Democrats and organized labor described it as a matter of economic justice, a true test of whether George Bush wanted a kinder, gentler America.
Republicans and big business predicted an economic apocalypse, with as many as 2 million people losing their jobs.But two years after Congress and President Bush ended a bruising legislative battle and enacted the first minimum-wage increase since 1981, the extra 90 cents an hour doesn't seem to have made much difference to anyone.
For workers like Chiffon King, a 28-year-old drug store cashier in York, Pa., the $4.25 hourly rate left them well below the poverty line.
The $4.25 rate represents a 27-percent increase over the old $3.35 minimum. But people like King are still falling behind the cost of living, which increased 49 percent since the last increase.
The result is that a single parent working full time at minimum wage with two children now earns 79 percent of the federal poverty level, compared with 96 percent in 1981.
At the same time, businesses did not suffer the disaster predicted by business lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said any increase in the minimum wage would cost Americans hundreds of thousands of jobs.
As it turned out, labor costs are high enough in most parts of the country that businesses can't hire anybody for less than $4.25 an hour anyway. Only about 5 percent of all hourly workers earn minimum wage, the Labor Department says.
"It's simply had no effect on what we pay people," says Charles Freihoff of the Charles Freihoff Baking Co. in Troy, N.Y.