(Courtesy: Chronicle Sacramento Bureau) Sacramento, CA: Senate Democrats injected a new issue into the three week budget quagmire, voting to increase the state’s minimum wage if welfare benefits are cut as proposed by Governor Wilson.
The bill would increase the minimum hourly wage from $4.25to$5 on July 1, 1996, and $5.75 a year later if payments to single parents and children the Aid to Families with Dependent Children are reduced.
Democrats designed the measure to blunt the effect of proposed welfare cuts and to paint Republicans as insensitive to the needs of working people.
Wilson is seeking an immediate 10 percent cut in Welfare benefits and another 15 percent reduction for able-bodied recipients who have received ‘Welfare for more than six months. That would pare the monthly check for a parent with two children from $607 to $547. Democrats have indicated a willing ness to accept some level of cuts, but have been grappling for a way to lessen the predictions for their urban constituents while allowing deeper cuts in rural areas represented mostly by Republicans. Approval of the bill on.a221015 vote also represented an effort by the lawmakers to play a bigger role in writing the budget that has been stalled by deep differences between the Republican governor and Democrats.
“We’re trying to put a policy cast to this,” Senator Steve Peace, D-Chula Vista, told reporters. “There is an opportunity for a policy driven resolution to the budget, rather than just fudging numbers.” The prolonged debate on the Senate floor provided plenty of opportunity for Democrats to portray them: selves as right-thinking defenders of working people and Republicans as coldhearted social Darwinists.
“An increase (in the minimum wage) Would reward work and assist the growing number of women and minorities Who only make the floor wage and are increasingly impoverished,” said the bill’s author, Senator Hilda Solis, D-Los Angeles. Corporate profits are at their highest level since just before the Depression, Peace declared. “Employers have an Obligation to pay a livable wage, and that’s not happen in But Senator Bill Leonard, R-San Bernardino. said’ “You’ can’t pay living wages because businesses are so tapped by this government they can’t afford to do so. It will increase poverty. Leonard attempted to tum the Democrats’ argument around, noting that if! 75 cent increase in the minimum wage was good policy, a bigger increase would be better. “I move the minimum wage in California will be $1 million an hour,” he said, facetiously.
If the minimum wage plan fails, the Senate Democrats have a backup—a bill that would create an earned income tax Credit that parallels federal law, the federal credit allows a family with two children to reduce their taxes by $2,528 if they have incomes of as much a5 $11,000, The credit diminishes as income goes up.
The Senate bill would be equal to 10 Percent of the federal credit for a maximum of $760 for a family with two children, meanwhile recently, in the Assembly.
Attempts by Sacramento Democrat Phil Isenberg to require the budget to be balanced with a3 percent reserve were rejected by his colleagues of both parties.
“This house, in the 20 years I’ve been here, has refused to do anything (to require a balanced budget) because we lack the courage to do so,” Isenberg said. “The governor and legislative leaders don’t want a balanced budget… list any Wonder the public is against the Legislature?” Assemblyman Jim Brulte, RRancho Cucamonga, opposed Isenberg’s proposal, noting that it would mean acute in slate aid to local schools.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 4, 1995
