“What this means is that we can clearly increase the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour under reconciliation rules,” said Sanders of CBO’s forecasts.
“Let’s be clear. We will never get 10 Republicans to raise the minimum wage through the ‘regular order’, ”said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “The only way to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour now is to approve it with 51 votes through budget reconciliation.”
The wage proposal, S. 53 (117), would gradually increase the federal hourly minimum from $ 7.25 to $ 15 through 2025 and index future increases to average wage growth. This would also eliminate the sub-minimum wage.
Biden expressed uncertainty on Friday about whether minimum wage clauses would work under reconciliation or be overturned by the hands of the Senate MP. “I don’t think it will survive,” said Biden.
The Senate parliamentarian decides which devices will make the cut, but Congressional leaders can tweak the language to try to make it work.
Even if a minimum wage increase can withstand parliamentary challenges, support for the proposal may fall short of the 50 votes needed in the Senate to be included in a final package. Senator Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) has said he does not support raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour. Last week, the Senate passed a verbal vote on an amendment by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that would ban a $ 15 increase during the pandemic.
Among the CBO’s predictions of how a minimum wage increase would affect workers, the budget department estimated that nearly a million people would rise out of poverty. At the same time, it would result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs, taking hundreds of thousands of workers out of the workforce when the federal minimum reaches $ 15 in 2025, disproportionately affecting “young and less educated people”, predicts the CBO .
The move could affect up to 27 million workers who were earning less or just over $ 15 in 2025, the budget office predicted. The report estimated that the cumulative pay for workers affected by the increase would increase by $ 333 billion in the ten years after the project’s promulgation.
Although Sanders acknowledged the positive side of the budget department’s deficit projection, he also lamented the high cost that the CBO estimated for his plan. “I find it difficult to understand how the CBO concluded that raising the minimum wage would increase the deficit by $ 54 billion,” he said, noting that the budget office previously estimated it would increase the deficit by less than $ 1 million.
CBO’s predictions are contrary to Sanders’ argument that its project would provide general taxpayer savings and ultimately reduce the deficit by removing workers from public assistance programs.
According to the budget department, the project would actually increase spending on Medicaid and Medicare because of the number of people “who lost their jobs as a result of the minimum wage increase and therefore became eligible for the program” and because ” Payment rates for health care providers would be higher. ”
The chairman of the House Education and Work Committee, Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Who is the sponsor of the House bill version, HR 603 (117), said the report “shows that the salary increase minimum will function as a direct and directed objective to stimulate workers in difficulties and their families ”.
Scott also argued that the CBO forecast “strengthens the need to gradually raise the minimum wage through the COVID-19 rescue package.”
Defense groups that pressure Congress to raise the federal minimum wage also hailed the CBO report as a victory.
“There are more than 54 billion reasons why the Senate parliamentarian has 32 million workers,” said People for Bernie, a popular movement that supported Sanders’ presidential candidacy, in a statement.
Frances Holmes, a member of the “Fight for $ 15” union, said the CBO report “confirms what we already knew – the Senate can raise the minimum wage to $ 15 as part of the COVID aid package.”
“We don’t need an apology from the leaders of our nation,” said Holmes. “We need help.”
Marianne Levine and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.