Senate Likely To Sink Minimum Wage Hike Today
Democrats, aware that the measure faces all but certain rejection Wednesday in the chamber they control, plan to use the vote to buttress their campaign theme that the GOP is unwilling to protect financially struggling families.
“Americans understand fairness, and they know it’s unfair for minimum-wage workers to put in a full day’s work, a full month’s work, a full year’s work, and still live in poverty,” the measure’s sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said Tuesday.
Harkin’s bill, an Obama priority, would gradually raise the $7.25 hourly minimum to $10.10 over 30 months and then provide automatic annual increases to account for inflation. Democrats argue that if fully phased in by 2016, it would push a family of three above the federal poverty line — a level such earners have not surpassed since 1979.
Democrats need 60 votes, and too many Republicans are on the side of big business to support the bill.
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