The House of Representatives will vote Thursday on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, more than double the current rate of $7.25 an hour. The legislation, titled the Raise the Wage Act, is unlikely to be picked up by the Republican-controlled Senate.
The vote had originally been expected for Wednesday but has been pushed back a day, the House Majority Leader’s office told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats have pointed out that it has been more than a decade since the minimum was increased. However a study by the Joint Economic Committee released Tuesday noted that an increase to just $10.15 an hour would bring the minimum wage in line with inflation. Last week, the Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business trade association, proposed a raise to that level, but the offer has found few takers within the majority Democratic Party.
“The federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25/hr. That wasn’t enough ten years ago when it was first implemented, and it isn’t enough now. It’s long past time to #RaiseTheWage so every American can earn $15/hr for a single job,” Ro Khanna, a California Democrat tweeted Tuesday.
Republicans countered that the raise was going too far and would hurt the people Democrats claimed to be trying to help. Doug LaMalfa of California said that in his state, which is in the process raising the rate to $15 and is currently at $12, restaurants in his district were already closing. “A 107% increase is not going to create a lot of jobs. It may sound good on paper but it would be very harmful,” he said.
The Raise the Wage Act would also eliminate the tip credit for businesses, which allows certain employers, such as restaurants, to pay less than the minimum wage provided that tips to workers make up the difference. The provision has prompted alarm from many in the service industry. “When we went from $5 to $7.50 in the state of New York for a server minimum wage there were effect from that. There was no more overtime. Work shifts were cut,” said Maggie Raczynski, an Albany, N.Y., bartender and activist against eliminating the tip credit. “It’s a struggle for us because we’re saying we don’t want this change and people aren’t listening.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last week estimated that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would cause 1.3 million people to lose their jobs. This would erase the overall benefits of the higher wage, with family income falling by $9 billion or about 0.1%, adjusted for inflation. Democrats have disputed the CBO’s numbers.
Less aggressive increases to the rate would have more moderate effects, the CBO found. An increase to $12 a hour would raise the wages for 11 million people while only causing family income to fall by $1 billion, or 0.05%, and costing about 300,000 jobs. An increase to $10 a hour, would increase wages for 3.5 million people while reducing family income by $100 million, a negligible difference.
