DOLE FACES FACTS ON WAGE BILL : CONGRESS LIKELY TO PASS INCREASE, SENATOR SAYS.

Byline: Katharine Q. Seeley The New York Times

Bowing to political reality, Bob Dole, who has strongly opposed increasing the minimum wage, said Sunday that he expects the Senate to pass an increase but refused to say how he would vote.

While being asked repeatedly on the CBS News program ``Face the Nation'' whether he would support raising the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour from $4.25 an hour, Dole acknowledged for the first time that the increase appeared inevitable.

``Will there be an increase? I assume there will,'' he said. ``The House has already indicated they're going to pass the minimum wage.''

His concession came after he repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether he would support a raise. Subsequently, he said: ``What we'll try to do, if there is an increase, is to package it with some other things,'' mentioning measures that the Democrats oppose, such as tax cuts, thereby dooming any increase.

Other measures he might link to the minimum wage, he said, include proposals for ``flex time,'' in which employees' hours are adjusted to meet personal needs, or for compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. He acknowledged that unions ``aren't crazy about'' these ideas.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, appearing later on CNN's ``Late Edition,'' endorsed Dole's concept of packaging the wage bill with other measures.

Saying it would cost businesses too many jobs, Dole has battled the Democratic initiative to raise the minimum wage over two years, even as House Republicans have endorsed the measure.

President Clinton is eager to sign the bill, which would be the first minimum-wage increase since 1990, when Democrats controlled Congress and raised the wage from $3.35 an hour to $4.25 over two years under President Bush. In the past, Dole has twice voted to increase the minimum wage, and he made arguments Sunday both for and against doing so.

The Clinton administration reacted to Dole's comments by calling on him to schedule a simple yes-or-no vote on the wage increase, without linking it to other measures.

Laura D'Andrea Tyson, the president's economic adviser, said that ``the real value of the minimum wage moves closer and closer to a 40-year low'' with each day of delay on a vote.

Dole's opposition to an increase in the minimum wage comes at a time when polls show that more than 80 percent of Americans favor a raise. And support for the Democratic measure by 20 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans increases the pressure on him to capitulate.

Dole is campaigning on his record as a leader in Congress, as ``a doer, not a talker,'' but many analysts concluded last week that Democrats have outmaneuvered him on the wage bill. On Sunday, he upbraided the 20 House Republicans whose support for the bill tipped the balance in the House last week in the bill's favor.

``We were somewhat blindsided by a group of House Republicans, which we hope we can prevent in the future,'' he said.

The ``Face the Nation'' interview again highlighted difficulty for Dole in playing two roles - as a presidential candidate who needs to appeal to a broad segment of the population, and as the majority leader who must work out compromises even when subverting his own position.

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PHOTO Bob Dole

``Blindsided'' by GOP