Democrats in Congress are trying to advance their long-standing goal of raising the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, introducing legislation on Tuesday that would do so in five years.
“In the richest country in the history of the world, if you work 40 hours a week, you must not live in poverty,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., The next chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. . “The minimum wage must be a living wage, allowing people to live in dignity. It is unacceptable that Congress has not approved an increase in the minimum wage since 2007 – 14 years ago.”
President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 aid plan also contains a clause to raise the federal minimum wage from the current level of $ 7.25 an hour to a minimum of $ 15. The president also signed an executive order last week telling the Department of Labor to develop recommendations on how to provide federal workers with the $ 15 minimum wage.
But the legislation, while supported by many Democrats, faces opposition from Republicans and it would be difficult to get through the equally divided Senate, requiring the support of all 50 Democrats and 10 Republicans to overcome an obstruction.
The House passed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour in 2019, but Republican and rural district lawmakers raised concerns, saying the increase would be too much of a burden for some small businesses, especially in places where the cost of living is lower than in large urban areas. Republican Party leaders classified the measure as a job killer and said it would be devastating for working families.
The Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2019 that the increase in the federal minimum wage would increase, in 2025, the earnings of 17 million workers who would otherwise earn less, possibly increase the wages of around 10 million others and raise about 1.3 million people above the poverty line. But, according to the analysis, another 1.3 million other workers would be unemployed.
Asked about advancing the minimum measure under budgetary reconciliation – which would allow Democrats to approve the bill as part of taxation policies and spending with a simple majority, while avoiding a Republican obstructionist – Sanders said he thought it would be possible to do so.
“In short, I think that common sense shows this: if millions of workers receive a salary increase, there will be less dependence on public assistance, which will have a significant impact on the deficit, which means that it should be considered as part of reconciliation,” he said. he.
Lawmakers at the news conference pointed to Fran Marion, a single mother of two teenagers who works at a McDonald’s in Kansas City, Missouri, as an example of why the bill is necessary.
Marion said that earning $ 2.50 more an hour to get her to the proposed minimum wage “would help us maintain a permanent roof over our heads, food on the table, health and money to send them to college. above all, it will mean I can look into my children’s eyes and tell them that I can give them a better life than mine. “