For Rosario Delgado, an increase in the minimum wage would help pay her $300-a-month rent -- and maybe leave enough for a winter jacket. She often walks to her $6.50-an-hour janitorial job at an office building at Keystone at the Crossing wearing just jeans and a sweatshirt.

For Lance Gallahan, a higher minimum wage might force him to cut part-time student employees from his family's convenience store chain in Peru.

If lawmakers raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, it could significantly impact some employees and employers such as Delgado and Gallahan. But as Congress and the Indiana General Assembly debate the issue this week, most businesses and workers say it will mean little to them.

That's because, in the record 10 years since the minimum wage last was increased, more and more companies that once paid minimum wage have had to increase their pay scales to attract workers.

By far, most workers make more than even the new levels being proposed by Congress. At the Indiana Statehouse, lawmakers are considering raising the minimum to $7.50 an hour. The median hourly wage in Indiana is about $13.30.

There is little strong opposition from typically pro-business politicians and lobbying groups, increasing a higher minimum wage's likelihood of passing.

"I'm listening for the phone to ring. And it's not ringing yet," said Roland Dorson, president of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3,800 businesses in Central Indiana.

President Bush, Gov. Mitch Daniels and even Wal-Mart say they support, or at least don't oppose, a minimum-wage increase.

Still, a lot of Hoosiers could get a raise if the wage is raised as expected. About 5 percent of workers in Indiana -- or 143,000 -- make less than the proposed minimum of $7.25 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank. Another 210,000 workers likely would see a raise, the institute predicts, because a higher minimum would push up wages for workers now making $8 or $9 an hour.

Congress is proposing a phased-in hike by January 2009. After the House approved it last week, the Senate is debating it this week. In Indiana, a legislative committee passed House Bill 1027 on Thursday, which would step up the minimum wage beyond the federal rate to $7.50 an hour by September 2008.

The minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour since September 1997. Twenty-eight states already have raised their minimums above the federal law.

Because of inflation, the purchasing power of the minimum wage is lower now than at any time since 1955, according to an analysis of federal labor statistics by the Economic Policy Institute. It figures that the minimum wage in 1968 would equal $7.71 in today's dollars.

But fewer than 2 million workers nationally, or 1.4 percent, are paid at or below the current minimum wage. In Indiana, 37,000 workers earn $5.15 an hour or less. And many of those, such as waiters and waitresses, earn tips on top of their wages.

"I just don't really see that much of an impact, except on high school kids," said Tony Demott, owner of Super Sports Supply in Martinsville. He said his business, which employs three women at more than $7.50 an hour, wouldn't be affected.

Most workers in and around Indianapolis already earn more than $7.25 an hour.

Angela Mendez, 27, gets $6 an hour working part time with Delgado. But her full-time job at a local hotel pays $7.50 an hour.

Kendra Brannon, a 19-year-old single mother who has never held a job, is interviewing for a food-service position at Conseco Fieldhouse. When her sister started there five years ago, she earned roughly $7.50 an hour. So Brannon hopes to start at about $8.50 an hour.

"I don't care so much about the minimum wage," she said.

Nearly 80 percent of small businesses say bumping the minimum wage to $7.25 wouldn't impact them, according to a survey by SurePayroll, a Chicago-based payroll service provider. About 5 percent say it would help them, while nearly 16 percent say it would hurt them.

Ron Fusselman, owner of Coffee d'Vine in Huntington, says moving to a minimum wage of $7.50 an hour would raise his payroll costs by $24,000 -- or about 10 percent -- wiping out his income and profit from the business, he said.

Coffee d'Vine employs 16 high school and college students, paying an average of $6.15 an hour, Fusselman told a House committee on Thursday in Indianapolis.

"At $7.50 an hour," he said, his voice shaking, "I'm going to have to let some of them go."

That's the downside of raising the minimum wage, said James Sherk, an analyst at conservative Washington think tank The Heritage Foundation. The foundation projects about 45,000 workers nationally will lose their jobs if the minimum wage is raised to $7.25 an hour.

"The true minimum wage is always zero," Sherk wrote in a policy paper. "A business can always choose not to employ a worker."

But Delgado, the janitor, could certainly use such an increase. The 22-year-old native of Mexico, who speaks little English, said she's short on rent this month because the Christmas, New Year's and Martin Luther King Jr. holidays curtailed her hours. Through an interpreter, she said, "It's really tight right now."