MR. REED: I rise to address my strong support for the increase in the minimum wage that we are debating today in this Chamber. Minimum wage workers deserve this long overdue raise. The minimum wage, which today stands at $5.15 per hour under Federal law, hasn't increased since 1997. Since then, inflation has entirely eroded that pay raise. In the meantime, the pay of CEOs of large corporations has increased to an average of $10.5 billion per year, about 369 times the average wages of a worker and 821 times the average wage of a minimum wage worker. That discrepancy, that disparity, that growing bifurcation between the very well compensated and struggling families in America, cannot be tolerated any longer. This legislation would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next 2 years. This measure is important because workers have been left out of the economic growth that we have seen so far in this limited recovery that we are experiencing. Strong productivity growth has translated into higher profits for businesses, not more take-home pay for workers. And this is not just the low, entry-level workers. This is very far up the income range for working Americans. The stagnation of earnings in the face of soaring prices for health care, education, and food is squeezing the ability of families to meet their demands, of providing opportunities for the children. In fact, for the first time in my lifetime, I am beginning to sense that so many people are worried whether their children will be able to enjoy the same level of progress of income, of housing that they have, a fact that they took for granted. No one who works full time should have to live in poverty, but the current minimum wage is not enough to bring even a single parent with one child over the poverty line, even if the parent works full time 52 weeks a year. That should never be the case in this country. Five million more Americans have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office; 37 million Americans are now living in poverty, including 13 million children. And we know what the effects of poverty on children are. It impedes their ability to succeed in school. It deprives them of some of the experiences that we think are essential for their progress. Ultimately, it impairs their ability to contribute to this country as workers but, more importantly, as citizens, to fully participate, to bear the responsibilities of this great country. An unacceptably low minimum wage is a key factor in the problem of poverty in our country. This measure would go right to that problem in a very efficient way. People who are working deserve to be rewarded for their work, deserve to be out of poverty. Congress is failing to catch up with reality. Many States have taken it upon themselves to raise their minimum wage. During the election this past November, six States passed ballot initiatives--not just a legislative effort but the voice of the people of those States--to raise the minimum wage. Today 29 States and the District of Columbia have minimum wages above the Federal level, anywhere from $6.15 per hour to $7.93 per hour. In addition, the States of Washington, Oregon, Vermont, and Florida have gone so far as to index the minimum wage to the rate of inflation, allowing workers to share in the benefits of a growing economy. Raising the minimum wage will make a real difference for working families, putting an additional $4,400 per year in their pockets. Almost two-thirds of those who would benefit are adult workers, more than a third of whom are the sole breadwinners for their families. More than 6 million children would benefit from this raise that their parents would receive. One of the fundamental principles of our country and our economy is that people should be able to support their families by their efforts, by their labors, by their works. That is when the economy is working well. That is the reality. Here we have a situation where there are people working two jobs sometimes, working 40 and 50 hours a week, who still don't have sufficient income to meet the demands of the family. Here in this country we should at least be able to guarantee to someone that if they are working that hard, they should at least be able to support their family out of poverty. That is at the core of what we are trying to do today. While the minimum wage has remained stagnant--because it is not just a question of how much a family earns; it is also a question of how much they must pay to support the basic demands of life--we have seen, for example, health insurance premiums increase 87 percent since 2000 alone. How does one afford health care if your wages don't go up? These premiums now average roughly $11,000 per year, and that is more than the annual wages of a full-time minimum wage worker. Clearly, they are not going to be buying health insurance policies. And, by the way, I don't think they are going to be able to take advantage of the President's proposal for a tax deduction because, simply, they are not able to buy the health insurance in the first place, nor are they able to wait a year to get a tax deduction on a tax liability that is probably close to zero, if not, in fact, zero. Additionally, if you look at college tuition, another aspect of family life which is part of the American dream, the notion, again, that you can go ahead and ensure or help at least your children to do better, to go to college, one of the things that recent economic studies have shown is that because we do not have the full access and affordability of college, the class structure is becoming more rigid. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, if you were predicting the income of a son based on his father's income, the correlation was somewhere at 20, 30, 40 percent. Today it is 60 percent. If you are a wealthy parent, you will probably have wealthy children. But the reverse is also true; if you are a low-income worker, the chances of your son or daughter rising to the top in this economy are much less than they were 40 and 50 years ago. Horatio Alger is not alive and well in America today as he once was. This economy has to be more representative of giving people a chance to move up. The key to that, or one of the significant keys, is access to higher education. We have to do more. One thing at least we can do, if the prices of higher education are rising so much, is certainly to at least raise wages and raise the minimum wage. Every day the minimum wage is not increased it continues to leave workers behind because inflation continues unabated at levels that are modest in terms of historical comparisons, but it still is eating away at that existing minimum wage. Today the real value of the minimum wage is more than $4 below what it was in 1968. Think of that. In 1968, we could afford to pay much higher wages to those people engaged in minimum wage work, and it didn't upset our economy. To have the purchasing power that it had in 1968, the minimum wage would have to be more than $9.37 an hour, not $5.15 as it is today, or even $7.25. If we could do it in 1968, why can't we do it today? History also suggests that raising the minimum wage does not have a negative impact on jobs. You will hear a lot of people say this is going to distort the employment numbers, and it is going to inhibit employment. In the 4 years after the last minimum wage increase passed in 1997, the economy experienced the strongest growth in over three decades. We have not seen that kind of growth since the late nineties or during this administration. But following the last increase, nearly 12 million new jobs were added, at a pace of about 248,000 a month. In contrast, in the most recent 4-year period, the minimum wage has remained stagnant and only a small fraction of that number of jobs has been created. Because of the increase in productivity, because of the fact that workers are more effective, they should be able to be compensated more. That is not happening as it should. Working families are struggling to meet their most basic needs, and a fair increase in the wage floor is the right direction to take for this Congress. I am disappointed that our most recent efforts to clearly and simply raise the minimum wage are being linked to other provisions. American families deserve the much needed boost that this raise will provide. They deserve to hear a clear signal from this Senate that we are on their side, they are not an afterthought to be added to other provisions. Mr. President, this is long overdue. I urge my colleagues to work as quickly as possible to pass the minimum wage increase. I yield the floor.