WASHINGTON (PAI) - Despite labor lobbying, the Senate again voted, on Oct. 19, not to raise the minimum wage.

The 51-47 vote against the $1.10-per-hour hike overcame unanimous Democratic support. Three Republicans also voted for the raise: Senate Labor Appropriations subcommittee chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Sens. Michael DeWine (R-Ohio) and Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). The latter two face the voters next year.

The latest plan, offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), would have raised the minimum wage, which has been $5.15 an hour for eight years, in three installments over two years. Kennedy and his allies said the hike would help working women with children, families and minority-group members in particular.

Earlier this year, Kennedy tried for a $2.10-over-two-years hike in the minimum wage but lost then on a party-line vote, too.

"Americans are working longer, they are working harder, they are producing more and one would think their paychecks would reflect it, at least at the lower economic end. And in all areas, it ought to reflect it. But no, it does not work that way. We refuse to give that kind of recognition," Kennedy chided his colleagues in the October debate.

Other worker allies made similar points. Sen. Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa), quoting the Bush Labor Department's own data, noted that 35 percent of minimum-wage workers are their families' sole breadwinner, while "61 percent are women and one-third of them are raising children."

Referring to arguments by minimum wage increase foes, notably fast-food restaurants and retailers, that a hike would help only teens, Harkin sarcastically said the Labor Department's data "doesn't sound like a teenager flipping burgers to me."

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) hit the contrast between lawmakers' refusal to raise the minimum wage and willingness to enact more tax cuts for the rich, as part of a pending budget bill. That measure cuts spending for Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and other programs by $35 billion-$50 billion, makes the Bush administration's past tax cuts for the rich permanent, and adds $70 billion more in tax cuts.

"It is hard to stand with this (Kennedy) amendment" to raise the minimum wage, said Sen. Hillary Clinton, "and not wonder: When will the majority stop giving privileges to the already privileged? Never has a political party given so much to so few who needed it so little."