Democrats Introduce The Raise The Wage Act

Today, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) will introduce the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the Federal minimum wage to $12 by 2020.  Jared Bernstein outlines the main components:

1) Raise the minimum wage in increments to $12 an hour by 2020.
The Raise the Wage Act would raise the federal minimum wage $0.75 in 2016 to $8.00 an hour and raise it an additional $1 per year for the next four years.  The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 37.7 million workers would benefit from the cumulative five-year increase.  As shown in the infographic above, the family of the average person in this group relies on the earner for more than half of its total income.

2) Tie minimum wage increases to increases in the median wage after 2020.
Historically, inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage between legislated increases.  The Raise the Wage Act would prevent future erosion by indexing the minimum wage to the median wage after the full phase-in.

Past proposals would have indexed the minimum wage to inflation instead of the median wage, but prominent minimum wage analyst Arindrajit Dube offers a compelling rationale for why the median is appropriate.  Keeping the minimum-to-median ratio around 50 percent, which this proposal would do, would put it “in line with the international average and with the U.S. historical average during the 1960s and 1970s.”

3) Gradually eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
In many states, tipped workers (for example, waiters and waitresses) currently have a minimum base wage of only $2.13 an hour.  These workers are still supposed to make the regular minimum – employers are required to make up the difference if adding tips to the base wage doesn’t get a tipped worker all the way there – but this requirement is difficult to enforce in practice.

Republicans and their Koch-supported minions are expected to use the same shop-worn excuses for why this shouldn't happen (and given the makeup of Congress, it won't), but it should be one of the main issues Democrats at every level should run on in 2016.  It's one of those bright line issues that separate the party of the 1-per-centers from the party that's fighting for the middle and working classes.  It's also a political winner since, as Bernstein notes, 75 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage even higher than this proposal, including 53 percent of Republicans.  Democrats would be smart to promote it at every opportunity.