Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Wednesday that raising the federal minimum wage was an important issue for her because her mother once worked one of those jobs to keep her family afloat.
“This is personal for me,” Warren said at a forum on the minimum wage hosted by the AFL-CIO labor federation at Gallaudet University. She related how, at age 12, her father had a heart attack that “turned our little family upside down” and put it in a financial hole.
“The bills piled up. We lost the family station wagon. We came about that close to losing our home. I remember the day my mother, scared, crying, pulled her best dress out of the closet, put it on, put on her high heels to walk to Sears to get a minimum wage job. That minimum-wage job was enough — back then — to support a family of three,” Warren said.
The experience taught her to believe in America, adding: “That is the America I am going to fight for.”
The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. The last time the wage was increased was in 2007, when President George W. Bush signed legislation raising it from $5.15 to its current level.
Senate Democrats called for raising it to $10.10 in the last Congress, but the legislation died mainly due to Republican opposition. Democrats said the wage had been ground down by inflation. A study last year by the Congressional Research Service found that the current federal floor would have to be $10.69 to match its earning power in 1968.
The GOP argued that a raise would hurt more than it would help, pointing to a Congressional Budget Office study last year that said a $10.10 minimum would cause the economy to shed 500,000 jobs.
With the GOP in control of Congress, there is little expectation that raising the federal minimum will pass in the current Congress. Warren’s speech indicated that Democrats will pursue the issue nevertheless. Her speech was preceded by one from Labor Secretary Tom Perez in which he said it was a religious imperative to raise the wage.
Just 4.3 percent of workers earn at or below the federal minimum wage, according to Labor Department data. Of those, 59 percent are part-time workers and almost half, 46 percent, are 24 years old or younger.
Warren’s anecdote capped a speech in which she reiterated her position that the Democratic Party must pursue an agenda of economic populism that includes higher minimum wages, using regulations to rein in Wall Street and resisting free trade.
She said that despite some recent good economic news, such as the unemployment rate falling to 5.8 percent, “for tens of millions of Americans the economy is not working.”
