For the strongest liberals both inside and outside the halls of Congress, the proposed $15 an hour federal minimum wage is not just a technical issue to be settled by the Senate parliamentarian, but an important test of the Left’s power in a capital that is narrowly, but uniformly, under Democratic control.
The minimum wage increase is popular. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that respondents favored the $15 wage 59% to 34%, with support only falling to 55% when the projected job losses were mentioned. A Harris poll showed 83% believed the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour is too low. A Pew Research Center survey last year found two-thirds of Americans backed the $15 number.
Minimum wage increases have been on the ballot 30 times in 17 states since 1938, according to the Congressional Research Service. They have passed 27 times and failed only three. These initiatives have succeeded 23 times since 2002. A dozen have prevailed with more than 60% of the vote, and five have topped 70%.
President Biden is behind $15 an hour. With Democrats in control of the Senate, longtime champion Sen. Bernie Sanders is now chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Several Republicans on Thursday announced their support for a plan by GOP Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Utah that would raise the minimum wage by a smaller amount more slowly and thereafter index it to inflation.
LEFT-WINGERS TARGET $15 MINIMUM WAGE FOES KYRSTEN SINEMA AND JOE MANCHIN
This makes the minimum wage debate rather unlike some of the other issues centrist Democrats complained about the Left pushing during the campaign. It is not a political liability.
Still, the fight for $15 faces an uncertain future. The Senate parliamentarian ruled late Thursday night, after the news in many markets, that the measure did not meet the requirements for budget reconciliation, which would allow it to pass with a simple majority of 51 votes rather than 60. White House press secretary Jen Psaki had told reporters, “The president would not have included an increase in the minimum wage if he did not want to see it in the final package. … But we’ll see what the parliamentarian says.”
At least two centrist Democrats in the Senate are skeptical about the minimum wage increase on both procedural and substantive grounds. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has specifically said he would prefer an $11 minimum wage, while Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has objected to the $15 minimum’s inclusion in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. The chamber is split 50-50, with Democrats needing Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote for the majority.
Small business groups have argued such a large increase in the minimum wage while they are still struggling with the coronavirus and its associated lockdowns would be harmful. “That kind of increase in a matter of months is really hard to swallow,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of the Job Creators Network. “It’s like giving a drowning man an anchor.”
“This is not the right time, during a pandemic, to enact a $15 minimum wage policy,” South Florida restaurant owner Carlos Gazitua told reporters in a conference call organized by Ortiz’s group, later adding, “We are being shattered by COVID-19. The restaurant industry is going to be turned upside down.”
Liberals and labor unions stress that workers are suffering, too. There has been no increase in the federal minimum wage in over a decade.
“Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour absolutely should remain a priority for the Democratic Senate,” said Democratic strategist Chris Fleming. “For far too long, home health aides, who care for the sick and elderly, child care workers, fast food workers, and more, have been working hard, and even working full-time at minimum wage, can’t make enough to survive. While billionaires in this country have seen their wealth skyrocket over $1.3 trillion in the past year alone, these workers can’t pay their rent or feed their families. It’s unconscionable that this is even allowed to occur.”
What happens with the minimum wage will provide an indication of how the rest of the liberal agenda will fare with such small Democratic majorities. Republicans had warned during the campaign that Democrats would pass the Green New Deal and expand the Supreme Court to add more liberal justices if given power.
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A Congressional Budget Office analysis concluded the minimum wage hike would lift 900,000 people out of poverty but at the cost of 1.4 million jobs. Democrats point to support for the proposal among economists and are being advised not to back down from this fight.
“There is copious amounts of data, and leading economists agree that a key to a strong economic recovery, and building back better, is getting money into the pockets of working people,” Fleming said, “and the Democrats should keep pressing for a $15 an hour minimum wage no matter what the parliamentarian rules.”
