The first known reference to a "catfish amendment" is from 1957.

As Dome speculated earlier, a minimum wage bill in that year's legislative session may have helped popularize the phrase. We've now tracked down that story.

In an unsigned article in the N&O on April 17, Lumberton Sen. Cutlar Moore is quoted complaining about changes made to a bill to boost the minimum wage to 75 cents an hour.

There was a fisherman, he said, who was having difficulty skinning a catfish which squirmed frantically under the knife.

"Finally," Moore said, "this fellow said, 'Hold still little catfish. All I'm going to do is gut you.'"

The amendments exempted hotel and laundry workers, firms with fewer than five employees, children under 18 and those who work fewer than 18 hours a week. They "chopped the bill down to a mere shell of its former self," the article notes.

It's possible that the phrase "catfish amendment" was already in use by then, and the joke was certainly not original. But the high profile of the minimum wage bill and the numerous amendments make it a plausible candidate.

The full text of the 1957 article after the jump.

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