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Minimum Wage Measure Moves to Senate
The bills would raise the wage floor in three steps. It would go to $5.85 an hour 60 days after signed into law by the president, to $6.55 an hour a year later, and to $7.25 an hour a year after that.
Organized labor and other supporters pitched the bill as badly needed assistance for the working poor.
  Rep. Michael McCrery, R-La., ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, left, accompanied by Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007 to discuss the raising of the minimum wage. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (Susan Walsh - AP) 
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Business groups and other critics said it could lead to higher prices for goods and services, force small companies to pink-slip existing workers or hire fewer new ones, and crimp profits.
The last time the federal minimum wage rose was in 1997. That's the longest stretch without an increase since the minimum wage was established in 1938. Inflation has eroded the minimum wage's buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years.
The Labor Department says 479,000 workers paid by the hour earned exactly $5.15 in 2005, the most recent estimate available.
The federal minimum wage is like a national wage floor, though some people can be paid less under certain circumstances. States can set minimum wages above the federal level; more than two dozen states plus the District of Columbia do.
People who are paid the minimum wage tend to be young _ under age 25 _ never married, more likely to be a woman, a minority and work part time, according to a recent analysis of 2005 data by the Labor Department.
If the federal wage does rise in 26 months to $7.25 an hour, about 5.6 million people _ 4 percent of the work force _ who make less than this would be directly affected, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal leaning group. The group estimates that another 7.4 million workers would benefit indirectly as raising the floor would ripple through the work force.
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House minimum wage bill HR 2
Senate minimum wage bill S 2
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