Bernie renews call for $15 minimum wage
Rep. Garcia leads co-sponors in Illinois delegation; Sen. Sanders sees possible parliamentary passage
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, seen at a Chicago campaign rally two years ago, is leading renewed calls for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders led calls for a $15-an-hour minimum wage Tuesday, reintroducing the Raise the Wage Act in Congress.
Chicago Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia immediately signaled his support, and the move has been backed in the past by most members of the Illinois congressional delegation.
Calling it “morally imperative,” Sanders pointed to how the current national $7.25-an-hour minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009 — the longest period without an increase since the U.S. minimum wage was established in 1938.
“This country faces an enormous economic crisis that is aggravated by the pandemic,” Sanders told The Guardian. “We’re looking at terrible levels of unemployment. We’re looking at growing income and wealth inequality. What concerns me as much as anything is that half our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Millions of people are trying to survive on starvation wages. For me, it’s morally imperative that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage that’s at least $15 an hour.”
Citing his role as “an original co-sponsor” of the Raise the Wage Act in the previous Congress, Garcia pledged his support, tweeting, “No one should have to chose between feeding their families or paying rent. It's long overdue to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.”
The Raise the Wage Act, hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, was originally submitted two years ago. It cleared the U.S. House in July 2019 on a party-line vote, but it was never taken up in the Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Now that the Kentucky senator is going to have to switch to minority leader, however, there are new hopes for passage, especially as President Biden supported an increase on the campaign trail and in his first days in office. Biden has mentioned an increase to the minimum wage as a critical part of COVID-19 relief.
Although Democrats now have a 50-50 split with Republicans in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote, GOP senators could still block passage with the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break it off and permit passage. Sanders, however, speculated Tuesday as the imminent new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee that it could pass in so-called reconciliation talks as part of a larger bill that has an effect on the budget — such as a coronavirus relief package. Reconciling differences between House and Senate legislation requires a simply majority on budget matters.
“It clearly has to be done by reconciliation,” Sanders told The Guardian. “That’s something I’m working very hard on.”
All Democratic Illinois U.S. representatives voted in favor when the Raise the Wage Act passed the U.S. House two years ago, and U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin were also listed as co-sponsors, although a vote was never taken in the Senate.
Illinois has already adopted incremental steps toward making $15-an-hour the minimum wage by 2025 in a bill signed into law by Gov. Pritzker two years ago. It just rose to $11 an hour with the new year.
A national Pew poll has found that two-thirds of U.S. voters support increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.