The $ 15 minimum wage debate
With millions across the country asking for a $ 15 minimum wage, small business owners fear that their business will be harmed, while workers on the minimum wage hope for better days ahead.
Representative Jim Clyburn, a powerful Democrat in the South Carolina House, attacked the Senate obstruction on Tuesday as an obstacle to civil rights and said people of color will not stand idly by and allow archaic rules to deny progress in raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour.
“I will not be quiet about this issue,” said Clyburn, the House’s third Democrat, on Tuesday about changing the obstruction. “People of color will not remain silent on this matter.”
Clyburn, who has a long history of civil rights activism, said the Senate standard that requires 60 votes to move most legislation forward needs to be changed. He recalled that segregationists used the obstruction to block civil rights legislation decades ago and said he would not stand still and allow Republicans to block progress in giving people a living wage.
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“If they are going to use the obstruction to deny the increase in the minimum wage, it will be equivalent to using it to deny civil rights,” Clyburn said at a Capitol news conference.
“… We are not going to just give in to these archaic methods of denying progress.”
Currently, the Senate is divided into 50/50, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tiebreak vote on certain key measures that require a simple majority. But raising the minimum wage would require 60 votes to move forward, as the Senate congressman recently decided that the Senate cannot use budgetary reconciliation – which requires a simple majority – to approve the Democrats’ $ 15 salary proposal.
Clyburn’s comments come at a time when more Democrats are raising the issue of abolishing the obstruction.
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Majority leader in the House, Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Also said on Tuesday that the obstruction must be changed and noted that it has traditionally been used to “undermine the rights of citizens of color in America”. Former President Barack Obama previously called the obstruction of a “Jim Crow relic” that should be eliminated in order to pass civil rights and voting rights legislation.
Clyburn, 80 and a founding member of the Non-Violent Student Coordination Committee (SNCC), said changing the obstruction is personal.
“We are not going to allow the obstruction that was used to deny me and the people who look like me the opportunity to come to this Congress – and that is what they did,” said Clyburn. “And they are not going to deny the opportunity for people to earn a decent living above the poverty wage.”
Clyburn continued, “If this is what they are going to do, they are going to have to live with it because we are going to make sure we serve.”
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But even if Senate Democrats wanted to change the obstruction, they currently have no votes. Moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed the removal of the obstruction, denying Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer the necessary votes.