A number of U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are signaling serious reservations about instituting an hourly minimum wage of $15 in the midst of a lingering, year-long pandemic.
The wage hike was a campaign-trail promise for many Democrats, including President Joe Biden. But by Friday, Biden was backing off his “Fight for Fifteen,” which has become a stumbling block in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wants to pass by mid-March.
The hesitation came to light Friday when senators adopted a nonbinding amendment to their budget resolution opposing an increase in the wage to $15 an hour from its current $7.25.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said there were significant trade-offs to the wage hike when it last analyzed the $15 wage mandate in 2018. CBO said then that gradually increasing the wage to $15 per hour by 2025 could curtail job creation and prompt employers to eliminate positions to the tune of 1.3 million jobs. But it also said 27 million workers would get a raise and 1.3 million would move out of poverty into the lower-middle-class.
Biden told CBS on Sunday that he was willing to put the raise on hold for now, at least to pass the stimulus bill. Republicans in particular have objected to having the wage hike in an economic relief bill.
“I put it in, but I don’t think it’s going to survive,” Biden told CBS. “My guess is it will not be in [the final stimulus package].
Advocates of the $15 minimum argue they always planned to phase it in over five years anyway.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has said he wants Biden to scale back the plan to allow for the minimum wage to be raised over time and top out at $11. Sen Jon Tester (D-Mo.) said he would prefer to allow regional variations in the wage.
A group of 12 House Democrats led by Sen. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) also prefer a law that allows for regional differences based on cost of living. They proposed a bill in 2019 that had little hope of seeing the light of day in the then GOP-led Senate or Trump White House.
But the political winds have shifted and a $15 minimum wage is a real possibility. The current plan to include it in budget reconciliation would preclude a Senate filibuster and allow Democrats to pass the bill with a simple majority vote.