WASHINGTON - President Clinton pressed the Republican-controlled Senate on Saturday to stop blocking a vote on raising the minimum wage because ''we should not leave behind anyone who is willing to work hard.''

Making the case in personal terms, Clinton said that while a senator's pay has increased by a third over the past five years, the wages of millions of American workers have been stuck at $4.25 an hour.

''It's hard to raise a family on $4.25 an hour,'' Clinton said in his weekly radio address. ''We must make sure the minimum wage is a living wage.''

Clinton and congressional Democrats propose to raise the minimum wage to $5.15 in two 45-cent steps over the next two years.

As it stands, Clinton said, the purchasing power of the minimum wage will fall to a 40-year low this year if Congress does not act.

On Thursday, in a 55-45 roll call, Democrats fell five votes short of the 60 needed to shut off Senate debate and force a vote on an amendment to boost the minimum wage. During the debate, Republicans accused the Democrats of raising the issue to embarrass Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, Clinton's certain opponent in the November election.

''I challenge the Republican majority to stop blocking a vote and let the majority rule,'' Clinton said.

''In fact, you need to know that a member of Congress who refuses to allow the minimum wage to come up for a vote made more money during last year's one-month government shutdown than a minimum-wage worker makes in an entire year,'' the president said.

And he said that over the past five years, ''while the minimum wage has been stuck at $4.25 an hour, a senator's salary has gone up by a third.''

In 1989, a U.S. senator's salary was $101,900. It has stood at $133,600 since 1993.

Dole, vacationing in Bal Harbour, Fla., said of Clinton's assertion: ''He tried to slip it in there. It's not coming up under regular process. It's all politics. It's unfortunate. We'll take a look at it.''

In Georgia, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: ''It tells you a lot about President Clinton. Two years ago he was quoted at length as opposing raising the minimum wage because it kills teen-age jobs.''

He said Republicans would not ''wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs for black and hispanic teen-agers just to make a political point. ... This is entirely a political game on the president's part and it's very sad.''

Gingrich noted that Clinton had two years to push for a minimum wage increase under a Democrat-controlled Congress and did not do so.

Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., did not refer directly to the minimum wage issue in delivering the GOP's official radio response to Clinton's address.

Instead he called the president a roadblock to Republican efforts to reform the welfare system, balance the budget, and provide middle class tax relief.

''The president still claims to be for these reforms while he continues to do everything he can to stop them,'' Thompson said.

''The president certainly doesn't have a problem with vision,'' he said. ''He has a problem of double vision. He's both for and against a balanced budget, welfare reform and middle class tax relief, depending on which group he is appealing to at the moment.''