Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator very much. I appreciate it.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. What has happened out there? We have seen the economic challenge for workers as a result of outsourcing, the mergers that have taken place, a number of them in my own State that are having a direct impact. There are two important industries that are the fastest growing industries in America. One is the collection industry. That is right, the collection industry, the people who spend their time dialing people who owe money on credit cards. They keep dialing--talk to the principal, talk to their children, talk to them at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when the children come back from school. That industry is growing. The second industry is part-time workers. That is what is happening. We find with part-time workers that they do not have coverage. People are ready to work. They want to work. They want these benefits. They have fought for these benefits over their lifetimes, the primary benefit being health insurance. We find out that what has happened in the United States today is the collapse of the pension system. What we are finding today is the lowest rate of savings in 40 years. And what does this administration want to do? They want to give Social Security to Wall Street. They want to give Wall Street Social Security and privatization. They took care of the major companies with the class action bill just a week ago, and now they are ready to take care of the credit card companies. But they cannot quite make up their mind whether the vote in the Senate that would restore existing conflict-of-interest provisions, which are existing law and which, I might point out, the Securities and Exchange Commission supports--not what is in this bill, but the amendment of Senators Sarbanes, Leahy, and Warner. They support that position. The SEC supports it because of conflict of interest. But not our Republican friends. No, they cannot make up their mind. If they add that to it, the power of the banking industry would be so strong over in the House of Representatives, they will have a stalemate, and then they will not get their goodies. They will not get their goodies. This is what has been happening. Look at the profits of the industry that is going to benefit, the credit card industry. In 1990, 6.4; 1995, 12.9, 2000, 20; 2004, look at this, $30 billion, between 2000 and 2004. Find an industry like that in America, except maybe the Guaranteed Student Loan Program, where we have a loan guaranteed by the Federal Government and lenders make 9% on some student loans. Parents wonder why the cost of going to school at the universities are so high, because the government is padding the pockets of student loan providers with tax payer dollars. These are the profits. Who are the people affected, as I mentioned before, during the course of this debate? We have 1.5 million bankruptcies annually and half of them are as a result of illness. Nonmedical causes, 54 percent; medical causes, 46 percent. But we are not going to show those. This bill was supposed to go after the spendthrifts. We can get the spendthrifts. We do not have to put these people through the mill. That is what this is really about. We are here this evening waiting until the clock moves down. We are at our offices constantly wondering when we are going to start the votes. Two votes were supposed to be at 5 o'clock--one to deal with single women who are in bankruptcy because they are not being paid their alimony and child support. That was dismissed out of hand; you will have to take that to a vote. We are prepared to take it to a vote, and we will certainly continue to take it to a vote. If we are not successful on this, anyone who thinks we are going to let these issues go away just does not understand those of us who are opposed to this particular program. We are also going to have an opportunity to vote on what has happened to so many of our American families as a result of outsourcing and how they have faced the economic challenges over recent weeks and months. More than 450,000 jobs have been outsourced. Over the next 10 years, we are expecting close to 3.4 million jobs to be outsourced, going outside the country. We have seen what is happening in manufacturing all across this country. We all know that manufacturing jobs are the ones that have the higher pay. That has been part of the phenomenon. Do you think that concept is of any importance to the proponents of this legislation? Absolutely not. No way. Health care prices have gone through the roof by 59 percent and the cost of prescription drugs 65 percent, and the fact we are an aging population with our parents, children, almost a third disabled who need those prescription drugs, and the prices are going up through the roof--are we giving them any consideration? Absolutely not. We do not care about the workers who have gotten shortchanged. We do not care about those who have needed prescription drugs and have been bankrupted in paying the prices. This is the same Republican Senate that would not permit the Secretary of HHS to negotiate prices downward--do you hear me--like we do in the Veterans Administration. Here we have hundreds of thousands of people who are going bankrupt because of increases in the cost of health care and prescription drugs, and we--most of us on this side-- who are opposed to these harsh provisions tried to make some difference several months ago to permit the Secretary of HHS to negotiate prices downward, as they do in the Veterans Administration. But, no, we are not going to let you do that. So that was defeated. You cannot import cheaper drugs from outside the country. You cannot get cheaper prices here. And what happens? You end up going into bankruptcy and end up with the harsh provisions of this legislation. This legislation is not fair, it is not just, and tonight we have seen what this is all about. The bankruptcy bill as written contains a provision, section 414, which would repeal the provision in current law on investment banks which underwrote a security of the company in bankruptcy from now serving as adviser to the bankruptcy. This is a basic conflict-of- interest prevention in current law, which this bill would repeal. It is one of the many shameful special interest provisions in this bill. To their credit, Senators Leahy and Sarbanes offered an amendment to remove this provision and maintain the current law against conflicts of interest by the investment banks. It appears that it may have the votes to pass, so to protect the investment banks the Republicans have effectively shut down the process. There should be no doubt, when people finally vote tomorrow, what this bill is all about, who it was for. When it is a fight for the real people, then we hear from the other side saying, no, no. But when it is their friends in the banks who are threatened, it shuts down debate in the Senate. Clearly, there is no room in the Republican agenda for the real needs of the real people, the veterans, the workers, the mothers, the children, and the widows.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I understand that at 10:15, the Senator from New York is to be recognized to offer an amendment?

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, this bankruptcy bill is mean-spirited and unfair. In anything like its present form, it should and will be an embarrassment to anyone who votes for it. It is a bonanza for the credit card companies, which made $30 billion in profits last year, and a nightmare for the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak. It favors the credit card companies, the giant banks, and the big car loan companies at every turn. It favors the worst of the credit industry--the interest rate gougers, the payday lenders, and the abusive collection agencies. It hurts real people who lose their savings because of a medical crisis or lose their jobs because of outsourcing or suffer major loss of income because they were called up for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. It protects corporate interests at the expense of the needs of real people. It does absolutely nothing about the glaring abuses of the bankruptcy system by the executives of giant companies such as Enron, WorldCom, and Polaroid, who lined their own pockets but left thousands of employees and retirees out in the cold. It favors companies like MBNA, a top credit card issuer, with over $80 billion in loans, which has contributed $7 million to Federal candidates, a half a million dollars to President Bush alone, and spent over $20 million in lobbying, since 1997, when their lobbyists wrote this bill. On the other side are people like special ed teacher Fatemeh Hosseini on the front page of Sunday's Washington Post. She fell on hard times when her husband left her and their three children. After her credit card debt reached $25,000, she stopped using the cards and took a second job to try to pay down that debt. She paid $2,000 a month but was hit with very high interest rates, which were raised even higher because of missed payments, heavy late fees, and over-limit penalties. She made no new purchases, but by last June her $25,000 debt had nearly doubled to almost $50,000. The longer she tried to pay what her statements told her were her minimum payments, the more her debt went up. When all of her salary was going for payments, she had no choice: she was forced into bankruptcy, in the hope of getting the ``fresh start'' the Nation has long provided to its working people when they hit bottom. This bill says to companies like MBNA: We'll help you scare that teacher out of going into bankruptcy by making the bankruptcy process expensive and burdensome to people like her. If we can't scare her away, we will help you squeeze your high interest rates out of her for a few years longer, even though she can't possibly pay off the amount she owes. We will take sides with companies like you and against people like her. That is what this bill says. We all know that is wrong. How could the Senate possibly do something so immoral and unreasonable and unfair to our constituents when they are most in need of our help? Where are the vaunted values our colleagues talk about so much? Why didn't the Judiciary Committee do something about this travesty before it reached the floor? Why haven't we fixed it on the floor after more than a week of debate? This bill was bulldozed through the committee on the pretense that we should not deal with its serious problems there but should wait until it reached the full Senate for serious negotiations and basic improvements. We were assured that there would be good-faith discussions and compromises and that all reasonable amendments would be given fair consideration. But now there has been no good faith at all--no meaningful discussions, no negotiation, no real consideration of any of the very reasonable amendments that have been proposed to give this bill some shred of balance and fairness. On the contrary, the Republican leadership has invoked the strictest possible party discipline. When individual Republicans say they want to support or offer constructive amendments, they are ordered not to do so. Even when a Republican identifies a serious gap in the bill, such as the very basic jurisdiction outrage pointed out by Senator Cornyn, an outrage that has prejudiced workers and retirees in almost every State, the Republican leadership said no and refused to let the amendment be called up. The excuse for this bad faith and breach of promise is itself bizarre. The Republican leaders say they cannot upset the delicate compromise reached two Congresses ago, but the only real compromise was the one that had the Schumer amendment in it, and this year's bill doesn't have that amendment in it. In committee Senator Schumer discussed his amendment, but I didn't see the other side jumping up to adopt it in order to restore and preserve the so-called compromise. The floor leaders have not indicated that they plan to accept this amendment to restore and preserve the supposed compromise. Let's be clear--any pretense of protecting a previous compromise disappeared when the bill's sponsors unilaterally took the Schumer amendment out of the bill before introducing it this year. So there is no compromise before us in the first place. What's more, even the 2001 bill is now totally obsolete. A great deal has happened in the past 4 years that helps us understand the real issues in this bill and shows that abuse of the system by consumers is not the real problem. We have now felt the full impact of the Bush economic decline, the broad record levels of sustained unemployment. We have seen an explosion of medical costs, prescription drug costs, and health insurance costs. We have seen job after job eliminated or downgraded or outsourced. A half million guardsmen and reservists have been called to active duty in Afghanistan or Iraq, leaving their families and their jobs and their small businesses behind to suffer the economic consequences, but this Senate said no to the Durbin amendment. We have seen the enormous harm caused to employees and retirees by corporate mismanagement and fraud at major companies like Enron and WorldCom and Polaroid, which abused the bankruptcy laws to avoid their obligation to their own loyal workers. We have seen credit card rates go higher and higher and higher, as high as 30 percent or more, plus fees and penalties and charges, raising credit card profits by another $10 billion, even as general interest rates remain low. We have seen the credit card companies use a self-help remedy for the problems they create by their own indiscriminate and predatory marketing practices. They charge still higher risk-based rates to the very same people who can't even afford the lower bait-and-switch rates. We now know a lot more about the abuse of bankruptcy this bill was supposedly designed to address. Four years ago we were told we were a nation of bankruptcy abusers. But now, thanks to the careful study of actual bankruptcy case files, we know the truth. We know that 50 percent of the families who go bankrupt have suffered from serious medical problems and have exhausted their savings. Most of those families had paid for health insurance, but it still left them with no financial protection from serious illness or accidents. If the family is impacted by cancer, you know right at the outset, even if they have health insurance, they are going to have a $35,000 bill. If it is the heart or stroke, it may be $20,000. If they have a child, spina bifida, autism, other kinds of serious children's diseases, it is going to be $15,000 to $20,000. We know that right at the start. And in too many instances, that is just enough to throw hard-working Americans into the bankruptcy system and the harsh provisions of this legislation. Most of these families tried in every possible way to avoid bankruptcy for years. They gave up food and medicine and utilities and other necessities of life and even transferred their elderly parents into less adequate nursing homes in order to try and avoid bankruptcy. But facts like these don't bother the sponsors of this bill. They just make it up as they go along. In the past week, for example, some of us offered amendments that would exempt people from the burdensome procedures in this bill if their finances were devastated by medical problems or because they were called up for military duty, and they were voted down. Instead the bill's sponsors introduced and adopted a devious amendment that they said would do what our amendment did. But, of course, it did nothing of the kind. It simply added some words about medical costs and military callups in a way that did not change the real substance of the committee's bill. The sponsors also said our amendments exempting those below the median income from the means test were unnecessary because low-income filers were already exempt. If they really mean what they say about no means testing for people below the median income, then they should not be refusing to accept our amendment which makes that exemption absolutely clear. Another Democratic amendment would have placed a generous limit of 30 percent on the interest rates any credit card company could charge. It very carefully stated that it would not change the status quo in States which already had lower limits. That didn't stop the bill's supporters from claiming that the bill would be an intrusion on States rights because it would lift the limit in States with a lower limit. And perhaps the most outrageous claim of all, one which I thought was dead and buried after it was dragged out in 2001, was dragged out again--a big blue chart and all--and further inflated in their debate. The sponsors repeated the old chestnut that every American family is paying $400 a year in a hidden bankruptcy tax for abuses that this bill would stop. Only now they say this mysterious tax has risen to $550 per person per year. How is the original $400 number calculated? The debts discharged from all consumer bankruptcies each year are about $40 billion. There are 100 million families in the United States. Therefore, those consumer bankruptcies must be costing each family $400 per family. But this phony math assumes that every dollar discharged in bankruptcy, 100 percent, could have been collected in full, if not for the massive abuse of the system by every consumer who goes bankrupt. It assumes that the credit card companies and payday lenders and other lenders who collect this debt under the bill would somehow distribute it to all 100 million American families instead of keeping it for themselves. Obviously, neither of these assumptions is true. Even the bill's supporters have long ago conceded that the maximum conceivable amount recoverable from the consumer bankruptcies is about 10 percent of the total. Other estimates conclude that the real number is a small fraction of that. We don't have to guess what a responsible lender's loss from bankruptcy abuse might be. The lead-off pro-bill witness at our hearing on the bill was the head of the Wisconsin community credit union, testifying for the national credit union lobby. He told us in the last 9 years his credit union has had an average of 10 bankruptcies a year from 11,000 members. He estimated that the 9-year loss from abusive cases was $15,000 to $75,000, with the higher figure based on an unlikely assumption of 15 percent abuse. His credit union's loss from possible abuse spread across its entire membership was 15 to 74 cents a year per member--not per every family in his county or state, but just his members. Yes, a real 15 cents instead of the mythical $400 dollars we have heard about for years on this floor. Why is that lender's loss from abuse so low? Because that credit union cares about its members, who are also its owners. It gives them a credit level appropriate to their finances, and does not promote across-the-board increases in credit limits. It routinely monitors credit card debt for signs of trouble. When members hit hard times, the credit union does not pounce on them. It looks for ways to help them out. In short, it is a careful and responsible lender, not a predatory lender. Hello? Could this tell us something about the real problem here? Perhaps the credit card companies who are really pushing this bill should think again about having solicitation desks every fifty feet in the airport, offering gifts to anyone who signs up for a card. Perhaps they should think twice about offering multiple cards to young college students. Perhaps they should not encourage people to raise their card limits recklessly or send them pre-printed checks against their accounts in junk mailings. Perhaps they should not send monthly statements urging their customers to pay only the monthly minimum and pile up their debt. This bill does nothing to prevent the enticements that the credit card companies use to run up their profits. It does nothing to prevent the real abuses of the system by those who use unlimited homestead exemptions or ``protective'' trusts to hide tens of millions of dollars from the bankruptcy process. We still have time for common sense amendments on all of these issues, but unless there is a change in direction, Republican party discipline will be invoked to defeat them. In fact, the present bankruptcy system has an effective way of dealing with real abusers. Bankruptcy judges can and do deny the petitions of those who have defrauded or abused the bankruptcy process. The corporate sponsors of this bill know that, but their real motivation is only partly to squeeze millions more dollars from the people who do get into the bankruptcy system. The more insidious purpose of this bill is to frighten people away from the system altogether, by making it so burdensome and expensive, that they delay filing for bankruptcy or never file. That way, the predatory lenders can continue to collect excessive interest and fees and penalties month after month from people who cannot afford to pay them. What this bill does to catch the very small number of potential abusers--most of whom can be caught and screened out under the existing system--is to impose huge new paperwork and filing and counseling and other barriers on all those who seek to enter the system, whether they are above or below the median income level, and whether or not there is the slightest indication that they are trying to game the system. Why else would the bill place such strict and intolerable personal liability on the bankruptcy lawyer for mistakes made in the detailed information provided by the client? In Boston and throughout the country, pro-bono lawyers from leading firms now lend a hand with bankruptcy filings to people down on their luck. The sponsors know that if this bill passes, those firms will not let their lawyers do that public interest work, because the risk will be too high. There is so much wrong with this bill that we must take the time to get it right. That is why we must have a serious discussion and negotiation and amendment process. That is why we must defeat tomorrow's cloture vote and continue to seek a bill that is not an embarrassment to the Senate and the fundamental principle of fairness and simple justice for all. It's wrong, deeply wrong, for the Senate to rubber-stamp the greed of the credit card industry. In a few moments, the Senator from New York will be recognized. I wanted to add a word of support for his amendment. His amendment is not about abortion. It is about violence. Those who promote the culture of life should not be encouraging acts of violence against any members of our society. There is no legitimate reason to oppose this amendment. Those who break the law through violence and intimidation should not have bankruptcy as a shield. Finally, in a vote later this afternoon, the Senate will declare its true loyalties. Do we stand with low- and middle-income families who fall on hard times, or do we stand with the credit card companies looking for higher and higher profits at any cost? If we are true to our values, we will stand with America's families and defeat this bill because above all else, America stands for freedom and fairness and opportunity. There is nothing fair about a single parent struggling to make ends meet only to be gouged by credit card companies with double- digit rates. There is no freedom in falling ill with cancer and facing a mountain of medical bills only to be hounded by credit card companies to pay them first. And what is fair when an average American who has done everything right still has to go alone into bankruptcy court and stand up against the big credit card companies and all their might and try to make a fresh start? I am reminded of the words of Leviticus in the 25th chapter which reads: If one of your brethren becomes poor and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him, but fear your God that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money for usury nor lend him your food at a profit. One glance at the story of Fatemeh Hosseini shows that even when you try your hardest to repay your debts, you are met by the cold, cruel world of the credit card companies. With our vote this afternoon, we have an opportunity to live up to the words of Leviticus and our basic values as Americans and vote against this bill.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand it, we have an hour and a half on our side.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be temporarily set aside.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, at 5:30, the Senate will have an opportunity to vote on an increase in the minimum wage, and we have not had an opportunity to increase the minimum wage for some 8 years. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is now probably at its second lowest purchasing level in the history of the minimum wage and is deteriorating every single day, in terms of purchasing power. These individuals that work at the minimum wage are hard-working individuals, men and women of great pride--primarily women, and women with children, and in many instances men and women of color. Historically, this issue has not been a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats have joined together to raise the minimum wage because we have believed as a country and as a society that work is important, work should be rewarded, and that men and women who work hard, 40 hours a week, should not have to live in poverty, particularly those who have children. Nonetheless, we have seen that those millions of workers who work hard and work at the minimum wage have been falling farther and farther behind. People can ask, why is this relevant to the bankruptcy bill? In fact, a third of all bankruptcies take place from people who have income below the poverty level. What we see on this chart is the fact that the real minimum wage has fallen now to just about $10,000 a year for a family of three. It is about $5,000 below the poverty line. If you are able to get individuals up so they have more purchasing power, particularly against the background which has seen an explosion of health care premiums, housing costs--in my own State of Massachusetts, we have the second highest housing costs of any State in the country. The cost of the general standard of living has put enormous pressure on these individuals that are hard-working and are at the lower end of the economic ladder. So this has a direct relevancy to the bankruptcy bill--trying to raise individuals to a point where they are going to be able to meet their financial obligations; that is extremely important. We have seen, as I just mentioned, over the period of these past 5 years what has happened with health insurance, college tuition, housing, and gasoline. Most of these minimum wage workers have no such thing as health insurance, few are able to save for college tuition, housing has gone up dramatically, and many of them are dependent upon driving in order to get to available jobs. So they have been enormously impacted by the increase in costs. We have seen that four million more Americans have gone into poverty over the last 4 years. As a result of the census, more than 1 million more children have gone into poverty over the last 4 years. These statistics tell the story. What also tells the story is this chart, which shows that Americans' work hours have increased more than any other industrialized country in the world. This chart indicates, using a baseline, what has happened from 1970, the last 30 years, in terms of people working. We found out that Americans are working longer and harder than in most other industrial nations in the world. What we find is that they are working longer and harder and, look at the results of working long and hard. They are producing more but making less. The increase in terms of productivity has been anywhere from 25 to 30 percent American workers. Do you think that has been reflected in any increase in the minimum wage? Absolutely not. That is because Congress has been unwilling to increase the minimum wage. As a matter of fact, when I offered this legislation even on the welfare bill, which my friend and colleague from Pennsylvania says is where it belongs, the legislation was pulled last year, rather than having a debate and vote on an increase in the minimum wage. I offered it on State Department reauthorization because the other side--the Republican leadership--would not give us an opportunity or a vehicle on which to consider this legislation, or by itself, so it was necessary to try to amend existing legislation. They said, oh, no, and they pulled that legislation. When I offered it last year on the class action bill, they pulled the class action bill because they did not want to vote on an increase in the minimum wage. So we find that Americans are working harder; we find a dramatic increase in productivity; we see explosions in cost; we see the purchasing power of the minimum wage going down to its second lowest level; and we see that so many of these individuals who are below the line of poverty end up in bankruptcy. This is just the background. There will be those who will say we cannot really afford to have an increase in the minimum wage because it is going to add a great deal to the problems of inflation. Right? Wrong. First of all, this chart indicates exactly what the impact of the increase in the minimum wage is in our budget. All Americans combined earn $5.4 trillion a year. A minimum wage increase to $7.25 would be less than one-fifth of 1 percent of national payroll. Do we understand that? The payroll is $5.4 trillion a year and we are talking about less than one-fifth of 1 percent. This doesn't have an adverse impact on inflation in terms of this country. We have seen from the various studies, which we will refer to later, that neither does it have in terms of employment. This is an issue, ultimately, about fairness. That is why this is so important. It is interesting that this Congress has not hesitated to vote itself a pay increase during this period of time, but not for the minimum wage earners. The height of hypocrisy will be this afternoon. The height of hypocrisy will be this afternoon when those individuals in the U.S. Senate say no to $7.25 an hour for hard-working Americans after they have accepted a $28,500 pay increase for themselves over the last 8 years. Do you understand that? They have been willing to vote on a pay increase for themselves, and we will find out whether they are going to vote for hard-working Americans who are trying to make ends meet and provide for their families and their children. It is as stark as that. That is what happened. This is where the minimum wage has been since the last increase in 1997. It has been flat over all these years--but not for the Members of Congress. You can understand why Members don't want to vote on increasing the minimum wage; it is because of that. It is not very surprising to me because we had an increase under the first President Bush. We had an increase in the minimum wage under President Ford and one under President Eisenhower. We have had it in a bipartisan way throughout history. But absolutely not now. The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States says, no way. This is the record of where we have seen it: Dwight Eisenhower, Jerry Ford, the first President Bush, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. It has been bipartisan over the period of history. It is baffling to me why in the world we cannot get an increase now. What is the reason? What is the reason we hear so much about values? Don't we figure that working hard is a value in our society? Don't we think that rewarding work is a value in our society? We will find out this afternoon. We will find out this afternoon, at 5:30, whether our colleagues think that rewarding the men and women who work hard, not just on one minimum wage job but often two or three minimum wage jobs, is a value. A principal, in surveys of children of these minimum wage workers, asked the children what their biggest complaints are. It is not that they are not able to get Christmas presents at Christmastime. It is not that they cannot afford to buy a birthday present for a fellow student's birthday. It is not that they cannot afford any skates to be able to join the other children skating. It is that they say they don't see their parents enough. They don't see their parents enough. There is not enough time with their parents. That is repeated time in and time out, again and again, as one of the primary concern of the children of minimum wage workers. Here we are debating the bankruptcy bill that has been written by the credit card companies, which have $30 billion in profits this year and are looking to collect billions of dollars more as a result of this legislation. That is going to turn our bankruptcy courts into collecting agencies for the credit card industry. And we are going to say, oh, no, no, we cannot afford $7.25 for working men and women. We can afford billions of dollars for the credit card companies--and I mean billions of dollars, probably the most profitable industry in this country--but we cannot afford to have an increase in the minimum wage. No, it adds to the payrolls of companies. It is going to be inflationary. Why are we setting a minimum wage? Let these people work harder. At 5:30 p.m., we are going to have two votes. One is going to be to increase the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps: 70 cents 60 days after enactment, 70 cents a year later, and 70 cents a year after that. My friend from Pennsylvania has offered an alternative amendment, the Santorum amendment. For those who are giving some thought to the fact that maybe going to $7.25 is a little bit too much, maybe the Santorum amendment makes more sense. I hope they will listen to me now. The Santorum amendment gives half of the increase to minimum wage workers with one hand and then--listen to me--takes away minimum wage, overtime, and equal pay rights from over 10 million workers with the other hand. It takes just one page of the Santorum amendment--here is my amendment, Mr. President. It is three pages to raise the minimum wage to $7.25. Here is the Santorum amendment--85 pages. If he was only raising the minimum wage half of what I propose, he would be able to do it in three pages, too. That ought to say something to our colleagues. What else is in the amendment? It is extraordinary. It takes one page, as I mentioned, to raise the minimum wage, and 84 pages are special interest giveaways that take rights away from workers. The Senator from Pennsylvania has a record of opposing the increase in the minimum wage, and I understand that. That is his record. He has voted against it at least 17 times in the last 10 years, so today is really no different. The Santorum amendment will increase the minimum wage by $1.10 cents an hour. It will benefit 1.8 million workers. Do we understand that-- 1.8 million workers. He goes up to $6.25. Ours goes to $7.25 and benefits 7.3 million directly and an additional 8 million more Americans; 3.4 million of those are parents with children. But Santorum benefits only 1.8 million. He is not just saying we will take $6.25 in place of $7.25; we only want that. Oh, no, he is only covering 1.8 million. That is enormously important. So what does he do? The Santorum amendment makes more than 10 million workers no longer eligible for the minimum wage, no longer eligible for overtime pay, no longer eligible for equal pay rights by repealing the individual coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act and raising the threshold to $1 million a year from $500,000. Those workers who work in the small stores that are involved in interstate commerce who are covered under minimum wage, not under Santorum, are excluded. If there is a State minimum wage, they are covered. We have a number of States that do not have any minimum wage whatsoever. Then he raises the level from $500,000 to $1 million as a threshold for the coverage. This is what he does: By eliminating the individual Fair Labor Standards Act coverage and raising the business exemption to $1 million, the Republican proposal jeopardizes worker protections for over 10 million workers. Those workers will lose minimum wage, overtime, and equal pay protections. What do I mean by they lose overtime? This is what the Santorum amendment does. Under current law, if the employer wants to work out flexible time with their employees, they can do it as long as it is done within the 40-hour workweek. That is all legitimate and fair. But under the current law, if an employer wants to work a worker 50 hours this week and 30 hours the next, they have 10 hours of overtime. Under the Santorum amendment, they can work 50 hours one week and 30 hours the next and no overtime. This affects millions of workers who are going to find out they are going to get a real pay cut. That is what is in the Santorum amendment. The Santorum amendment also prohibits States from providing stronger wage protections than the Federal Government for waiters, waitresses, and other employees who rely heavily on their tips for earnings. Do we understand that, Mr. President? The Santorum amendment puts the long Federal arm right at the throats of the States and tells them there is no way they can provide the extra reimbursement to these workers. In the State of Pennsylvania, employers are required to pay their tipped employees $2.83 an hour. Yet this amendment would deny the hard- working waiters and waitresses the 70 cents an hour employee-provided wages. That is not true in every State, but Pennsylvania made that decision. And here on the floor of the Senate is an amendment to deny the people of Pennsylvania from carrying forward their judgment. Mr. President, 22-year-old Julie Phillips in Johnstown, PA, is working two part-time jobs--one at minimum wage making $5.15 an hour and another as a waitress at a Chinese restaurant. This amendment would deny Julie 70 cents an hour in wages from her minimum wage job. She would have to rely on unpredictable tips from her second job instead. The amendment also gives a free pass to violators of a broad range of consumer, environmental, and labor protections by prohibiting the Federal agencies from assessing civil fines for first-time reported violations. It also preempts the ability of States to enforce these laws. The States are enforcing these laws, but under the Santorum amendment, they will be denied the opportunity to enforce those laws. Those laws are there to protect the workers, but he preempts the ability of States to enforce these laws. Once again, we are on the Senate floor with legislation written by special interests which will help them the most. The bankruptcy bill was written by the credit card companies, the class action bill was written by corporations, deceiving and overcharging their customers, and now we have the minimum wage bill written by the restaurant industry and retailers looking for a way to fatten their bottom lines. If the Republicans were truly interested in raising the minimum wage, they would not have loaded their proposal with these antiworker poison pills that are special interest giveaways. It is hard to believe our Republican colleagues are serious about this thinly veiled attack on low-income workers. There are many ways to help small businesses without denying rights to millions of minimum wage workers. We worked together in the past to provide reasonable small business tax relief, along with the minimum wage. I would be willing to do that again. Three times in the last Congress, the Republican leadership brought down a bill rather than let us vote on it. So their actions speak louder than words. A week ago, our Republican friends were touting their so-called antipoverty agenda. But as we see with their agenda, what they really are doing is creating a deeper poverty agenda. If they are truly serious about helping hard-working families rise above the poverty line, they will support our amendment to give a fair raise to America's low-income workers. It is shameful that in America today, the richest, most powerful Nation on Earth, nearly one-fifth of all children go to bed hungry because their parents are working full time at the minimum wage and still cannot make ends meet. That is a key part of any real antipoverty agenda: ending childhood poverty. But the Republican proposal will actually plunge even more children into poverty. Mr. President, 3.4 million children have parents who would get an immediate raise under our proposal. Hundreds of thousands of those children will be left behind by the Santorum amendment. The poison pills in the Santorum amendment will be particularly harsh for children. Think about the single mother with two children working as a waitress in Minnesota. Under the Santorum amendment, she will lose her guaranteed right to the minimum wage, leaving her paycheck smaller and her children less secure. Think about a garment worker working 80 hours a week to provide for her family. Her husband, a janitor, relies on overtime as well to pay for food, rent, and clothes for their children. They will lose their overtime coverage under this amendment, and both parents will take a pay cut. Some antipoverty agenda. According to the Families and Work Institute, among the most important aspects children would most like to change about their working parents are these: They wish their parents were less stressed out by their work; they wish they were less exhausted by their work; and they wish they could spend more time with them. But this amendment will deny overtime for more than 10 million workers, leaving them less time to spend with their children. What is more, this amendment would tie the hands of Federal and State agencies trying to enforce the Federal laws that protect families, children, and communities. It weakens the gun safety protections under the Brady Act, which could lead to an increase in weapons sales to criminals, jeopardizing our neighbors and children's safety. It weakens environmental laws that require companies to disclose their toxic emissions. It weakens reporting requirements under the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. It undermines consumer protection laws that require companies to report on the safety of their food. These provisions put all Americans, especially children, at risk of increased exposure to pollution, toxic substances, and serious illness from unsafe foods. We teach our children the importance of hard work. We encourage them to do their best in school and be good citizens. We tell them their reward will be good jobs that fulfill their hopes and dreams and enable them to support healthy families. That is what America is about. But for the 36 million Americans who live and work in poverty today, that dream is unfulfilled. They work as hard as any American--often harder-- but too often they are forced into bankruptcy because the minimum wage will not cover their bills and give their families the support they need. We can no longer turn our back on our fellow citizens, but that is exactly what is happening in the Senate. Raising the minimum wage is critical to preventing the economic free-fall that often leads to bankruptcy. Amending the bankruptcy bill to increase the minimum wage will help many of the people this so-called reform is likely to hurt: low-income families, minorities, and women. As I mentioned, nearly a third of those who file for bankruptcy are in poverty at the time they file. That is half a million families who are already living below the poverty line and will be plunged into further hardship with this bankruptcy bill, and many of them are minimum wage earners. In the current economy, millions of Americans are suffering: 8 million are unemployed, 45 million are without health insurance, and 13 million children live in poverty. Poverty has doubled for full-time, full-year workers since the 1970s. Minimum wage employees work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, and they deserve to be fairly paid. Low-income families are being squeezed in every direction by the economy, and families are just barely balancing on a cliff of piling bills, hoping they will not topple over. Their costs are rising but not their wages. To make matters worse, the credit card companies prey on low-income workers. They know these workers are desperate. They offer loans at exorbitant interest rates that are made to seem cheaper than they are by three of the most deceptive words in the English language: minimum monthly payment. While workers struggle, credit card companies reap skyrocketing profits from their hardships. This is not only an economic issue, it is a family issue and women's issue. Divorced women are 300 percent more likely than single or married women to find themselves in bankruptcy court, often because they are owed child support or alimony and cannot collect it. They are trying to raise their children but they face a daunting challenge. This bill will make it harder for them to meet that challenge. Sixty-one percent of those who will benefit from the minimum wage increase are women and one-third of those women are mothers. The minimum wage is so low today that many workers have to work several minimum wage jobs in order to make ends meet. Look what our program will do: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25. That is $4,400 to a minimum wage family. That is 2 years of child care. That is full tuition for a community college. That is a year and a half of heat and electricity. It is more than a year of groceries. It is more than 9 months of rent. That may not sound like a lot for people around here, but that means a great deal to the people who can benefit from this. History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage does not have a negative effect on jobs, employment, or inflation. In the first 4 years after the last minimum wage increase, the economy had its strongest growth in three decades. More than 11 million new jobs were added at a rate of 200,000 a month. Compare that to the 530,000 private sector jobs lost since this administration took office. Minimum wage will not cause more job losses, but staying the course on failed economic policies will. Overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens in Nevada and Florida showed the way last November by voting for a higher minimum wage in their States. It is time for the Republican Party to stop obstructing a fair increase in the minimum wage for all employees across the Nation, and I hope that our Members would support this. I ask unanimous consent that Senators Lieberman, Durbin, Sarbanes, and Harkin be added as cosponsors to the amendment.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will take a moment or two to respond to my good friend from New Hampshire and then also to the Senator from Pennsylvania with regard to the points they have made. First of all, I will respond to the Senator from New Hampshire about the question of whether the increase in minimum wage is really good for low-income working people and whether this isn't going to create more problems for working people because of the increase in the minimum wage. He mentioned, if this was such good medicine--$7.25--why aren't we going for $20 or $25? The obvious simple answer for that is we are talking about a minimum wage, we are not talking about a maximum wage. I haven't even gotten into discussing what has been happening at the upper end of the economic ladder and the stories over the weekend that showed the bonuses are going to the wealthiest individuals in the corporate world. They have increased astronomically in a period of the last few years. Since the midthirties, we have had a minimum wage because we believed as a matter of social justice men and women who are going to work in this country and have families should at least have some minimum standard, some minimum safety net; that this society is not the society of survival of the fittest, but it is also a ``we'' society, not just a ``me'' society. There has been a recognition of the importance of the minimum wage. I will include in the Record the support for the increase of the minimum wage. Mr. President, 552 economists agree, including a number of Nobel laureates. This is a summation of what they say. We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effect that critics have claimed. In particular, we share the view of the Council of Economic Advisers' economic report, that the weight of evidence suggests that the modest increase in the minimum wage has had very little or no effect on employment. That is what an outstanding group of economists have said. Let us not just take what they have said, let us take a look at the facts in terms of employment and job growth. If you look over at this chart, you will find the increase in the minimum wage in October of 1996. We had an increase in the minimum wage. In October of 1997, it went up again. The minimum wage increased to $4.75 in 1996, and then it went up to $5.15 an hour. This red line is an indication of the job growth during this period of time. I don't accept the arguments that my good friend from New Hampshire has made--that this is going to mean the loss of jobs. It just has not been so. If you look at the historic lows of unemployment after the minimum wage, if you look again in 1996, the minimum wage went to $4.75, and unemployment went up. It picked up a tenth of a point, but then it started down. The minimum wage goes up to $5.15, and what happened? It continues to go down. Here is the last time that we have the increase in the minimum wage, and we see it had absolutely no impact--none, zero--in terms of unemployment, as we reported, for good reason, because it is less than one-fifth of 1 percent of total payroll. So it has no impact in terms of unemployment, and it has virtually no impact in terms of inflation. But it does have an important impact in terms of social justice. This chart is interesting. It indicates that the States with the higher minium wage add more jobs. These are the 39 States with the minimum wage at $5.15. Their employment growth has been 4.1 percent, and some have been somewhat higher at 6.2 percent. We have debated this time in and time out. The most inclusive studies were the Card-Krueger studies and the conclusions they have made. They are from Princeton, NJ. Contrary to the central prediction of the textbook model of the minimum wage, but consistent with a number of recent studies based on a cross-sectional time series comparison of affected and under-affected communities of unaffected markets or employees, we find no evidence that the rise in New Jersey's minimum wage reduced employment. This is pretty well established. It has a dramatic impact in other areas. I listened with interest to the Senator from Pennsylvania talking about the increase in the minimum wage. Better than 60 percent of the increase in the minimum wage goes for the lowest 40 percent on the economic ladder. Let us look at what has been happening in our country in the recent times since the last increase in the minimum wage. This is in the area of hunger. We have the survey of hunger and homelessness by the Conference of Mayors. This is December 2004. This is in their summary: Officials in the survey estimate that during the past year, requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent, with 96 percent of the cities registering an increase; requests for food assistance by families with children increased by an average of 13 percent; 56 percent of the people requesting emergency food were members of families, children and parents; 34 percent of adults requesting food assistance were employed. These are people who just can't make it with the $5.15 increase in the minimum wage. Then I heard about flextime. We are all for flextime. The argument is very simple on the issue of flextime. Our Republican friends want flextime when the employer can decide it. They have flextime now under current minimum wage. They can work that out with regard to flextime, up to 40 hours. Then, if it is going to be more than 40 hours, they have the overtime. But they negotiated that out. That is permitted today under the law. But that isn't what the Senator's amendment would say. If the employer wants that individual to work 50 hours 1 week, and 30 hours the next week, the employer can make up their mind. Why is it always the individual employer who makes it up? It was nice to hear my friend from Pennsylvania say they work it out over in their office, and sometimes they work longer hours. I would say, by and large, they work it out--the employees work it out. I doubt very much for many of us in the Senate, if we just told our people what they were going to have to do, if they did not do it in the sense of expectation and teamwork, I don't think we are going to be very much value to many of our constituents. The fact is, under the Santorum amendment one person makes that decision on flextime, and that is the employer. If the employee says, Look, I have a child who is in a play that I would like to go to, and the employer says, No, you can't go--you don't go. We tried for many years. I mentioned before the Senator arrived on the floor of the Senate, I think he has been against any increase in the minimum wage 17 times. It is a little difficult to get much encouragement. I think the Murray amendment asked that an employee would be able to take 24 hours off with sufficient notice because of a child with medical appointments, or because a child might be in a play, or a child might have some special event. I was here many times when the Senator from the State of Washington offered that amendment. It was voted down every single time. The only way we get flextime is when the employer does it. That is not fair. That is not right. He is correct. That is what this bill does. And he will permit the employer to make that judgment. I want to make another point or two about the U.S. Conference of Mayors study. Seventeen percent of the homeless people in cities, according to the Conference of Mayors, are employed. Ten percent are veterans. The demand for emergency shelter is increasing. Seventy percent of the cities are reporting an increase in the last year, and the percentage of cities reporting an increase with homeless families with children is even greater. This is what is happening. It isn't just the Senator from Massachusetts. This is the Conference of Mayors telling about what is happening in urban and rural America. It is also about growth. This is the general challenge. We have too many Americans who are now living in poverty. One in every 10 families, up to 44 million Americans, live poverty-- one out of every six children; one out of every five Hispanics; one out of every four Americans. The greatest impact of raising the minimum wage is going to be lifting up Hispanics and African American workers. That is what the statistics demonstrate. I don't know why we have the imperative of constantly saying no, that we are just not going to help people who are working and want to work. An interesting point--not a major one--is that when we raise the minimum wage, it not only affects the 15 million lowest income people; some of those people then will not be eligible for some of the other programs. So it saves the taxpayer some money. We move them out and work with the earned-income tax credit. We have the earned-income tax credit that works with families who have children. If there is an increase in the earned-income tax credit, if you have two or three children, that is the way to go. For a single worker, if we are talking about a single mom with one or two children, an increase of the minimum wage is the way to go. As a society, if you are interested in trying to do something about poverty and working families, you are trying to do something about both of those. My friend from Iowa is here and I want to mention to him, because he has been a leader in the Senate regarding overtime compensation, under the Santorum amendment, this will take away the overtime rights that exist for minimum wage workers because it excludes 10 million workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act--6 million last year--and it will result in millions losing their overtime coverage. The second point I mention to my friend from Iowa, in this legislation there is a prohibition for States to enforce their tax credit provisions. We have the tip credit for $2.12 or $2.13, and that is the Federal credit. Under the Santorum amendment, we are taking away any kind of enforcement of that, not just by the Federal Government but the State government. I brought this up earlier because I want to remind the Senator from Iowa the amendment on the increase in the minimum wage happens to be 3 pages long; his is 85 pages. That includes not only the tip credit, not only eliminating from coverage those workers who work even in companies that are capitalized at $500,000, if they are in interstate commerce-- That has been part of the minimum wage since the 1930s--but the Senator from Pennsylvania wants to take out that kind of coverage. Hundreds of thousands of workers will lose their coverage. I don't understand why he is targeting those individuals. Quite frankly, the most incredible provision in this amendment is to eliminate any kind of enforcement. The Senator might have difficulty in following all of the points I am raising on the amendment, but on page 14 of the Santorum amendment it sounds very appealing. Small Business Paperwork Reduction; skip over to page 16 and we find out on the bottom of that, line 22, what it is about. Notwithstanding any other provision, no State may impose a civil penalty on a small business concern. And it applies that to every kind of unsafe work conditions, including air pollution, toxic substances, unsafe food. What in the world are we thinking of? Why would we include those? What is the reason we are doing that? I don't understand it. I can understand the Senator from Pennsylvania saying he wants a lower increase in the minimum wage, but then to have provisions in his amendment which are so punitive to millions of workers--not just on the overtime but in terms of protecting those workers that get the tip credit of $2.12 and then depend on tips for the rest of it, and to say, no, we are not going to enforce the $2.12.

Mr. KENNEDY. Briefly.

Mr. KENNEDY. If you read from page 21, the top line from 2 down to line 16, it effectively states: ``may not establish or enforce any laws that require employers to tip credit employee.''

Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator understands that every State has to have the tip credit at the present time. They have to have the $2.12.

Mr. KENNEDY. Under Federal law at the present time, every State has to have a minimum of $2.13 and then the States can add on top of that. Many of the States do. The State of Pennsylvania has added, I believe, 60 or 70 cents on top of that. So when you talk about not permitting any States to enforce the tip credit, you are talking all the States. That is the way we read it.

Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator can clarify that language, we would be glad to work with him. I see my friend and colleague. We have pointed out the fact that we have not increased the minimum wage now in 8 years. It is at the second lowest purchasing level in nearly 60 years. A third of all those that go into bankruptcy are those below the poverty line. This has a direct relevancy to the underlying bill because we are trying to raise up people with the minimum wage. We are not going to get them up to the poverty line, but we will probably raise up some people as a result of the increase. Therefore, it is appropriate to this legislation. It is long, long overdue. It seems to me at a time we are doing so much for the credit card industries, companies that have billions of dollars in profits, that we ought to be willing to make work pay. I know that bothers some Senators. It bothers the Senator from New Hampshire who criticized this and said, Well, we do not want to be like the Soviet Union and like communist countries. It is interesting that Great Britain just went up to more than $9 for the minimum wage last week. They have the most successful economy in Europe at the present time. They have taken 1.2 million children out of poverty. They have the lowest home mortgages in 50 years. They brought unemployment down. And they are trying to do better for the children that are living in poverty. They have just raised their minimum wage in Great Britain. I will include the other countries that are not, allegedly, Communist. That includes a good many of the European countries: Belgium, Ireland, U.K., Portugal, France, Spain, and Greece. I don't think the argument was serious.

Mr. KENNEDY. I am happy to yield.

Mr. KENNEDY. I think the argument made by my friend--and I want to be careful about how I explain it. He took issue when I said in the Senate Chamber what I believed, that this is a value issue. We hear a great deal about the importance of values, having work pay, respecting that work is a value issue. It is a family issue that affects children. However, it is a value issue. It indicates that we believe work should pay. My good friend, and he is my friend from New Hampshire, said that sounded an awful like a government establishing pay like Communist economies did. I don't want to go into it a great deal more.

Mr. KENNEDY. More than 60 years.

Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely right. I want to catch my friend from Pennsylvania before he walks out. The Senator is quite correct. In a more basic way, this has been something Republicans and Democrats have worked on together. President Eisenhower, the first President Bush, President Ford--all supported an increase. Since the time I have been here we have had bipartisan coalitions. But as the Senator remembers, under the Republican leadership they have refused to do so. I mention one thing to my friend from Pennsylvania. I have a letter, which I will include in an appropriate place, from Ohio State University, from a professor of law who said the proposed Santorum legislation would also reduce existing protections provided to tip employees by prohibiting State and local governments from enforcing any State or local law that fails to grant a 100 percent tip credit. That is, employers would be allowed under State and local law to pay nothing to tip employees as long as their tips from customers add up to the minimum wage. This provision would even override the laws of States that have eliminated the tip credit entirely or that require tip employees to be paid minimum wage by their employers. That is the reason I mentioned this earlier. If that was not the intention of the Senator, hopefully we can correct that.

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, there is a point that I would hope our colleagues would pay close attention to, and that is that the Santorum amendment will eliminate the equal pay provision for women working for companies with sales of less than $1 million. This is enormously important. The Republican amendment gives pennies to minimum wage workers with one hand. With the other, it takes thousands of dollars away from minimum wage, middle-class, and women workers. As I mentioned earlier, it slowed it up with antiworker poison pills, and the pill that is the hardest to swallow of the Republican amendments effectively denies over 10 million more workers minimum wage, overtime pay, and equal pay protections by eliminating the Fair Labor Standards Act coverage completely. Currently, all employees who work for employers that are engaged in interstate commerce and have gross annual sales of at least $500,000 are guaranteed Fair Labor Standard protections. But even in businesses that have less than $500,000 in annual sales, the employees still have individual Fair Labor Standard coverage if they are engaged in interstate commerce. The Santorum amendment raises the $500,000 annual sales threshold to $1 million, as he mentioned, and virtually eliminates this individual Fair Labor Standard coverage, even for workers who are engaged in interstate commerce. It makes one exception for workers engaged in industrial housework. It allows businesses to pay their workers less than the Federal minimum wage, requires them to work longer hours without overtime pay, and to be able to pay men and women differently. The gross annual sales threshold was created as a way to determine the employers that are engaged in interstate commerce, not as a way to exempt the workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act. For over 60 years, Congress has amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide even more workers with the minimum wage. Instead of trying to exclude over 10 million workers from the guaranteed minimum wage, we should raise it. I refer to the paragraph of the Fair Labor Standards Act, paragraph 206, that says each employer shall pay to each of his employees whose work is engaged in commerce, in the production of goods for commerce-- that is those who are being paid who are working for companies earning less than $500,000. In the same paragraph it says: No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate. Those are eliminated. So we don't have equal pay for equal work in the United States. There are only a few areas where we do. It is in this particular area that we do and the Santorum amendment eliminates it for those individuals. I say to our colleagues here in the Senate who care about equal pay for equal work for women, this is a bad deal.

Mr. KENNEDY. The history for interstate workers is that from 1938, when the minimum wage was first passed, the minimum wage has applied to them. That is being changed by the Senator from Pennsylvania. We understand that. That is being changed. It is going to have a profound effect on millions of workers. It is not only by the provisions, the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, it is not only the payment, but it is also the equal payment. Second, there have been different rules with regard to retail workers. There was the overall figure of $1 million that was used on retail workers. That was reduced to $500,000 and even down to $250,000. So we have been dealing with this for many times. The point of the matter is, under the Santorum amendment, the way it is constructed, there will be millions and millions and millions who will be outside the coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. That is plain and simple.

Mr. KENNEDY. I only have a few minutes left now. The point I was making earlier, when I offered our amendment, it is 3 pages long, to deal with the increases in the minimum wage for workers. The Senator from Pennsylvania has an 85-page law. He has opposed the minimum wage 17 times in 10 years. Minimum wagers, beware.

Mr. KENNEDY. I have to withhold my remaining time.

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 5 minutes.