Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders said Sunday he hasn’t given up on raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour as part of coronavirus relief even as President Biden says he doubts it will survive.
Mr. Sanders said his staff was working to convince the Senate parliamentarian that a provision to increase the minimum wage should be permitted in the final $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package via the budget reconciliation process, and therefore subject to a simple-majority vote.
“As chairman of the Budget Committee, we have a roomful of lawyers working as hard as we can making the case to the parliamentarian that in fact raising the minimum wage will have significant budget implications and in fact should be consistent with reconciliation rules,” the Vermont Independent said on CNN’s “State of the Union”
Mr. Biden said in a “CBS Evening News” interview slated to air Sunday ahead of the Super Bowl that he doubts the $15 minimum wage provision would make it.
“I put it in, but I don’t think it’s going to survive,” said Mr. Biden.
The Congressional Budget Office said in a 2019 report that enacting a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would raise the pay of at least 17 million people but put as many as 3.7 million Americans out of work as employers are forced to cut staff to comply with the higher wage.
Mr. Sanders said that “we have literally tens of millions of people working for starvation wages.” The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, although 29 states had a higher minimum as of 2018.
“You cannot make it in any state in this country on $9 or $10 an hour,” he said. “We’ve got to raise that to $15 an hour.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders says he hopes Pres. Biden is wrong about a minimum wage hike being unlikely to make it in the final coronavirus relief package: “You cannot make it in any state in this country on $9 or $10 an hour. We’ve got to raise that minimum wage to $15 an hour” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/l3NnBKJYKe
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) February 7, 2021
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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