Federal minimum wage: Harris voices support for $15 wage to contrast Trump

CNN
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Vice President Kamala Harris said for the first time Tuesday that she supports raising the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour after blasting former President Donald Trump for dodging a question about whether he wants to raise it.

As the two rivals race to win over voters in the final weeks of the campaign, Harris and Trump have sought to demonstrate their support for working-class Americans. The federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 since 2009, has become a topic of conversation recently, especially after Trump took a temporary job as a fryer at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania on Sunday.

While Harris has said for months that he would push to raise the minimum wage, he did not specify a threshold until asked by NBC News on Tuesday.

“At least $15 an hour, but we’re going to work with Congress, right? This is something that’s going through Congress,” Harris told NBC as part of his interview with the candidate.

Trump, however, did not directly answer when asked during his brief stay at McDonald’s if he thought the federal minimum wage should be raised, saying: “Well, I think this: I think these people work very hard , it’s great.”

When asked to respond to Harris’ support for a $15 minimum wage, the Trump campaign cited a statement from Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly, who accused Harris of “lowering real wages and raising prices through reckless spending.”

Harris used Trump’s point Monday as an opportunity to show the contrast between herself and her Republican rival, though she did not reveal at the time how much higher she would want to raise the threshold.

“So there’s a big difference between Donald Trump and I on a number of issues, including this one, where I absolutely believe that we need to raise the minimum wage and that working Americans, whether they work at McDonald’s or anywhere else, they should at least have the ability to be able to take care of their family and take care of themselves in a way that allows them to actually be able to meet their needs,” he said before a campaign stop in Michigan .

Full-time workers making $7.25 an hour make $15,000 a year, “which is basically poverty wages,” noted Harris, who included a promise to raise the federal minimum wage in his proposal to eliminate federal income taxes on tips, which he introduced in August. .

Harris has cited her summer working at McDonald’s as a young woman as an example of her understanding of the lives of working Americans, while Trump has questioned, without evidence, whether she actually worked there.

Democrats have long pushed to raise the federal minimum wage, which has not been raised in a record 15 years. But Republicans, backed by employers, have argued it will cost some workers their jobs.

Those making the federal minimum wage earned 29% less, after adjusting for inflation, than their counterparts in July 2009, according to an analysis. by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that was published in April. And the federal floor has fallen far short of a living wage, say those who support raising it.

The $15 threshold was popularized by the Fight for $15 movement, which began in 2012 as an effort to draw attention to the paltry pay of low-wage workers, including those working in fast food restaurants.

The Biden administration sought to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of its massive Covid-19 pandemic relief bill shortly after taking office in 2021. However, Rep. of the Senate did not allow this provision to be included.

At the time, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would have reduced the number of people in poverty by 900,000 and raised the wages of about 27 million workers, according to a Congressional Budget Office report . But it also would have reduced employment by 1.4 million workers and increased the federal budget deficit by $54 billion over a decade.

After being blocked by Congress, the Biden administration raised the hourly minimum wage for hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contract workers to $15.

But many states and municipalities have raised their minimum wages in recent years, some of which have been mandated by voters at the ballot box.

About 30 states and the District of Columbia have higher thresholds than the federal floor, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In addition, 63 localities have adopted minimum wages above state thresholds.

Many employers in lower-wage industries have also increased their starting pay in recent years, largely as they have tried to attract and retain workers in the wake of the pandemic. Amazon announced in 2018 that it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all US employees. Target did the same in 2020.