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Monday, March 29, 2021
POLITICO NIGHTLY: How the 50-50 Senate was lost
Sunday, March 7, 2021
RSN: FOCUS | Rev. William Barber to Democrats: Overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and Pass the $15 Minimum Wage
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06 March 21
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FOCUS | Rev. William Barber to Democrats: Overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and Pass the $15 Minimum Wage
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Reverend Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach, notes that 140 million people in the U.S. were already living in poverty before this pandemic, and he urges Democrats to 'stick together' and push through the minimum wage hike."
AMY GOODMAN: The Senate voted Thursday to open debate on President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The final vote was 51 to 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking the tie after every Republican senator voted against advancing the legislation. Democrats are hoping to pass the bill before March 14th, when extended unemployment benefits run out. The legislation has widespread support from voters. One new poll shows 77% of Americans support the bill, including nearly 60% of Republicans. But Senate Republicans are attempting to slow the process to a crawl. On Thursday, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson forced Senate clerks to read the entire text of the stimulus bill aloud — more than 100,000 words filling 628 pages.
The House has already approved a $1.9 trillion relief package, but the Senate bill has some key differences. It reduces the number of people eligible for direct stimulus checks and does not include a provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over a number of years. The unelected Senate parliamentarian recently ruled the wage increase could not be included in a bill passed through what’s known as the budget reconciliation process.
However, the Fight for 15 is not over. The Senate will consider today an amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders to raise the hourly federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 over the next five years. Sanders spoke on the Senate floor Thursday.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: This is legislation that will increase wages for 30 million American workers. And if you ask me what the great economic crisis in our country is today, it’s not just high unemployment. It’s not just income and wealth inequality. It is that half of our people today and before the pandemic were living paycheck to paycheck. Their wages were so low that if they had a problem with their car or their kid got sick, suddenly they were in financial crisis. And in the richest country in the history of the world, half of our people should not be facing economic desperation when their car breaks down. And the reason for that is, significantly, that many millions of workers are earning starvation wages — and I underline that: starvation wages — in this country. I’d love to hear anybody get up here and tell me that they could live on seven-and-a-quarter an hour, they can live on eight bucks an hour, they can live on nine bucks an hour. You can’t.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Bernie Sanders.
To talk about the push to raise the federal minimum wage, we’re joined now by the Reverend Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach. He and Reverend Liz Theoharis just wrote a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, published in The Nation, titled “VP Harris, Maybe You Were Elected for Such a Time as This.”
Reverend Barber, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what you are demanding.
REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Amy, for having me on this morning.
And we wrote that letter to Senator [sic] Harris and to Chuck Schumer and to Democrats and to President Biden. I can’t help but think right now about a passage of Scripture, Isaiah 10: “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights.”
When I went to West Virginia a few weeks ago and met with poor, low-wealth people, from the hollows of West Virginia to the streets of Charleston, they were clear — white and Black and Brown: When passing tax cuts, they said, for the wealthy, parliamentarians have never had the last word, and they shouldn’t have it now. Parliamentarian didn’t rule; the parliamentarian merely advises.
And they were demanding of Manchin, whose actions have just been shameful — Republicans’ actions have been sinister; his have been shameful. They were demanding that Democrats have to keep pushing. And as Bernie Sanders said, Senator Sanders, not one of these senators could live off of what people are living off of now. Every one of them makes hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And, Amy, I also — we’re pushing. I really want to hear Bernie Sanders also say “poverty wages.” We’ve got to say “poverty.” A hundred and forty million people were living in poverty even before — poverty or low wages, even before this pandemic. We said that Senator Schumer should have kept it in the bill — it shouldn’t have to be amended — should have been kept it in the bill and forced Vice President Harris to overrule the advice of the parliamentarian.
And the history is important here. The parliamentarian issue, parliamentarians advised and ruled out of order every attempt to end slavery. They ruled out of order attempts to change the Constitution, to change injustice after the Civil War. Nobody should want to be connected to that legacy. And if Senator Harris was to say no to the adviser, which has been done before — Trent Lott fired a parliamentarian, Hubert Humphrey did fire them, Rockefeller. There’s a history of this.
And then it would force it back to the floor, which would mean that senators would have to have 60 votes to override the presiding officer. Where we are now, if Bernie puts an amendment on the floor, if the Democrats were to stick together, first of all, the amendment could pass. Then it would put it back where the parliamentarian would advise against it. Then the vice president could say no to the advice. And it then would require 60 votes. And they don’t have 60 votes. Even Manchin and Sinema, those Democrats, they don’t have the intestinal fortitude to vote against the bill, which is why they want a pass. They don’t want to have to vote and let everybody see them vote against $15.
They know, lastly, that there are 62 million workers before this pandemic who were making less than $15 an hour. They know that the poor and low-wealth people were the first to be forced to go to work, the first to get infected, the first to get sick and the first to die. And they know that 55% of poor and low-wealth people voted for the Biden-Harris ticket.
They also know, lastly, that this issue of $15 an hour, the March on Washington, Amy, agenda was $2 an hour and the Civil Rights Act. Two dollars an hour in '63 would be $15 an hour today. Seventy percent of the public wants this. And I think Democrats are really playing with fire here if they don't get Manchin and Sinema in check or if Schumer pulls this out, and they don’t — and the vice president doesn’t overrule, because you’re talking about 62 million people. You’re talking about 65 million poor and low-wealth voters, and you’re talking about in the midst of a pandemic.
And it’s shameful, lastly, that in the midst of this pandemic, there are three things we have not done. Number one, we have not guaranteed unemployment and sick leave. Number two, we’ve not expanded healthcare. And number three, we’ve not decided to pay essential workers a living wage, essential, what they need, in the time in which 8 million more people have gone into poverty. Only 39% of this country can afford a $1,000 emergency. Seven-twenty-five is barely $15,000 a year. And tip workers make $2.13 an hour, 16 million tip workers, and 60% of them couldn’t even qualify for the unemployment offered during this pandemic. This is “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights.” And this robbery needs to stop, and we need to do what is right.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, what’s fascinating here is you have a group of people, a hundred people — and then, of course, there’s Kamala Harris — and the majority of them are millionaires saying $15 an hour is too much. You make a critical point about Manchin and Sinema. They have said they would not vote for that $15-an-hour increase — which is not right away. It would be over a number of years. Manchin said maybe he would tolerate $11. But that you’re saying if push came to shove, given its vast popularity among the American public, including Republicans, they would not go against this bill.
REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Don’t have the guts to do it. I don’t believe it. In West Virginia, 50% of the people work for less than a living wage. That’s 362,000 people. I’ve been to West Virginia. I’ve seen the fervor in the people. I’ve never seen the unity between Black people from the streets of Charleston and white people from the hollows of the mountain. When we we met with Manchin, we had persons from his own county, his hollow. One lady said, “I knew your mama. I knew Robert Byrd. This is not what Robert Byrd was about.” They have been strong. There are 900,000 poor and low-wealth people in West Virginia. In Arizona, there’s about almost a million people who make less than a living wage. They don’t want to have to vote. They want a pass. They want to be able to say, “Well, the parliamentarian didn’t allow it.” But the parliamentarian advises. The parliamentarian doesn’t rule.
And the reason I’m saying this to — we’ve said to Vice President Harris is it’s really a love statement. You have a chance here to make this our economic Selma. You have a chance to stand where Rosa Parks stood, where Fannie Lou Hamer stood, where Amelia Boynton stood, who was beat on the bridge in Selma but also was at the — with Poor People’s Campaign in '68, she was in Resurrection City. You have a chance to say, “Not only am I the first Black woman in the position, but I'm going to take a position, and I’m not going to allow a parliamentarian — one person — to block 62 million people who are poor and low-wealth. I’m not going to allow one person to hurt 25 million people who are facing hunger right now, 30 to 40 million people that are facing eviction. I’m not going to let one person block billions of dollars being pumped into the economy” — because, you know, if they did it immediately, it would actually pump $330 billion-plus into the economy. She could say, “I’m not going to allow the 74 million women who are poor and low-wealth in this country to continue to be hurt. No, I’m going to force you to have to vote on this. I may not be able to vote on it, but as the vice president, I’m not going to allow a parliamentarian to be more powerful than me. I’m going to overrule them.”
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the legacy of the parliamentarian? You’ve talked about it going back to slavery.
REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah. I mean, and that’s the other reason nobody should want to be lined up with this issue, because, Amy, none of this stuff is constitutional. Nobody swore to uphold a parliamentarian. They swore to uphold the Constitution, which declares the first thing you must do, if you’re going to heal — have domestic tranquility, is you must establish justice. And there is no justice when we still have people making $7.25 an hour. There is no justice when in America today we’ve declared, by our outdated poverty measurement, that if a person makes $12,761 a year, they are not poor. That is absurd.
There is no justification in allowing a parliamentarian — and as I’ve said, if you go back in history, every time the issue of slavery came up, parliamentarians advised against it, said it was not — it could not be brought to the floor, prior to slavery, and there were attempts to do it after the Civil War. And then the whole parliamentarian filibuster issue was used constantly by white supremacists in the Congress during the civil rights movement and prior to the civil rights movement. This is an ugly history.
And there is history, though, of it being defied. As I said, Hubert Humphrey did. Nelson Rockefeller did it. Trent Lott fired the parliamentarian. There’s no way — and that’s why we were so troubled. President Biden should loose the vice president. There’s no way in the world he — and I preached the inaugural ceremony. I have great respect. We are thankful for much else that’s in the bill. But there’s no way he should have said two weeks ago, “I’m going to abide by the parliamentarian.” The parliamentarian didn’t elect him. The parliamentarian isn’t a constitutional office. The parliamentarian, and use of it by oppressive forces in this country, has a deep and ugly history. No, overrule that parliamentarian and make those senators vote. Make them vote in front of the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Conservative Dems have fought so the Biden admin sends fewer & less generous relief checks than the Trump admin did. It’s a move that makes little-to-no political or economic sense, and targets an element of relief that is most tangibly felt by everyday people. An own-goal.” And, I mean, the stats are staggering. You write raising the minimum wage would, quote, “lift 40 percent of African-American workers and 62 million poor and low-income Americans of every race.”
REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, first of all, again, I’m going to challenge even all the Democrats. We need to stop using this language about conservative. Look, they’re not conservative. There’s nothing conservative when you deestablish justice. To conserve means to hold on to something. So they’re not conservative. They’re not liberal. They’re not moderates. They’re not centrists. What is a centrist? You only make sure half the people get justice?
What we are seeing is a robbing of the rights of the poor. What we are seeing is a clear violation, I believe, of the fundamental principles of the Constitution. And that’s what we need to call it. It’s extreme. It’s catering to the corporate bloc in this country. It’s a refusal to treat people right. It is literally stomping on the hopes and dreams of the very people, poor and low-wealth people, who were the main ones to have kept this economy alive in the midst of a pandemic.
And lastly, there was no parliamentary issue brought up when we gave $6 trillion to the corporations, no issue brought up when 84% of the first COVID bill went to banks or corporations, no issue brought up when we gave $1.2 trillion to corporations that didn’t even go through the Congress. Mnuchin just did it.
And how tragic it would be to pass a bill that is less than what Republicans did, less than what McConnell did. And if Democrats are not careful, Republicans are going to outflank them. Trump and others are so cynical. They would come back — I bet you — if we don’t do this, and then propose a higher minimum wage and end up outflanking Democrats, because, you know, there’s a kind of populism that has a history in this country that is economic populism but is also socially regressive.
This makes no sense at all. Make these senators vote. So, when Bernie Sanders puts this motion on the table, Democrats should stick together, goes back to the vice president. She should overrule the advice — that’s all it is — of the parliamentarian and force it to a 60-vote margin. They have to have 60 votes to overrule the vice president. And let America see. If they’ve got the intestinal fortitude to vote against their own people, let us see that. And then we’ll be clear about what we need to do in the next election. But I don’t believe they have it. They just want a pass. They want to not have to vote, and they’re afraid to have to vote. And if we make them do it in the public, I don’t think they’ll vote against the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Dr. William Barber, I want to thank you for taking this time — you’re on the road in North Carolina — to be with us, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach. We’ll link to the letter you and Reverend Liz Theoharis wrote to Vice President Kamala Harris, published in The Nation, again, titled “VP Harris, Maybe You Were Elected for Such a Time as This.”
Next up, the House has passed H.R. 1, the most sweeping pro-democracy bill in decades, at a time when Republicans are pushing more than 250 state laws to restrict voting access. We’ll speak with New York Congressmember Mondaire Jones. Stay with us.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
RSN: FOCUS: We Need a $15 Minimum Wage, Not Excuses
02 March 21
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FOCUS: We Need a $15 Minimum Wage, Not Excuses
ALSO SEE: David Sirota | Joe Biden Says His Hands Are Tied
on a $15 Minimum wage. That's Not True
Julia Rock and Andrew Perez, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Dozens of congresspeople are pressing Vice President Kamala Harris to ignore the Senate parliamentarian and fulfill her $15 minimum wage promise. The Biden administration has no one to blame but themselves for inaction."
rogressive House lawmakers are demanding Vice President Kamala Harris use her power as presiding officer of the Senate to immediately advance the $15 minimum wage that she has long said she supports.
“Eighty-one million people cast their ballots to elect you on a platform that called for a $15 minimum wage. We urge you to keep that promise,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Harris and President Joe Biden, pressing the White House to raise the wage for workers as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan. “We must act now to prevent tens of millions of hardworking Americans from being underpaid any longer.”
The letter released Monday was signed by twenty-three Democrats, including Reps. Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.
Raising the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour would increase the wages of thirty-two million workers, a majority of whom currently live below the poverty line.
“We believe that the bill the president signs must include the House-passed minimum wage legislation,” Khanna told the Daily Poster. “This is the moment to get this done, and it is within our control.”
The Senate Presiding Officer Is the Decider, Not the Parliamentarian
Last Thursday, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, the body’s nonpartisan adviser on all procedural matters, issued an opinion advising Democrats that she believes the minimum wage increase is subject to a point of order, allowing it to be stripped out of a COVID-19 bill under the budget reconciliation process. Democrats are using that process so they can pass the legislation by a simple majority vote.
The parliamentarian’s advice is nonbinding. The presiding officer of the Senate is the ultimate decision-maker and can ignore the parliamentarian, as the Daily Poster previously reported and as indicated by a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. If the minimum wage is included in Democrats’ COVID-19 relief bill and Republicans raise a point of order to try to strip it out, the presiding officer can reject the point of order.
As vice president, Harris is the chamber’s presiding officer, though if she decides to avoid being present in the chamber, another Democratic senator can issue rulings on parliamentary questions. The CRS report notes that sixty votes are needed to overrule a presiding officer’s ruling, though Republican senators could try to change that long-standing rule with a simple majority vote.
Democrats also have another option to advance the minimum wage: they could follow Republican precedent and replace the parliamentarian with a different adviser with a different interpretation of the so-called Byrd Rule, a three-decade-old rule requiring measures in budget legislation be related to federal spending. A Congressional Budget Office report said the minimum wage is related to spending, but the parliamentarian ignored that report.
While Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin backed a minimum wage increase in 2014, they have said they oppose including a $15 minimum wage in the COVID-19 bill. It’s unclear whether they would vote to sink the entire relief package if Democrats include the measure and overrule the parliamentarian.
White House Is So Far Trying to Preemptively Surrender
President Biden campaigned on a promise to enact a $15 minimum wage and presented himself as the guy who knows “how to make government work,” but his White House has suggested it wants Democratic senators to accept the parliamentarian’s opinion and allow the minimum wage measure to be pulled out of the COVID-19 relief bill.
“The vice president’s not going to weigh in,” Biden National Economic Council director Brian Deese said Friday on CNBC. “The president and the vice president both respect the parliamentarian’s decision and the process.”
House Democrats included the minimum wage measure in the COVID-19 relief legislation they passed on Saturday.
The new letter from the House Democrats heightens the pressure on Harris, who has backed a $15 minimum wage for years.
Exactly one year ago today, Harris reiterated her support for the wage increase.
She is now letting White House aides speak for her on the issue, however. Harris, should she want to run for president, could be seen as the candidate who killed a major party priority while in the White House. Alternately, she could play a high-profile role in advancing the minimum wage increase.
The letter notes that Vice President Hubert Humphrey twice overruled the Senate parliamentarian, as did Vice President Walter Mondale. In 2001, Republicans fired the parliamentarian after he made two rulings that impeded their policy goals.
Days before the presidential election, Harris appeared in a virtual town hall with Sen. Bernie Sanders and committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Biden and Harris both backed a $15 minimum wage during the Democratic primaries.
“The outdated and complex Byrd rule, rooted in restricting progress, must not be an impediment to improving people’s lives.” the House Democrats said in their letter. “You have the authority to deliver a raise for millions of Americans.”
Saturday, February 27, 2021
RSN: FOCUS: David Sirota and Andrew Perez | Kamala Harris Needs to Act Now to Advance a $15 Minimum Wage
26 February 21
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FOCUS: David Sirota and Andrew Perez | Kamala Harris Needs to Act Now to Advance a $15 Minimum Wage
David Sirota and Andrew Perez, Jacobin
A confidential memo now circulating spells out exactly how Vice President Kamala Harris to help push through a $15 minimum wage. There are no excuses for inaction.
n Thursday, a key Senate official advised Democratic lawmakers that the chamber’s rules do not allow them to include a minimum wage increase in President Joe Biden’s first COVID-19 relief legislation. The ruling from the parliamentarian means that Vice President Kamala Harris could decide the fate of one of the Democratic Party’s most significant campaign promises — but it remains unclear what she will end up doing.
As the presiding officer of the Senate, Harris — who has long touted her support for a $15 minimum wage — can now use the power her predecessors have used to ignore the advisory opinion and fulfill Biden’s campaign promise to boost the wage. A confidential memo we obtained that is now circulating on Capitol Hill spells out exactly how that could be accomplished.
However, White House chief of staff Ron Klain this week declared that Harris will refuse to use that power — a decision that would effectively put the Biden-Harris administration in the position of potentially killing the prospect of minimum wage legislation for the foreseeable future. Immediately after the parliamentarian’s ruling, the White House issued a statement reiterating Klain’s comment, declaring that “Biden respects the parliamentarian’s decision.”
Some congressional Democrats have already been arguing that the Biden administration’s refusal to overrule the parliamentarian would be immoral and a political disaster for their party.
“It’s been twelve years since we’ve raised the minimum wage, and if we’re going to make those promises, we have to be able to deliver on them,” Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal said Wednesday on MSNBC. “Because, I’ll tell you what, in two years . . . when people vote in the midterms, you’re not gonna be able to say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, we couldn’t raise the minimum wage because the parliamentarian ruled that we couldn’t do it.’ That’s not gonna fly.”
“Ultimately It’s the Vice President of the United States”
The maddening process conversation surrounding a $15 minimum wage increase is the result of Democrats refusing to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which means Republicans can block most legislation unless Democrats find sixty votes.
As such, Democrats are working to pass the COVID bill using the convoluted budget reconciliation process. The process will allow for a simple majority vote on the final legislation, but it also allows Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to recommend tossing certain provisions if she decides they violate the so-called Byrd Rule, which is designed to prohibit extraneous matters outside of federal spending issues to be added to budget legislation.
The minimum wage, however, has budget implications, according to the Congressional Budget Office — which is why proponents had hoped MacDonough would advise that it is in order, especially since the nonpartisan parliamentarian has previously ruled that other, less significant budget-related issues were in order.
MacDonough, however, refused to do so on Thursday evening. The development is not catastrophic for the $15 minimum wage provision — if Harris simply uses her power to ignore the opinion and clear the path for the measure she has long insisted she supports.
The problem is that the White House is signaling she will do the opposite.
In an MSNBC interview on Wednesday, Klain said that if the parliamentarian advises Democrats against including the minimum wage hike, the White House will not want Democrats to move ahead with it. If Harris refuses to use her power, that decision could leave workers who are paid poverty wages and toiling in hazardous conditions during the pandemic to wait indefinitely for better pay.
“Not sure if it’s ever happened in the past,” Klain said when asked if Harris will ignore the parliamentarian. “Certainly that’s not something we would do. We’re going to honor the rules of the system and work within that system to get this bill passed.”
Vice presidents have ignored the parliamentarian in the past. According to Slate, “Vice President Hubert Humphrey routinely ignored his parliamentarian’s advice.”
Roll Call reported last month: “Precedents for ignoring parliamentary advice include 1967, 1969, and 1975 efforts to change the Senate’s threshold to end debate from a two-thirds vote to three-fifths.”
“Ultimately it’s the Vice President of the United States,” said former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove in a 2010 interview about such matters. “It is the decision of the Vice President whether or not to play a role here . . . And I have seen vice presidents play that role in other very important situations . . . The parliamentarian can only advise. It is the vice president who rules.”
At the time, the Huffington Post explained that a vice president “can choose whether or not to accept the parliamentarian’s decision or rule . . . that ruling is subject to appeal — but the appeal is decided by majority vote.”
Confidential Memo Spells Out a Path Forward
In a new memo we obtained that is circulating to lawmakers, Harris’s power as the presiding chair of the Senate is spelled out, citing a precedent set during the Clinton administration.
“It would take 60 votes to overturn the ruling of the Chair on a Byrd Rule point of order, regardless of what the Parliamentarian advises,” states the memo. “Based on a search of the Congressional Record, it appears that only twice has the chair’s ruling on a Byrd Rule point of order been appealed. Both instances occurred on August 6, 1993, during consideration of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. Neither appeal garnered the 60 affirmative votes necessary to overturn the Chair’s ruling.”
The memo spells out exactly how Democrats could use the same process now, explaining the scenario that would play out if Harris invoked her power:
“What would probably happen is a senator would appeal the ruling of the chair and then the full Senate would vote on whether to sustain the appeal,” it says. “The Chair’s ruling would be upheld as long as there are not 60 affirmative votes to sustain the appeal. So, if the majority could hold enough members together (less than 60 affirmative votes to sustain the appeal), the ruling that runs counter to the Parliamentarian’s advice would be upheld.”
The same memo also warns against Harris accepting the parliamentarian’s advice and Senate Democrats then pretending to push for the new minimum wage as part of the deliberations. In that situation, the memo suggests Democrats would be setting the minimum wage measure up for defeat.
“If in the same scenario, the chair followed the parliamentarian’s advice (and) a senator from the majority party (in favor of the provision at issue) were to appeal that ruling, then it would also take 60 affirmative votes to overturn the chair’s ruling,” says the memo. “Thus, the majority would be in a weaker position by doing it this way, because they would need to muster 60 affirmative votes to overturn the chair.”
Biden Has Been Retreating for Weeks
Biden’s “American Rescue Plan,” released on his first day in office, called on Congress to raise the minimum wage in its COVID relief bill.
“Throughout the pandemic, millions of American workers have put their lives on the line to keep their communities and country functioning, including the 40 percent of frontline workers who are people of color,” his plan stated. “As President Biden has said, let’s not just praise them, let’s pay them.”
But for weeks now, it’s seemed like Biden and his fellow Democrats were actively hoping the parliamentarian would give them a halfway plausible reason to avoid including the minimum wage in the COVID bill. Indeed, last week, Biden suggested in a meeting with governors and mayors that he didn’t think the Senate parliamentarian would allow the wage increase to remain in the bill.
If you watched White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s appearance on MSNBC on Wednesday, it was abundantly clear that he and his colleagues do not view securing the minimum wage hike in the COVID legislation as a priority.
Instead, Klain went to the mat to defend Biden’s scandal–plagued Office of Management and Budget nominee Neera Tanden, who probably won’t have the votes to win confirmation after Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he’ll oppose her.
Klain said, “We’re fighting our guts out to get her confirmed.” He added: “If Neera Tanden is not confirmed, she will not become the budget director. We will find some other place for her to serve in the administration that doesn’t require senate confirmation.”
The contrast could not be more stark: the Biden administration appears to be pulling out all the stops to confirm a Washington insider to a relatively obscure position, but not doing the same to fight for a policy that polls show is wildly popular and that economic data suggests is desperately needed now more than ever.
According to a recent study by the US Congressional Budget Office, raising the minimum wage to $15 could affect the wages of 27 million US workers. Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve published research showing that the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 is worth less today than it’s ever been.
This abominable reality could continue for the foreseeable future if Harris now refuses to use her power to add a minimum wage increase to what could be the only piece of major legislation that could move in a gridlocked Senate.
Top News | 'He’s Not Going to Run Unopposed': Sanders Rejects Schumer for Majority Leader
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