Posted on 11/07/2013 6:28:33 PM PST by markomalley
Senate Democrats, hoping to move beyond the disastrous rollout of the new health care law, plan to pivot to legislation that would increase the federal minimum wage by nearly $3, to over $10 an hour.
Democratic lawmakers met privately Thursday to discuss proposals, including one by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, a nearly 40 percent increase. It would also would tie wage levels to inflation.
Democratic senators weighed the plan after being deluged with letters and calls from constituents complaining that Obamacare has cost them their chosen health care plans and required hefty premium and deductible increases, in some cases doubling, tripling or quadrupling health insurance costs.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called the proposed minimum wage increase "long overdue, an important economic issue and a message to working families struggling paycheck to paycheck that we can help."
President Obama is behind the push for a wage increase, senators said. Obama sent his chief economist, Jason Furman, to promote the plan to Senate Democrats Thursday afternoon.
"There is a strong need to adjust the minimum wage to reflect the erosion that it has had since it's last passage," Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said after the meeting.
Congress last voted to raise the minimum wage in 2007, lifting it from $5.15 to $7.25.
At that time, Republicans backed the increase, leading some Democrats to speculate now that they will get GOP support this time as well.
But the economy has shifted substantially over the past six years and millions of jobs have disappeared. Many Republicans are wary of wage increases that they fear will drive up costs for employers and kill jobs.
Also missing are many of the moderate House Republicans who backed the legislation and pushed for it when Republicans were in the majority just a year earlier.
Boehner in February flatly rejected a federal wage increase after the president made his pitch in his State of the Union address.
"When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it," Boehner said at the time, noting the high unemployment rate. "Why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?"
Some Senate Republicans on Thursday declared their opposition to a wage hike.
"The way you increase wages is by increasing jobs, that is the approach I support," Sen John Hoeven, R-N.D., told the Washington Examiner.
Hoeven said Republicans are crafting a counter proposal to a Democratic wage hike bill that would create more jobs and increase the demand for labor.
"We are working on ideas," Hoeven said.
The plan Obama laid out in his State of the Union address would have raised the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 per hour. But Durbin said the White House now wants that bumped up to just over $10 an hour.
A minimum wage increase could be a difficult vote for some red-state and swing-state Democrats up for re-election in 2014 who won't want to offend local business communities.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., declined to say whether he would back an increase.
"We just started talking," he exclaimed as reporters pursued him down a hallway.
But Reid is planning to move quickly, according to Senate aides, and could have legislation ready "in the next two weeks."
Even while the federal wage rate has remained frozen, states have been raising the minimum wage on their own. New Jersey voted Tuesday to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 an hour beginning Jan. 1. The minimum wage in the District of Columbia is $8.25 per hour. In Virginia and Maryland, it remains $7.25 per hour.
Of course he will.
He's trying as hard as he can to get attention off Obama's Big Lie.
The Republican counterproposal is to raise the minimum wage by 39.6%, with a tax credit for businesses owned by single mothers and illegal aliens, to prove they reject the War on Women™ and that they love Hispanics.
And I’d bet my next SocSec deposit that these same pr!cks are buying stocks in robotics and automation companies, and Chinese manufacturers....
And the idiots who vote these idiots into office don’t realize that an increase in the minimum wage could raise their income above the level at which they qualify for an Obamacare subsidy.
Unintended consequences -— Please pass the popcorn!!!!!
“Let’s just make it $1000.00 an hour and we will all be rich.”
Actually that is a valid way to oppose this type of thinking.
If Republicans ran of a raise the minimum wage to $1000.00 an hour because if $10.00 is good then shouldn’t $1000.00 be 100 times better it would force the demonrats to talk about actual economics.
The real reason the demonrats want to raise the minimum wage has nothing to do with helping the poor. It is will CAUSE inflation. By inflation will reduce, in actual spending power, the value of the debt that demonrats have sold to China and other countries. Inflation effectively lowers the amount of foreign debt. Of course that means that other nations will make up the difference in future bond by demanding a higher interest rate but the demonrats can’t think that far ahead
Why? So they can afford the new, much higher payments on their medical insurance?
I am speechless at their mind-boggling stoopidity! First time I’ve been speechless in 68 years!
Wonder what the price of a Big Mac is at + 40% ?? sigh
Get a further way to destroy American jobs and force even more people onto the dole
They are looking for any “NO” from a Repub that they can find to use in 2014. Be it minimum wage, immigration, federal gay marriage law — watch they’ll put out one big bang theory after another.
The Fast-Food Restaurants That Require Few Human Workers
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/08/28/216541023/the-fast-food-restaurants-that-require-few-human-workers
What we would have is an underground economy; 30% of the labor force working off the books for cash and of course not paying any federal income taxes or social security taxes.
A 40% increase in labor costs for some of your workers.
Replace low wage low skilled workers with machinery or higher paid more skilled workers
Didn't the economy then crash in 2008??
Buying votes unashamedly.
A republican should introduce a bill raising the minimum wage for ALL workers, federal, state, municipal, military personnel as well as private sector workers to $1000/hr. This should be done in all seriousness with no republican dissent. Let the democrats line up for or against and listen to the fight between those factions. It would provide ample sound bites when those libturds run again.
If 40 % would help, why not a minimum wage of $100,000 per year. Of course, we would not want to leave out the moochers, so the minimum welfare payment would be $100,00 per year too!. Golly, that would jump start the economy! [/sarc
2. At certain income levels, wage increases yield higher tax rates which effectively mitigate the income raise.
3. Increasing minimum pay will cause inflation, thus prices also increase. The trick is to keep the price increase rate lower then the wage increase. With more service then manufacturing jobs, good luck with that one.
3A. Inflation may eat all the wage increase the minimum wage earner received, so how would they be better off?
4. Since we all know that union pay is a function of the minimum pay scale, well union pay raises. And who is the largest union employer? Government! Where does government get their revenue? So taxes, fees and other ways of extracting money from the public will increase .
5. Employers who cannot successfully increase their selling pries to cover the increased cost of labor will have two options. Layoffs or close. That will help the nation.
Seems like the public will be worse off after the minimum wage increase.
Alright, then we get more illegals who will work for $5/hr. /s
I’m waiting for McDonalds to start paying 15.00 per hour. I will get my retirement job. I know I can beat out most of the kids that work there because I can make change.
10 dollars an hour actually sounds about right to me. The 15 dollars an hour fast food workers are demanding is just crazy.
Desperation.
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