum-wage workers have had no raise in eight years, and mounting prices have eroded their buying power. If the $3.35 wage had kept pace with inflation, it would stand at $4.46 an hour today. President Bush maintains that the increase set by Congress would discourage employers from hiring inexperienced workers. He has proposed a raise to $4.25 an hour that would be linked to a "training" wage of $3.35 an hour, which employers could pay new workers for as long as six months. Congress accepted the idea of such a subminimum wage but for only two months.

The day after Bush's veto, House Democrats attempted to override the President's decision. But the tally -- 247 to 178 -- fell 34 votes short of the two-thirds needed for approval. A solution to the deadlock may lie in a House proposal to combine a smaller increase in the minimum wage with new tax breaks for low-income workers, an approach that Bush supports. The House plan, proposed by Wisconsin Republican Thomas Petri, would expand the earned-income tax credit. The tax rule allows poor working families to take special deductions of as much as $874 a year; Petri has suggested boosting the ceiling to $2,500.