- The Senate voted unanimously to prohibit raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour during the pandemic, which neither party has ever supported.
- The amendment was proposed by Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican.
- The effort came as Democrats tried to approve a $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package.
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The Senate unanimously passed a Republican amendment on Thursday that aims to prevent Democrats from doing something they never wanted to do: double the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour during the pandemic.
Indeed, Democrats, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, joined Republicans to publicize the fact.
Instead of doubling the federal minimum wage before the pandemic ends, President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats are proposing to gradually increase it to $ 15 an hour by 2025 as part of their $ 1.9 stimulus package. trillion.
The amendment by Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, appeared to be an effort to spread the Democrats’ position – promulgating a $ 15 minimum wage “during a global pandemic” – and to put centrist Democrats in place to highlight divisions within the broken. the salary increase plan.
Specifically, the amendment would grant the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee the right to prohibit a salary increase as part of the reconciliation process – a parliamentary maneuver that allows the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass legislation in the upper house with a simple majority, rather than 60 votes normally required.
Sanders, an independent from Vermont and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said during the debate that he would do “everything he could to ensure that a $ 15 minimum wage was included in this reconciliation project”. He rejected the Republican argument that Democrats are trying to double their wages before the pandemic is over.
“It was never my intention to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour immediately during the pandemic,” said Sanders. “My legislation gradually raises the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour over a five-year period, and that is what I believe we should be doing.”
Sanders put the amendment on an unrecorded vote in a move that likely deflected criticism of his effort to raise the minimum wage.
“We need to end the hunger wage crisis in Iowa and across the United States,” he added.
A senior Democratic aide, anonymous because he was not allowed to speak publicly, argued that Republicans had failed to force moderate Democrats to vote politically difficult.
“This is not Bernie’s first rodeo,” said the aide. “Nobody needs to vote hard on a message amendment and we can still try to approve the minimum wage in the reconciliation project.”
It is not yet clear whether Democrats will succeed in approving the minimum wage increase through strict budget rules that govern the reconciliation process.
The federal minimum wage of $ 7.25 an hour was last increased in 2009.
Earlier this month, Ernst spoke out against including a salary increase as part of any stimulus package, saying that “liberal priorities“would hurt small businesses.
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told Insider that such an impact would be minimal, at worst, and possibly beneficial for companies and also for workers, with higher wages reducing costly employee turnover.
Despite Republican opposition, however, raising the minimum wage is popular with voters. According to a recent survey by Quinnipiac University, 61% of Americans support Democrats’ effort to increase the value to $ 15 an hour.
Twenty states have already raised their own minimum wages since the beginning of 2021.
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