Ted Kennedy

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. KENNEDY. I join my leader urging the House to move forward promptly. Would the leader not agree with me that at the current time our borders are effectively broken and that only means a real potential danger to our national security, and that our legislation that passed in the Senate would address that aspect of the immigration issue? Would the Senator agree with me on that?

Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator will yield for another brief question, the Senator would agree with me that effectively our borders are broken. The employer enforcement program that exists today is in tatters, as we have seen from the GAO report. There is continuously this Third World underground economy that is operating effectively out of control. All those issues were addressed effectively and in a bipartisan way in the Senate. Would the Senator not agree with me that if the House continues to avoid a conference and the hopeful aspect of a reasonable compromise, we fail the American people in dealing with these extremely important public policy issues in a bipartisan way?

Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator realizes, we have $25 billion for border security and other immigration enforcement. Evidently, the House doesn't believe that is something that ought to get passed if we are not going to have a resolution of that issue, $25 billion in terms of enforcement spending that is authorized. If we don't get that passed, we don't have that $25 billion; am I correct?

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, in a short while, we will have an opportunity in the Senate to vote on whether we are going to provide an increase in the minimum wage that will affect approximately 15 million Americans. We have not, as has been pointed out in our discussions yesterday and the day before, increased the minimum wage in the last 9 years. Even the $5.15 an hour, the current minimum wage, has lost, since 9 years ago, about 20 percent of its purchasing power. The men and women who earn the minimum wage are men and women of dignity. They take pride in doing the jobs they do, although they do very menial work at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. They work as teachers assistants in our schools. They work in the nursing homes looking after the men and women who have made this country the great country it is. They provide the essential services in many of the buildings of our Nation, where American commerce is taking place. They work and they play by the rules and still they fall further and further behind. I think there is a broad agreement in this body--there should be-- that if you are going to work in the United States and you are going to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you should not have to live in poverty. But these individuals do. We have seen what has happened to the minimum wage over recent years. The minimum wage jobs are not jobs that get you out of poverty. Minimum wage jobs are jobs that keep you in poverty. That is a rather dramatic difference from what we have had historically when we had Democratic and Republican administrations all voting for an increase in the minimum wage and an expansion of minimum wage coverage. So that is the issue that is going to be before us, whether we are going to go over a 2-year period and raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. There are those who are strongly opposed to it. We heard some of those voices yesterday. They say let's let the market decide on these issues. Let's let the market make the judgment and decide whether $5.15 is fair or whether we should see even a reduction. We have a number of States that have no minimum wage whatsoever, none. It is amazing. Six States have no minimum wage. One State has minimum wage of $2.65 an hour. I think Americans have made the judgment that a minimum wage ought to be a minimum wage and people who work ought to be able to at least get the essentials in life. Of course, that is impossible today with the explosion in costs. We have seen the explosion of costs taking place, whether it is gasoline, education funds, health care or whether it is food, but we have not seen an increase in the minimum wage. We have seen an increase in salaries of the Members of the Senate. That has gone through. We have seen that over the last 9 years. We have increased our salaries with the cost of living by some $30,000, but we refuse to provide an increase in the minimum wage for primarily women because 59 percent of these individuals who would benefit are women. They work hard. Many of those women have children. So it is a women's issue and a children's issue. It is also a family issue. We hear a great deal in the public discourse about family values, about our value system in the United States. Is X, Y, and Z public policy issue consistent with our values? Certainly, if you are talking about having someone who is going to work 40 hours a week, a women who works hard and is trying to raise a child, whether they are going to be able to have any family time together effectively or whether that woman is going to have to work two or three jobs and have little or no time with that child is a family issue and is a values issue. Americans understand that. So this is a values issue. The leaders of our great religions understand it. That is why the members of the churches in our country have been in strong support--and I will come back to that in a minute--of an increase in the minimum wage. It is also a civil rights issue because so many of those men and women entering the job market at this level are men and women of color. It is a children's issue, a women's issue and, mostly I as I have said many times and continue to say, it is a fairness issue. Americans understand fairness. Work hard and play by the rules in the richest country in the world and you should not have to live in poverty. Yet we find that at the end of the year, these families are $6,000 below the poverty line and they are falling further behind. This is it. We'are not going to get another chance. Arguments will be made that, well, you should not offer it on this particular legislation. This is the Defense authorization bill. We say: Look, Mr. Republican leader, give us a chance to have a direct up-or-down vote on the increase in the minimum wage. You have your alternative on it. Give us a freestanding bill and I have indicated that we would withdraw this amendment, but we have been unable to get that. All of us understand legislatively that we are moving more and more rapidly into the appropriations, and there is going to be a point of order made against legislating on appropriations. This legislation is appropriate for a very basic and fundamental reason. That is why our men and women who wear the American uniform are fighting in Iraq and fighting in Afghanistan--to defend American values and ideals. One of the American values is fairness here at home. It is treating people fairly for a day's work. That is an American value. That is one of the values these Americans are fighting for. That is why it is appropriate here. I don't know offhand, though, if we had more time--and I will find out next time we debate this issue because even if we get $7.25 an hour, we are still failing to meet the needs of working poor. I don't know how many servicemen are in the military serving overseas whose parents are earning the minimum wage, but there are scores of them. So this is about the values we hold in this country and the values worth protecting by the military of this country. That is what it is talking about. We understand there are important debates going on through noontime, and as far as I am concerned, they can go on through the evening. The idea that we are taking a few moments this morning to talk about an issue that affects some 15 million of our fellow citizens--this Senate could find plenty of time to debate the estate taxes, plenty of time to debate flag burning. I don't know when the last flag was burned in my State of Massachusetts, but we have plenty of time to deal with that. We have had plenty of time on the Federal marriage amendment. But we don't want to deal with an increase in the minimum wage that affects 15 million people. There you are. There are the priorities. It could not be clearer. So we know where we stand. We are always asked how we stand on different issues: What do you believe in? We will have a very good opportunity this morning to indicate what we believe in. That is basically the framework of this issue. Mr. President, how much time have I used?

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 4 more minutes. Mr. President, this letter is from the heads of 33 major religious groups calling on Congress to do its moral duty to raise the minimum wage. This is the Let Justice Roll, which is an organization of faith and community leaders: As leaders of our respective faith communities, we call on Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage in the 109th session. For too long, the ranks of the working poor have grown in this country. For too long, low-wage workers have been unable to support themselves and their families, even though they work several jobs, trying to make ends meet. Poverty has become a disease, striking at the very heart of the United States, attacking the most vulnerable, even as the wealthy few continue to accumulate far more than their reasonable share. It is unacceptable that such a state of affairs be allowed to continue, as year after year, Congress fails to pass an increase in the Federal minimum wage. Prophetic voices through the ages have called upon their nations to show justice to the poorest and most vulnerable in society. The Prophet Amos exhorts the people of Israel, ``Hate evil and love good, and establish justice. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.'' Then, and now, the assembled people of God are called upon to establish justice for low-wage workers, whose cries are so often heard across our land. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter and the signers be printed in the Record.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, when we asked people to sign on as citizen cosponsors of the Fair Minimum Wage Act, 1,000 religious leaders answered the call. They took a stand to say that minimum wage is a moral issue that must be addressed. They have come together from all denominations, all walks of life to send this important message. I will take a couple more moments. First, I remind my colleagues in the Senate that support for an increase in the minimum wage is going like a wildfire across the country. This chart indicates in red those States which have increased the minimum wage above the Federal Government minimum wage. Look at this: Arkansas and Illinois. The States in yellow are those States where the minimum wage will likely be on the ballot this fall. Illinois, Florida, North Carolina--red States--passed an increase in the minimum wage in both houses, but they have not been reconciled. North Carolina, Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart, increased the minimum wage. This is happening in the countryside. I remind the Senate again, with the failure to increase the minimum wage, what the impact has been on families and on the poor. From 2000 to 2004, we failed to increase the minimum wage and 1.4 million more children have fallen into poverty. If we look at what has been happening to families, 5.4 million more Americans are in poverty over the last 4 years. This does not bring it up to 2006. This would continue to grow. It is 5.4 million now. The best estimate is we have 1.4 million more children who are now in poverty. In terms of the industrialized nations of the world, this is what has happened: We have the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world, and we haven't increased our minimum wage. I remind my colleagues what has been happening in other countries. Tony Blair said 7 years ago that he was going to end poverty in Britain by 2020. There were 4 million children living in poverty, and he said, as a matter of national direction and vision, that he was going to eliminate poverty for children by 2020. This is what they have done. They will have a minimum wage of $9.80--$9.80--an hour this October. They have moved 1.8 million children out of poverty over the last 4 years. The United States has refused to increase the minimum wage, and we have put 1.4 million children into poverty. That is completely unacceptable. This is the time.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I will take 2 minutes to respond to my friend from Alabama, and then I see the Senator from Connecticut on the floor. The Senator from Alabama has made the best case for comprehensive immigration reform because if you are not going to have the comprehensive reform, you are going to have the continuation of the pressure of driving wages down, as we find our employers hiring the undocumented workers. It has been his administration--according to the General Accounting Office, the Republican administration--that has refused to enforce employer sanctions against the employers who are currently doing it. There have been three cases in the last 4 years, $220,000 in fines. If he is so worried about this, I would say, Why aren't we after the Labor Department to try to do something about it? Second point: For those who are going to come into the United States--and they ought to be able to come into the United States as workers, if there is a job an American does not take--there is going to be the labor protections, which do not exist today. There is going to be prevailing wage protections, there are Davis-Bacon protections, if they work in contract, if they work in construction, and service contract employees. None of that has been mentioned by the Senator from Alabama. That is an entirely different current situation. And we are going to have 7,000 inspectors to make sure that it is enforced, which does not exist now and is a principal reason why we have the kinds of results the Senator from Alabama refers to. Mr. President, he has made the best case possible for passing a comprehensive program so that those conditions would not exist. How much time remains?

Mr. KENNEDY. Why don't we start with 10.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, does the Senator from Alabama want 30 seconds? I will be glad to take this at another time when we have the time. I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Alabama.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, 15 seconds in response. The legislation we have introduced would require that there be a job that an American worker has not been interested in and refused to accept. Those are the jobs individuals would be eligible for under the guest worker program. I look forward to continuing this debate with my friend from Alabama. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. For those who are even thinking about voting for the Enzi proposal, you are eliminating the protections, and you are getting the serious cutbacks. That is why the $1.10 increase would impact 1.8 million. Ours would be 6.6 million directly and 8 million on top of that. The Senator makes a very good point. This is not a base increase for the minimum wage. This would be gutting the minimum wage protections for millions of Americans. That is a fine ``how do you do.''

Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator stated it correctly. We are having a discussion and debate about the fact that we haven't increased the minimum wage in 9 years. As the Senator pointed out and as I have pointed out, we have had this explosion of poverty with children, an explosion of poverty with minimum wage workers, and an explosion of hunger. What we do have as an alternative is an increase in reduction of protection, unlike the historical debate for an increase in the minimum wage. Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining on our side?

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. KENNEDY. How much time do I have?

Mr. KENNEDY. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from California.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I understand, I have 2 minutes 50 seconds left.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, there are going to be two votes, and the first vote will be on my increase in the minimum wage; am I correct?

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, in just about 5 minutes from now the Senate will have an opportunity to make a judgment as to whether we are going to offer a helping hand to some 15 million Americans who are at the lower end of the economic ladder who are earning the minimum wage and just above. These workers are men and women of dignity. They take pride in their work. They are overwhelmingly women. If you care, this is a women's issue, having an increase in the minimum wage. It is a children's issue because a great majority of the women have children. So many of these mothers look in the eyes of their child, and they wonder if they are going to be able to feed that child. They are worried whether that child is $80 sick, when they hear that child cry in the night because they know they have to pay $80 to go to an emergency room. They know they cannot afford a birthday present for their child, to be able to go to a neighbor's house, to be able to enjoy the things every child who is a son or a daughter of a Member of Congress can enjoy. That is what is happening out across America. It is a women's issue, a children's issue; it is a civil rights issue because so many of those workers are men and women of color. It is a family issue. It is a values issue. Don't talk to us on the other side of the aisle about family values. This is it. This is an issue of decency and fairness. Americans understand decency. Americans understand fairness. Americans understand that if you work hard, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, you should not live in poverty. And that is what is happening. Nine years they have waited. Nine years they have waited--but not the Members of the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, $30,000 we have increased our salary, and in 9 years we have refused to provide an increase for the men and women who are working on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. That is obscene. We have a right to alter that and change that now when the roll is called. Let's say that we stand for those workers who are working hard, trying to make a difference for their families, playing by the rules. I hear from my friend from Wyoming they should not be on the Defense authorization bill. How many soldiers who are over there fighting in Iraq, mothers or fathers, might have been earning the minimum wage? What are they fighting for? They are fighting for American values. American values are to treat people fairly and with respect. Increase the minimum wage, and we will have taken a very important step down that road. Mr. President, I understand my time has expired.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I intend to support the Levin-Reed amendment, and I also intend to support the Kerry amendment. Both amendments make clear that Democrats are united in our belief that it is time to shift to the Iraqis the responsibility for their own future and to begin to withdraw our troops from Iraq. It is wrong for the Republican-controlled Congress to be a rubberstamp for the President's failed policy. We cannot ignore our responsibility to our men and women in uniform. America was wrong to go to war in Iraq in the way we did, when we did, and for the false reasons we were given. There was no immediate threat. There was no persuasive link to al-Qaida. Saddam Hussein was not close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. But as my brother Robert Kennedy said in 1968: Past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Mindless determination and foolish consistency don't make a better outcome likely. With each passing day, the American people are growing more and more impatient with the war in Iraq. They want a policy worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, not sloganeering and accusations of ``cut and run.'' The American people don't want our troops deployed in Iraq indefinitely, defending the same flawed strategy. Staying the course is not an acceptable strategy when the course is a failed course. Our military forces have now been deployed in Iraq for 39 months, more than 3 years. That's longer than the 37 months of combat in the Korean war. By the end of this year, it will be longer than it took to fight and win World War II. The American people want a realistic strategy for our troops to be redeployed out of Iraq, and this amendment provides it. It sends clear message: now that a democratic government has been elected by the Iraqi people, it is time for American troops to begin to come home. We need to view disengagement as part of the solution in Iraq. Our overwhelming military presence and our open-ended military commitment have only fueled the insurgency, made America a crutch for the Iraqi Government, made our country more hated in the world, and made the war on terrorism harder to win. The best hope for the success of the new Iraqi Government to succeed is for us to begin disengaging from Iraq, and they from us. The Iraqi Government must begin to make its own decisions, make necessary compromises to avoid full-scale civil war, and take responsibility for its own future. As Iraq's National Security Adviser wrote in the Washington Post yesterday: ``Iraq has to grow out of the shadow of the United States and the coalition, take responsibility for its own decisions, learn from its own mistakes, and find Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems.'' Iraq has had elections, a permanent government has been established, more than 200,000 members of Iraqi security forces have been trained, and it is time to begin bringing Americans home. The Levin amendment and the Kerry amendment can help us achieve that goal and prevent our troops from being caught in an endless quagmire. The cost of this war in blood and treasure has been far too great. More than $320 billion has already been spent, with no end in sight. A recent estimate by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz suggests the total cost will exceed $1 trillion. Our military is stretched to the breaking point. Many soldiers have been deployed more than three times to Iraq. More than 2,500 American lives have been lost, including more than 50 sons of Massachusetts. More than 18,000 of our troops have been wounded. Clearly, despite the death of Zarqawi, al-Qaida terrorists and insurgents remain determined to kill American soldiers. Despite what Vice President Cheney says about the insurgency being in its last throes, the insurgency rages on. Last month, 68 American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Insurgents attacked American soldiers 90 times a day. We always knew that deposing Saddam Hussein would be easy, but the administration should have foreseen that winning the peace would be difficult. Unfortunately, for our men and women in uniform, the arrogance of the administration blinded it to the cold, hard realities that our troops would face every day in Iraq. Alarm bells had been ringing, but the Bush administration ignored them. As General Hoar, former head of the Central Command, warned before the war, in September 2002, winning the peace would be bloody. He said: ``In urban warfare . . . It looks like the last 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.'' General John M. Shalikashvili, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned, before the war, in September of 2002: ``I think if it gets to urban warfare, and the likelihood is certainly great that it could . . . it could get very messy. The collateral damage could be very great, and our own casualties could increase significantly.'' In fact, in their 1997 book, A World Transformed the first President Bush and his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft explained why they didn't go on to Baghdad in the first gulf war. They wrote that it: ``would have incurred incalculable human and political costs . . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable exit strategy we could see. . . . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.'' Those words eerily describe what happened when the current President Bush ignored that wise advice and invaded Iraq. We must not forget that ultimately this is a debate about real people who are risking their lives every day. With this amendment and the Kerry amendment, we provide a realistic way out of the quagmire in Iraq, and I urge my colleagues to support both.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, America has long been a beacon of human rights and democracy in the world. But Guantanamo demonstrates the administration's disrespect for the rule of law. The administration is trying to have it both ways. They claim the detainees at Guantanamo are prisoners of war and thus should be held until the end of hostilities. At the same time they refuse to treat them as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. In the first gulf war, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that our Nation's compliance with the Geneva Conventions was the best of any country in any conflict in the history of the conventions. Sadly, this administration has presided over the steepest and deepest fall from grace in our Nation's history. The administration did not give the detainees the field hearings required under article 5 of the conventions, when the information relating to their capture was most readily available. Over 2 years later, the administration created combatant status review tribunals to substitute for the field hearings they should have held. It is no surprise that it is often very difficult to find the necessary evidence. Yet the administration doesn't even try. The Boston Globe recently reported that 34 detainees convinced officials that overseas witnesses would provide relevant testimony. But in every case--every case--the administration said the witnesses could not be found. Yet in three days, Boston Globe reporters found three out of four witnesses--one of whom is teaching right here at the Pentagon's own National Defense University. The shocking ease with which the Boston Globe located these witnesses suggests that the Government didn't make an effort to find them and raises serious questions about the administration's good faith in dealing with the detainees at Guantanamo. We have an even greater obligation to make sure we have a strong case now, since we have already kept these people for so long. The administration not only ignored the law when it came to ensuring that these people were properly classified, but it also failed to give them the proper treatment. The Geneva Conventions clearly state the standard for humane treatment of prisoners of war: No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. This administration threw out the golden rule that had served us so well for so long. Instead, they adopted new rules that allowed cruel tactics such as waterboarding, use of military dogs, and stress positions. The administration consistently overruled the objections of experienced military personnel and those who represent American interests abroad, including Alberto Mora, the former general counsel of the Navy. As Secretary of State Colin Powell warned the White House, ``It will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops.'' Senior Defense officials were warned that changing the rules could lead to so-called ``force drift,'' in which, without clearer guidance, the level of force applied to an uncooperative detainee might well result in torture. But these wise words fell on deaf ears. Officials at the highest levels of the administration viewed the rule of law as inconvenient and quaint. As Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary Powell, said, ``I don't think, in our history, we've ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice- presidential involvement, an attorney general involvement in telling our troops essentially carte blanche is the way you should feel.'' There is little doubt that some of those detainees are cold-blooded killers intent on harming Americans. They should be charged for their crimes and locked away. But far too many were swept up in raids by the Afghans and turned over to the Americans for reward money. Some were seized from the streets of Africa, Thailand, or Europe. As Jay Hood, the former commander of Guantanamo, said, ``Sometimes we just didn't get the right folks.'' The terrorists don't obey the Geneva Conventions. But we can't win the war on terror by stooping to their level. We do not win by repudiating the very ideals our soldiers are fighting for. We win by setting an example--by doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have argued that we need to hold these people until the end of the war on terror. We have created legal and literal black holes where detainees are being held without hope of receiving due process or fair and humane treatment, and that is nothing short of a travesty. We criticize such tactics in repressive regimes for doing exactly that. It is the height of hypocrisy. It violates the basic principles on which our Nation was founded. Indefinite detention is not the American way. We need to restore our standing in the eyes of the world as a beacon of human rights, and the best way to start is by closing Guantanamo. I understand the Senator from New Mexico was unable to get sufficient time to debate his amendment and will not insist on a vote. I hope that he will continue to fight for its adoption, and I urge my colleagues to support the Bingaman amendment when it is offered again.

Mr. KENNEDY

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the issue we are talking about, my good friend and the chairman of the Committee on Human Resources is talking about, and that I have talked about earlier, is whether we were going to have an opportunity in the Senate to take a few minutes to consider an increase in the minimum wage for the lowest paid workers in America. I had offered that as an amendment on the Defense authorization bill. One might ask: Why are we doing this on the Defense authorization bill? The answer to that is we would not have another opportunity to do it on any other bill until the recessing of the Senate. In my opening remarks when I offered that amendment, I indicated to the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services that we would be glad to work out a time for consideration that would not interfere with the general debate and discussion of the issues on the Defense authorization bill, but we have been unable to get that at this particular time. Therefore, we are talking about this issue at this time. The Senator from Wyoming asked why is this relevant to the Defense authorization. I think the answer is rather compelling. That is, when we think of why the service men and women are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and around the world, they are fighting for American values, American principles. Part of American values and principles is economic fairness, not the exploitation of poor workers in the United States of America. That is why it is relevant. We are talking about the ideals and the values of the United States of America. We are talking about family values. We are talking about what people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder are going to get paid. I bet some of these individuals who will be affected by the minimum wage are over in Iraq now fighting. They are wondering, why in the world are we taking up time when we have not increased the minimum wage in the last 9 years and we have taken the time to see six pay increases for the Senate? They are saying: Why aren't you providing that increase for the minimum wage for these workers? That is what we are talking about. Can anyone imagine that? We are going to get another pay COLA increase next week. We have increased our own salaries $30,000 over the period of the last 9 years. And how much have we given to an increase in the minimum wage? Zero. We have, I daresay, men and women who are serving in Iraq whose parents are probably earning the minimum wage. We are talking about getting an increase to $7.25 an hour. This issue never used to be a partisan issue. I regret it has turned out to be a partisan issue. We have been unable to get our Republican friends to give us an opportunity to vote on an increase in the minimum wage. We are caught in this situation because we cannot get an up-or- down vote on the increase in the minimum wage. Since the time of the initiation of the minimum wage, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, all had an increase in the minimum wage. Richard Nixon, an increase in the minimum wage. George Bush, an increase in the minimum wage. But we do not have anything after Bill Clinton and the increase in the minimum wage. Nine years is the longest period in history for no increase of the minimum wage. If the Senator would let us have an up-or-down vote, we will take a very short time period. We are interested in taking a short time. We only received the Republican alternative about an hour and a half ago. We still don't know what the scoring is on it. The initial statement we have heard is that it is pretty much the same as it was a year ago, and that basically cuts overtime pay. It also undermines the States' opportunities to deal with problems on the tip credit. It also eliminates worker protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That is a fine option that is going to be out. That is what we have gotten in the last hour or so. If I had the attention of my friend from Wyoming, the managers of the bill are here, I would ask unanimous consent that upon completion of the Defense bill, the Senate turn to the minimum wage bill, the text of which is my amendment, that the Enzi amendment be in order, that there be 4 hours of debate equally divided, and then we would go to a vote.