Congress approved legislation in 2000 to double the President’s annual salary from $200,000 to $400,000, effective January 20, 2001. This jump, like the automatic Congressional pay increase, was deemed “a case of simple equity” to allow the President’s salary to keep pace with inflation.[i] However, while President Bush has benefited from Congress’s recognition that the salaries of public officials must keep pace with inflation, the White House has not shown the same consideration for minimum wage workers.

President Bush supports a proposal that would give states the ability to “opt out” of the federal minimum wage.[ii] This proposal is a backdoor repeal of the minimum wage, as the federal minimum would no longer be the wage floor for the nation’s workforce. It violates the basic principle, which we have stood by for almost seventy years, that working men and women are entitled to a fair minimum wage. Allowing states to opt out of the minimum wage would also fuel a dangerous “race to the bottom” among states, guaranteeing that even greater numbers of low-income workers will have to live in poverty.

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[i] “Salary of the President of the United States,” Hearing Before House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology, 106th Cong. 24, May 24, 1999 (statement of Kenneth Duberstein, Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan).

[ii] Greenhouse, Steven, “Senate Panel Gives Warm Reception to New Labor Nominee,” New York Times, January 25, 2001, p. A20.