SENSIBLE IDEAS

Both U.S. senators from Missouri have attempted to address the federal minimum-wage issue as efforts to increase the pay standard wind through Congress. In both cases, the senators have offered plans that would be more meaningful to working Americans and their employers. In both cases, their proposals are being stymied by politics and the threat of a presidential veto.

Sen. John Ashcroft was in Cape Girardeau recently working in the produce department of a supermarket -- he has labored at a variety of jobs during his political career in order to gain a better understanding of job-related issues -- and promoting his plan to allow working Americans to use their Social Security contributions as tax deductions.

This simple idea would affect minimum-wage workers in a much more positive way than the proposed 90-cent-an-hour increase in the pay standard by allowing workers to keep more of the money they earn, regardless of the job or its pay level. Sen. Christopher Bond's efforts were aimed at easing the burden of a minimum-wage increase on small businesses by exempting newly hired employees and workers in businesses that do less than $500,000 in business a year.

Ideas like these bring a modicum of sensibility to an issue that really has very little merit in the first place. Democrats pushing for a minimum-wage increase suggest that the current $4.25-an-hour standard isn't a living wage. Regrettably, Democrats don't seem to understand that $5.15 an hour also isn't a living wage. The minimum wage was never intended to be anything more than a starting wage for the most menial and basic jobs. Increasing the standard will only mean fewer jobs for workers who need them.