AUSTIN — Happy Mom's Day! In addition to making the old dear breakfast or taking her out for lunch, there are some other useful and important things you can do to make Mom's life easier — not just today but all year long.

— Write or phone your friendly congressperson (who may be a mom herself) and urge a vote to increase the minimum wage. It's a mom's issue because 60 percent of those who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage are women, and 77 percent of them are adults (these numbers are courtesy Sen. Ted Kennedy's office).

I found an interesting quote in a story out of North Canton, Ohio, in Friday's New York Times. Tom Schervish, who owns interests in seven Burger Kings, two Fuddruckers and two Pancho's Southwestern Grilles, told his congressman that 60 to 70 percent of his employees are suburban teen-agers working to pay for cars and insurance. "The idea that people are living off the minimum wage is a totally false scenario, a bleeding-heart ploy," he said.

Actually, according to published reports, four out of 10 minimum-wage workers are the sole wage-earners for their families, and two-thirds of minimum wage workers are adults. What we have here is a classic assumption by Schervish that the whole country must be like a comfortable Ohio suburb. It's like those idiotic conversations you can actually hear at country clubs: "I don't know anyone who supports a minimum-wage increase," people say, ignoring the waiter who is handing them cold drinks.

Isn't it interesting that when someone proposes a raise for burger-flippers, the business establishment goes nuts and claims that it will cause unemployment and inflation. But take a look at what the head burger-flipper of them all gets. According to Bloomberg Business News, Michael Quinlan, chairman and CEO of McDonald's, got a compensation package worth $13.1 million last year ($11 million in stock options, $1.05 million in salary and a bonus of $1.05 million).

Or, take the lady at the soft-drink counter in the burgery, pulling Cokes for $4.15 an hour: According to the Atlanta Journal, as of Dec. 31, Coca-Cola's chairman and CEO owned stock worth $417 million, not to mention his salary.

According to Arch Patton, who retired in 1971 as head of McKinsey & Co.'s compensation-consulting practice, executive compensation began to soar when active CEOs began serving on the compensation committees of other companies. The pay panels turned into "the CEO's union," motivated by mutual self-interest. Minimum-wage workers do not, alas, set one another's salaries.

— Another thing you can do for Mom is support an extension of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Family leave was one of Clinton's biggest early triumphs, guaranteeing up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to employees who need to take care of their parents, spouses, children or newborns.

A just-completed report on the effects of this law show that during the first year and a half it was in effect, between 1.5 million and 3 million Americans took leave for a median of 10 days to take care of their own illnesses or others.

As the beloved Ellen Goodman gleefully points out, the business interests who claimed that family leave would bring about economic chaos and ruin were wrong, wrong, wrong. Of the businesses surveyed, between 89 percent and 92 percent reported either small or no extra costs. But family leave now covers only companies with 50 or more workers — about half of the work force. There's no reason not to extend it now that we know the results.

— Tell your congressman to stop cutting education and the environment. The E's consistently show up in polls of female voters as subjects of urgent concern, and for obvious reasons. Those who still have the primary responsibility for raising children in our society are worried about both E's for good cause.

— I know that some our fellow citizens of the Christian right have managed to persuade themselves that pre-kindergarten programs are somehow part of a vile plot to have The State raise our children. But all of us are familiar with the granddaddy of pre-K programs, Head Start, the program for disadvantaged kids. Head Start works; kids who go to Head Start do better in school and have lower dropout rates than those who don't. But the program isn't "fully funded," as they say in Washington-speak. That means Head Start doesn't have places for hundreds of thousands of kids who are eligible for the program and who should be in Head Start. Expanding Head Start and funding other pre-K programs would be a priceless boon to the working moms of America.

— It's often assumed that care for the elderly is a senior-citizen issue, but, in fact, cuts in Medicare often fall just as squarely on Mom. Seniors in nursing homes are almost without exception incredibly frail and in need of 24-hour care. If you add the burden of elder care to Mom's already full plate, the poor old girl is going to collapse.

So, do your Mother's Day good deed and get in touch with your elected representative on these topics. Believe it or not, that works, too.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.