Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, what I suggest is that, keep in mind, these trends of wage stagnation go--depending on whose numbers…”

“Well, first of all, what I suggest is that, keep in mind, these trends of wage stagnation go--depending on whose numbers you look at--go back at least 15, and perhaps 20, years. So I think it's unrealistic to think that you can turn them around in 2 years. But I believe there are certain things that we need to do. First of all, I think that if we can--the expansion of trade, which we have pushed, has generated about 2 million new jobs. On average, those have been higher wage-paying jobs. I think we need to do things that change the job mix. That is a slow but an important remedy. So that a high percentage of the total number of jobs in America have a higher average income. In order to do that, we not only have to continue our trade policies, we must continue to invest in research and development and in new technologies. Now that has been something that hasn't been noticed at all in this budget debate. But one of the quarrels I have with the congressional budget is that it takes our R&D budget down by roughly six-tenths of a percent of GDP. And a lot of Republican high-tech executives are very concerned about it. They believe it will lead to a loss of America's position in a lot of important industries over the next 5 years. So changing the job mix is an important part of it. Continuing to get a higher and higher percentage of people in education is an important part of it. I have given the Congress one proposal, which I thought looked very much like a Republican program, which I expected them to embrace, the so-called ``GI bill'' for America's workers, in which we proposed to consolidate 70 Labor Department training programs and not block grant them to the States but give them in the form of vouchers to unemployed people and welfare people so that when people lose their jobs, they can immediately go back to a new training program. Thirty years ago, 80 percent of the people who were laid off from work were called back to their old jobs. Today, 80 percent of the people who are laid off are not called back to their old jobs. And it's bad for employers and for employees--because employers pay unemployment--bad for employers and employees to let people traipse around looking for jobs when what they really need is to immediately be in a retraining program. I think we should raise the minimum wage. It's going to go to a 40- year low if we don't. I think we should avoid gutting the earned-income tax credit for working families. I think that's one of the two or three worst things in the congressional budget. It will aggravate income inequality. And I think, frankly, the proposals that we have endorsed that the Congress is working on from the Jordan commission will have some impact. If we lower the aggregate number of legal immigrants coming into the country, even by a modest amount, it will free up more jobs to people who now don't have any, and it will tighten the labor market some. I talked to the Governor of Nebraska the other day, the State with our lowest unemployment rate, and I said, ``Do you think when we're creating all these jobs, it's going to ever raise wages?'' He said, ``Yes.'' He said, ``I just don't think the markets are quite tight enough in the country.'' He said, ``In Nebraska, wages are up, and even at the places that used to not give benefits--fast food places--they're all giving health care benefits now and wages are up.'' So he said, ``I think if you can get the unemployment rate down maybe another half a point, you can get that done.'' So those are my ideas for raising the wages levels: change the job mix, improve the training, continue to expand trade, raise the minimum wage, and have a modest reduction in the number of legal immigrants. We'll still be a country of immigrants, but we should lower the total. We raised it, after all, dramatically, in 1990 to help deal with the cold war. We've done a lot of that, and I think we should come back down now. Colin Powell”