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“This means that we can clearly increase the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour under the rules of reconciliation,” Sanders said of CBO’s predictions.
“Let’s be clear. We’re never going to get 10 Republicans to raise the minimum wage through a “regular order,” said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “The only way to increase the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour now is to pass it with 51 votes through budget reconciliation.”
The wage proposal, S. 53 (117), would gradually increase the federal hourly minimum from $ 7.25 to $ 15 by 2025 and index future increases to median wage growth. It would also eliminate the wage below the minimum wage.
Biden expressed uncertainty on Friday as to whether the minimum wage provisions would work under reconciliation or be overturned by the Senate MP. “I don’t think it’s going to survive,” Biden said.
The Senate parliamentarian decides what provisions will make the cut, but congressional leaders can tinker with the language to try and make it work.
Even though a minimum wage increase may withstand parliamentary challenges, support for the proposal may fall short of the 50 votes needed in the Senate to be included in a final package. Senator Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) has already said he does not support increasing the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour. Last week, the Senate passed by vote an amendment by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that would ban a $ 15 hike during the pandemic.
Among the CBO’s predictions of how an increase in the minimum wage would affect workers, the budget office estimated that nearly a million people would lift out of poverty. At the same time, it would result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs, pushing hundreds of thousands of workers out of the workforce when the federal minimum hits $ 15 in 2025, disproportionately affecting “young people, the less educated, ”predicts CBO.
The change could affect up to 27 million workers earning less than $ 15 or just over $ 15 in 2025, the budget office predicted. The report estimates that the cumulative compensation of workers affected by the increase would increase by $ 333 billion within ten years of the bill’s passage.
While Sanders acknowledged the bright side of the budget office’s projected deficit, he also moaned at the high cost estimated by CBO for his plan. “I find it hard to understand how the CBO concluded that raising the minimum wage would increase the deficit by $ 54 billion,” he said, noting that the budget office had previously estimated it would increase. the deficit of less than $ 1 million.
The CBO’s predictions run counter to Sanders’ argument that his bill would provide overall savings to taxpayers and ultimately reduce the deficit by removing workers from public assistance programs.
According to the budget office, the bill would in fact increase Medicaid and Medicare spending because of the number of people “who lost their jobs because of the increase in the minimum wage and therefore became eligible for the program” and because that “payment rates for health care providers would be higher.” ”
House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Who is the sponsor of the House version of the bill, HR 603 (117), said the report “Shows that increasing the minimum wage will act in a direct and targeted manner. stimulating for workers in difficulty and their families. ”
Scott also argued that the CBO’s prediction “strengthens the case for a gradual increase in the minimum wage through the COVID-19 bailout.”
Advocacy groups lobbying Congress to raise the federal minimum wage also hailed the CBO report as a victory.
“There are more than 54 billion reasons why the parliamentarian of the Senate stands alongside 32 million workers,” People for Bernie, a grassroots movement that supported Sanders’ presidential candidacy, said in a statement.
Frances Holmes, a member of the union-backed ‘Fight for $ 15’, said the CBO report “confirms what we already knew: The Senate can raise the minimum wage to $ 15 as part of the COVID relief program.
“We don’t need an apology from the leaders of our nation,” Holmes said. “We need help.”
Marianne Levine and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.
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