The speculation in the State of the Union address is now official: The Clinton administration is seeking an increase in the minimum wage. Under this proposal, the minimum wage will increase 90 cents over two years in order to "maintain a minimum prerequisite for lifting families of four out of poverty."

However, I submit to you that this is yet another example of the hypocrisy that is intrinsic in liberal rhetoric and that prevails in this administration, and a simple case of symbolism over substance.

The goal that the administration portends is to give poverty-stricken families a wage they can actually live on. The problem is, though, that minimum-wage jobs are primarily entry-level positions, most often filled by teenagers from non-poor households. In addition, only 3.7 percent of the overall work force earn minimum wage. Fifty percent of the jobs are held by those in the 16- to 24-year-old range, 36 percent are under 20 years of age, and 63 percent are merely part-time jobs. Over 80 percent of these workers live in non-poor households with 20 percent from households with annual incomes of more than $50,000.

I remember a few years ago when they last hiked the minimum wage. I worked on the grounds of the Wellsville Country Club and was psyched because I was going to get a raise. I didn't worry that I would lose my job since by stepfather is the superintendent there. Yet many other kids lost their jobs or were unable to come by one.

WCC is the perfect example of the burden wage increases put on small businesses. There are countless duties that must be done in order to maintain a golf course in tiptop condition, and the job requires all the hands it can get. Yet the minimum-wage hike, essentially an unfunded mandate on business, makes it impossible to hire enough help when businesses are already financially strapped and must operate under a limited budget. This is a pattern seen for every single minimum-wage increase ever enacted for all kinds of businesses all over the United States.

Not only are businesses hurt, but so are the chances for people to get their foot in the door and obtain the skills necessary to advance in salary and job status. A 1978 survey of the American Economic Association found that 90 percent of economists believed that minimum-wage earners maintained families, and not all of them were poor. "But by pricing such workers out of the labor market, (Labor Secretary Robert) Reich might very well make them poor," adds the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Supporting this claim is a Congressional Budget Office study in the same year that projected that a proposed increase would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs, and a study conducted by the Public Service Research Council in 1987 showing that increases in the minimum wage actually increase poverty.

And here is where the current administration's hypocrisy comes in, because they have acknowledged all of this before. A couple years ago, when Clinton was contemplating a different minimum-wage increase that they ultimately decided to delay, the New York Times quoted sources in the Clinton administration saying that it would "undermine job growth." What's more, Reich, in a July 20, 1993, memo, said, "...most minimum-wage workers are not poor. And the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase on employment should, of course, be weighed." Yet now they just wave off these claims. Pure hypocrisy.

The reason, then, for this current proposal is obvious. It is purely political. Clinton, still rubbing his butt from the beating he and his party took at the polls on Nov. 8, is trying to appear more "compassionate" and obtain ammo to label the Republicans as "cold-hearted" and neglecting the poor while catering to the rich. It is this same class warfare the liberals have been pulling for the last few decades and failed at in these last midterm elections. Just another example of symbolism over substance from a party that has run dry of ideas.