Sanders Supports $15 Per Hour Federal Minimum Wage

“It has got to be increased to a living wage”. “Democratic supporters of increasing the minimum wage are trying to debate and determine what’s the national floor is, because there are different economic environments”.

The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. He was joined by progressive caucus Democrats Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Raul Grijalva. “I support the local efforts”, Clinton said.

“What we’re seeing here is that people at the bottom of the wage totem pole are working long hours and not earning enough to survive with dignity. In the richest nation in the world, no business should be able to pay so little their workers are forced to find second and third jobs to feed their kids”. It could stand to rise more than a smidgen above what Sanders has rightly called today’s “starvation wage”.

The impulse to boost the wages of the neediest workers is a good one, particularly given how low-skilled workers’ bargaining power has been ground down over the decades. If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity and inflation since 1968, it would be more than $26 an hour today.

The Vermont senator made an appearance Wednesday with hundreds of striking contract workers on Capitol Hill who are employed as cooks and janitors in a number of federal buildings in Washington.

Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley have both endorsed the $15 standard.

However, Resnikoff continues, “the $15 wage proposal gives progressive organizations and their allies in Congress a totem around which to rally”.

A policy fissure is quickly opening in the Democratic primary over the minimum wage, with Hillary Clinton’s two main challengers taking advantage of her hesitancy to embrace the issue. “And what you can do in L.A. or in New York may not work in other places”.

Among the federal contract workers cheering on the minimum wage bill on Wednesday was Sontia Bailey, who wrote about her plight in the Guardian on Tuesday.

“Chanting “$15.00 and a union”, thousands of federal contract workers walked off their jobs yesterday, led by the Senate’s cafeteria workers who serve Senators their food.

Saltsman says that, as Sanders makes youth unemployment a key cornerstone to his presidential run, he “would say to him that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is worst thing because that’s going to kick more [youth] out of a job”. I had to get back to work so I could have a proper and decent funeral for my baby.

The federal government’s two largest benefit programs face short- and long-term financial problems as they close in on milestone anniversaries. “If I had just one good paying job, I would be a new mother today”.

Ahead of Wednesday’s rally, a group of more than 200 economists and scholars released a letter endorsing the legislation.

In some parts of the country, where the cost of living is relatively steep, a $15 minimum wage might put more money into the pockets of workers while eliminating relatively few jobs.

“When I’m on picket lines around the country, people tell me they’re protesting because they’re working harder than ever and still can’t make ends meet”, Rep. Ellison tells CNN in a statement.