Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill to increase the minimum wage by 2025.
What We Know:
- On Tuesday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, alongside other congressional Democrats, proposed a bill to gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. The plan would implement the first increase in the federal minimum wage since 2009. Currently, the minimum wage remains at $7.25.
- Since Democrats have regained control in Congress, the bill is being added into President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package. It is being called the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 and seeks to increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including roughly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers.
- If passed, the Raise the Wage Act would start with a $2.25 boost to $9.50 in 2021 and continue raising the minimum wage every year through 2025. The bill also plans to phase out the tipped minimum wage for restaurant service workers, the youth minimum wage, and eliminate lower pay rates for disabled workers.
- Democrats argue that increasing the minimum wage will reduce federal safety net spending. On top of that, a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis on raising the minimum wage also found that it would dramatically decrease poverty for roughly 1.3 million Americans.
- Senator Bernie Sanders, who is in favor of the proposal, said, “In the richest country in the history of the world if you work 40 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty.”
[The] minimum wage must be a living wage, enabling people to live with dignity. It is unacceptable that Congress has not passed an increase in the minimum wage since 2007 — 14 years ago,” he continued.
- In 2019, the House passed a bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Still, it was shut down by the Republican-leaning Senate, claiming that the increase would be too much of a burden for small businesses and reduce employment in places where the cost of living is lower than in large urban areas.
- House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott commented on the timing of the bill saying, “Now, the pandemic is highlighting the gross imbalance between the productivity of our nation’s workers and the wages they are paid.”
While the legislation has strong backing from Democrats, it faces opposition from the evenly split Senate. It will require support from all 50 Democrats and at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster.
