Posted on 11/12/2006 10:01:34 AM PST by jamesrichards
Minimum Wage Hike Now Likely
The biggest winners in last week's congressional elections may be workers currently earning the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Democrats have made a top priority to boosting the federal minimum wage for the first time in almost a decade — and President Bush has signaled he will go along.
Voters in six states — impatient with the Bush administration and the out-going Republican-led Congress — voted last week to hike their state minimum wage, bringing to 28 the number of states that have acted on their own to boost wages.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the presumptive House speaker, said she wants to immediately move to raise the national minimum wage. Her counterpart in the Senate, Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has said he will make a wage increase one of the first few bills that the chamber takes up next year.
The federal minimum wage, which sets the floor for hourly pay in many low-skilled jobs nationwide, was last increased in 1997 — making the last nine years the second-longest stretch without a boost since the legal minimum was established in 1938. Back then it was 25 cents an hour.
Democrats said workers were forced to go to the states and to ballot-initiatives for relief because lawmakers on Capitol Hill have failed to raise the minimum wage — while raising their own pay each year.
“Washington wouldn't act on raising the minimum wage, so America did — and now the new Congress will,” said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
Kennedy has proposed boosting the minimum wage by 70 cents three times over the next three years — bringing it to $7.25.
Congress came close to hiking the minimum wage last summer after Republican leaders packaged the Kennedy plan with a conservative-backed cut in the estate tax and a series of tax cuts for businesses.
Republicans had hoped the popularity of a minimum wage increase would buy support for the tax cuts, but Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Senate objected to tying the issues together and blocked the package after it had won House approval.
Republicans — backed by the Chamber of Commerce, small business owners and the American Restaurant Association — have generally opposed minimum-wage increases. They argue that an increase could force some employers to lay off some workers or cut some entry-level jobs to compensate.
For small businesses, “their cash flow is far more precarious,” said Marc Freedman, director of labor policy for the Chamber of Commerce.
“Their ability to absorb an increase in (wages) without an increase in production is very difficult,” Freedman said. As a result, Freedman argued, small business will raise prices, take less profit, cut benefits or lay off workers.
Supporters of an increase, including labor unions, insist that the federal minimum wage is the single factor determining how much money millions of Americans take home from their jobs — and that families can't make ends meet on $5.15 an hour.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal non-partisan research group, an estimated 6.6 million workers would immediately benefit if the federal minimum wage jumped to $7.25 by 2008.
Bush has signaled he is receptive to boosting the minimum wage. In a news conference Nov. 8, Bush said a hike is “an area where I believe we can find common ground.”
But, Bush said, he wants to ensure that any wage increase has “compensation for the small businesses” — a sign he still wants to see a some kind of tax cut tied into a wage hike.
Oh, BTW, I think the STATES were finally doing their job, and establishing that THEY are the ones who decide where the rate for minimum wage should be.
They're the ones who actually have to deal with all the repercussions, right? (rhetorical)
Freepers looking at massive spending, a Democrat congress and impending Amnesty are all broken up over your being offended.
Maybe instead of blaming President Bush, you should try to educate your fellow voter about the fallacy of the minimum wage.
Amen to that
This is why I thought the GOP should index the minimum wage for inflation. The minimum wage is SO low that is does not currently hurt business. Index for inflation at today's level and it would be taken out of the political equation forever and it would NEVER be a problem for business.
Indexed for inflation, it would increase at something like $0.15 per year. The proposal on the table is to raise it $0.70 cents per year for three years. Immediately after that, there will be more calls for increasing it. IT IS A DIM CAMPAIGN ISSUE. We should take it off the table.
COngressional salaries and Social Security payments are indexed to keep them from being political issues. This should be as well.
a liberal non-partisan research group,..... UHHH, how does that work out?
2007 will see the biggest recession we have ever witnessed. Mark this thread.
Right now, MW doesn't hurt most business because it's below most actual MW salaries in most areas. Indexing it to inflation would make it a problem, JUST like SS is a problem. There's a reason this is the first issue out of the block: it enjoys popular, if naive, support. Sure, some see what it will do to their union scale salaries and don't care that it actually hurts the working poor. But many actually mistakenly believe this is FOR the working poor. If we don't address it now, it WILL be a wedge issue for 08. But indexing it to 'take it off the table'? No. Indexing it makes it a long term problem instead of useless and meaningless pandering legislation.
Got that right! Why just because he favors socialized perscription drug program, a raise in minimum wage, amnesty of all illegal aliens, tripled Government spending, and signed an education bill sponsered by Ted Kennedy on top of the last 2 years of his Presidency that he'll spend kissing the @sses of Democraps by signing every spending bill that they give him you can't call him a RINO!
Indexing it keeps it at EXACTLY the same effective level as it is now. (Technically, it would be slightly LESS of a problem every year. Indexing it to wage growth would keep it EXACTLY even with where it is today. Inflation has historically been lower than wage growth.)
This is NOT like SS. SS is a problem because ALL of the money collected for it was wasted instead of being invested.
Bush doesn't want the fence either. In fact he wants an open border.
A few months ago, he was asked about illegal immigration, and he made a statement about how immigration has made America great, and they do jobs Americans don't want.
Just like the Democrats, he can't wrap his mind around the word "illegal" in conjunction with the word" immigrant."
If some nuke gets thru our southern border, he will be as responsible as anyone.
I've given up on the minimum wage. The idea is so repugnant with no grounds in economic theory, but the American public still has huge support for it for whatever reason.
RINO or not, just pass it and be done with it....useless feelgood legislation, maybe, but it takes a major talking point from the Dems.
Congratulations on your election victory. Showed us Bushbots who's boss didn't you?
Indexing might make it slightly LESS a continuing problem at the bottom, but MW is not really about the bottom wage, but about the 'bracket creep' it serves to create. In that case, the law of unintended consequences of indexing MW to inflation would be to tag more and more salaries to that index, meaning each yearly index adjustment artificially raises many more salaries, and the level of inflation such salaries create. It would also serve to truncate other types of annual raises, meaning salaries based on communist principles (I deserve a salary/raise for breathing)and not rewards for effective labor.
I'm offended that Bush would brag about how his drug program was proud extension of the work Johnson had done.
Bush is the biggest RINO ever.
More jobs going overseas, more cries of "the Republicans are outsourcing our workforce" in '08 - beautiful....
Good luck making this argument. I'm not saying you're wrong - you aren't - but there are too many lazy, stupid people in this country who don't have the depth of intelligence to understand this argument. On top of that, the usual class warfare rhetoric also makes it difficult to win this argument.
I don't have a lot of optimism that that argument against minimum wage laws will win the day. I don't have a lot of optimism about the fate of the US, in general, either, for the reason you mentioned there.
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