- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a $ 15 increase in the minimum wage will be included in the House’s stimulus package.
- Democratic lawmakers are working with the congressman to ensure that the minimum wage increase is in line with Byrd’s rule.
- Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont disagreed with the CBO’s conclusions earlier this week that an increase in the minimum wage will increase the federal budget deficit.
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House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi said during a news conference on Thursday that a $ 15 increase in the federal minimum wage will be included in the stimulus package that will go to the Senate.
“Yes, it will,” said Pelosi in response to whether the provision would be included. “And we are very proud of that.”
—MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 11, 2021
The increase in the minimum wage is one of the most controversial measures in President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan and has sparked debates between economists and lawmakers about the impact on the economy and employment.
On Wednesday, the House’s Education and Labor Committee approved a $ 15 minimum wage increase under its stimulus bill that would gradually be implemented by 2025, a measure originally proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other Democratic lawmakers. in the Wage Increase Act of 2021.
“It is a moral imperative in the richest country in the world that no one is forced to live on a starvation wage, and the American Rescue Plan will do that,” said Sanders in Twitter.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday that he is “working hard” with Sanders to get the minimum wage increase approved. This includes holding talks with the parliamentarian to ensure that the provision complies with Byrd’s rule, which prohibits measures that increase long-term debt in a budgetary reconciliation bill.
In a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, he found that raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour over four years will add $ 54 billion to the federal budget deficit. However, in response to the report’s conclusions, Sanders cited other important studies that found that rising wages would reduce the budget deficit and said that the CBO actually supports budget reconciliation efforts.
“The good news, however, is that from the perspective of Byrd’s rule, the CBO has demonstrated that raising the minimum wage would have a direct and substantial impact on the federal budget,” Sanders said in a statement. “What this means is that we can clearly increase the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, according to the reconciliation rules.”
Pelosi is pushing for the pandemic aid package to be approved by the end of February, so that Biden can sign it before March 14, when unemployment insurance is set to expire.