Last Call For (Minimum) Waging War

The Congressional Budget Office has scored Bernie Sander's $15 an hour minimum wage bill as good news and bad, that it would initially reduce employment by about 1.4 million jobs and cost $54 billion over ten years, but that more jobs would be created over those five years elsewhere, and that nearly a million American households would be lifted out of poverty.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill to hike the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would grow the deficit by $54 billion over a decade, Congress’s independent budget scorekeeper estimated Monday.

That prediction of a deficit pile-up could work in Sanders’ (I-Vt.) favor as he fights to include the minimum wage increase in the package Democrats are crafting to enact President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

Under the fast-tracked budget process Democrats could use to clear the aid package with just 51 votes in the Senate, the bill must have a direct and substantial impact on federal spending, revenues or the debt. So the Congressional Budget Office score is a boon for Democrats fighting for the minimum wage hike to be included, even as Biden casts doubt on whether it would past muster under Senate rules for the reconciliation process.

“What that means is that we can clearly raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour under the rules of reconciliation,” Sanders said about CBO’s predictions.

“Let’s be clear. We are never going to get 10 Republicans to increase the minimum wage through ‘regular order,’” said Sanders, chair 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 hike the federal hourly minimum from $7.25 to $15 by 2025 and index future increases to median wage growth. It would also eliminate the sub-minimum tipped wage.

 

The final call is the Senate Parliamentarian, but they are allowed to work with the Senate once they have a CBO score to consider, which they now do. So it's possible to put the $15 minimum wage hike in the reconciliation bill.

We'll see if it makes it.  Gonna want to see how the Senate GOP votes against it, and every single one of them will most likely, but again, it only matters if voters feel like making them pay.

It worked in Georgia.