House Democrats, who campaigned on increasing paychecks, have struggled to round up enough votes to pass a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
In January, lawmakers introduced the Raise the Wage Act, which calls for phasing in an increase to $15 per hour by 2024. Five months later, the measure has cleared a committee vote but languishes on the House floor while Democratic leaders twist the arms of reluctant rank-and-file members whose support is needed to pass the bill.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., announced last week he’s not waiting much longer and aims for a vote on the bill next month.
“This weekend marks the longest period of time without an increase in the federal minimum wage,” Hoyer declared on Twitter. “I brought the last minimum wage increase to the Floor & another raise is overdue. I’m working w my colleagues to bring the #Raise the Wage Act to the House Floor for a vote in July.”
The timeline gives Democratic leaders just a few weeks to shore up votes from at least 11 wavering Democrats, most of them centrists from swing districts that will be competitive in the 2020 election.
Hoyer told the Washington Examiner he’s still negotiating with some reluctant members but will push ahead. “I don’t have any doubt we are going to have the votes for it,” he said.
As the House vote looms, the top 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are coalescing around a $15 federal minimum wage. “Companies continue to squeeze every last penny out of workers, making it harder and harder for Americans to make ends meet. It’s way past time we make a $15 minimum wage the law of the land,” tweeted Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner and former vice president.
But two dozen House Democrats have refused to co-sponsor the legislation. Many of them support a pay increase but are wary that a federal minimum wage hike will hurt small businesses and kill jobs in their economically fragile districts.
“There are some folks who would like to see us do something to make sure small business fears are allayed,” Hoyer said. “Yes, we are working on it.”
One lawmaker, Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., introduced an alternative to the Raise the Wage Act that calls for raising the federal minimum wage “based on the regional cost of living and purchasing power.”
Sewell believes her legislation incorporates needed flexibility that will prevent a universal minimum wage increase from hurting local economies.
“Small businesses are the lifeblood of communities in Alabama’s 7th District and across the country and are often the primary source of economic opportunity for workers in distressed neighborhoods, but they are disproportionately impacted by uniform changes to the minimum wage,” Sewell said.
A dozen Democrats, some of them also backers of the Raise the Wage Act, have co-sponsored Sewell’s measure.
Democratic leaders favor the Raise the Wage Act, not Sewell’s bill, however.
“Frankly, I think that is not one of the ones that would go forward,” Hoyer said of Sewell’s bill.
Hoyer and other top Democrats are now working to convince approximately two dozen Democrats, some of whom have not signed on to either bill, to back the Raise the Wage Act.
The group of holdouts includes representatives of purple or red districts in Iowa, New York, Utah, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire.
Democrats who represent more rural districts want to ensure a federal wage hike doesn’t encourage small businesses they represent to close, reduce work staff, or automate, as McDonald’s has done in the wake of local minimum wage hikes.
A $15 minimum wage requirement would cost a restaurant $170,000 per year, according to Rachel Greszler, a labor policies scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“If the restaurant currently earns profit margins of 5%, it would have to increase sales by $3.5 million per year, or an extra $67,000 every week,” Greszler told the Washington Examiner. “But that is not realistic. The likely scenario is that they’ll either have to cut working hours or fire some workers altogether. Either way, most people are worse off than before.”
