Congressional Democrats’ new minimum wage proposal: $12 per hour

Because $10.10 per hour is so 2013.

Congressional Democrats’ federal minimum wage proposal is getting a makeover.

On Thursday, members of the party will introduce a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 per hour, a $4.75 increase over the current rate, which has gone untouched since 2009.

The so-called Raise the Wage Act, which will be introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate, will slowly boost the current $7.25 rate over the next five years, with the first hike to $8 coming in 2016 and $1 annual increases occurring through 2020. The bill’s sponsors—Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and Congressman Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia—estimate that raising the federal minimum wage to $12 would result in increased pay for 38 million Americans.

The $12 headlining the legislation is an increase over Democrats’ 2013 proposal for a $10.10 minimum wage, which has languished in Congress. That amount appeared progressive at the time, but it’s since lost its luster as cities and states have set minimum wages that reach further into the double digits—Seattle’s $15 per hour, Massachusetts’s $11 rate—and as low-wage workers have taken up a $15 per hour rallying cry.

The new bill is unlikely to become law anytime soon, but it will refresh the minimum wage debate in Washington, D.C., as lawmakers narrow their focus on the 2016 election cycle. The issue is a winning one for Democrats; a 2014 poll showed that nearly three in four Americans—including 53% of Republicans—approved of raising the $7.25 per hour minimum wage to the $10.10 rate that Democrats had proposed.

Despite broad public support for a higher minimum wage, the $12 per hour bill is not expected to gain support among Republicans who now control Congress. House Speaker John Boehner has previously opposed a federal minimum wage hike because he considers it a job killer. He once saidthat he’d “commit suicide before [voting] on a clean minimum wage bill.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also said that he considers a minimum wage hike harmful to employment.

That rationale is a common refrain among Republicans, and a 2014 report from the Congressional Budget Officegave it more fire power, finding that boosting the minimum wage to $10.10 would increase the income of 16.5 million low-wage workers but cost some 500,000 jobs. At the same time, other research suggests that raising the federal minimum wage modestly would have little to no negative effects on employment. The $12 figure, which would restore the minimum wage’s purchasing power from the 1960s, is thought to land in that “modest” sweet spot.

Since 2013, when Democrats proposed their $10.10 minimum wage and President Barack Obama lent them his support, raising the federal minimum wage has taken a back seat to campaigns to raise wages in the private sector and at the city and state levels. This past November, voters approved ballot measures that increased the minimum wage in four Republican-led states. On January 1, 20 states raised their minimum wages due to recently passed legislation or annual increases. Several large corporations—Ikea ($10.76), Gap ($10), Wal-Mart ($9), Target ($9),McDonald’s ($1 more than prevailing minimum wage), T.J. Maxx and Marshalls ($9)—have implemented their own minimum wage hikes.

Excluding Seattle’s wage boost, none of the aforementioned hikes raised minimum hourly pay as high as Thursday’s proposal would. Washington, D.C.’s plan for a $11.50 minimum wage in July 2016 and Massachusetts’s $11 per hour rate, effective in 2017 have come closest to that mark.

In addition to proposing a $12 hourly rate, the new bill will also eliminate a carveout in the minimum wage law that allows restaurants and other employers to pay tipped workers far less than the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum for a tipped employee—first enacted in 1966 to address the erratic nature of working for gratuity—is $2.13 and has remained stagnant for 24 years—even longer than the “regular” federal rate.

Since the tipped minimum wage has stayed put in the last two decades and the regular federal minimum wage has increased, the former now constitutes just 29% of the latter (down from 50% over the past 20 years). In theory, the gratuity that tipped workers receive is supposed to bring their take-home pay up to at least the regular minimum wage, but under that arrangement—as it stands now—customers make up more than 70% of tipped workers’ pay while employers contribute less than a third.

 

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Southern Democrats: Can You See Revival Down The Road?

by Isaac Wright

I was honored this April to address the organizing convention of the Tennessee Democratic Party about the 2016 election cycle – the state I grew up in and the state party I worked at roughly a dozen years ago. It felt like a homecoming of sorts with 200 of the Volunteer State’s most committed Democrats. But it made me take stock of the political evolution in the South I’ve witnessed. On this trip to Spring Hill, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, I realized that for Southern Democrats, 2016 is the time for revival. Hillary Clinton’s newly announced campaign is our opportunity.

Over the last 15 years, I have lived and worked in Tennessee, Louisiana, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Missouri, and spent the better part of a decade in Arkansas before returning to the nation’s capital.

When I left Tennessee, Democrats held majorities in both chambers of the legislature, we were one of only two Southern states with a Democratic majority in its U.S. House delegation, and we held the Governor’s office. None of that is true today.

In my time in Arkansas, my second home state, Democrats won back the Governor’s office, held all seven constitutional offices, super majorities in both legislative chambers, held both U.S. Senate seats, and a majority of the House delegation. But things have changed dramatically in the Natural State since then.

These choices made in elections have consequences.

What is the difference between Republican leadership and Democratic leadership and what they provide in the South? Under the leadership of then Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, Arkansas’s public school education rose to 5th in the nation and more than 30,000 new jobs were announced with Beebe’s signature program the Quick Action Closing Fund. But today, Arkansas has fallen to 36th in the same education rankings and Tennessee and Louisiana follow at 37th and 44th in the same report. In February 2015, Tennessee ranked 45th for unemployment and Louisiana ranked 47th according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Our hope for revival — economic and educational — begins with our values.

The South I grew up in is permeated by a sense of community and responsibility to take care of our own, matched with a unique strain of populism: if given a fair playing field and the opportunity, we’ll succeed on our own merits and hard work, and then we’ll do our part to help our neighbors reach their potential, too.

That was never more real for me than in a Canon U.S. House building hearing room with then Governor Mike Beebe as he testified to a Congressional Committee on FEMA’s failed response following devastating tornadoes in Arkansas. In the face of the Bush administration’s failure, he said plainly that the administration could “lead, follow or get out of the way, but we’re going to take care of Arkansas.”

Hillary Clinton summed up this Southern spirit in her first week as a candidate. She said, “We need to build the economy of tomorrow, not yesterday. We need to strengthen families and communities because that’s where it all starts.”

She noted that, “the deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top. There’s something wrong with that. There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. There’s something wrong when American workers keep getting more productive, as they have … but that productivity is not matched in their paychecks.”

Sometimes, as Southern Democrats, we need a little more of that forward-looking perspective. We’re here to help because we know the way forward.

Democrats have done it before and with Hillary Clinton we can do it again. We are the party that provided a safety net for sick people and old people. We’re the party that brought you the 40-hour work week and fights for equal pay for equal work. We’re the party that can drive our communities, our states, our region, and our country forward. Hillary Clinton sees the way forward. She has the vision, the resilience and the leadership that people — Southerners, Democrats and all Americans — are hungry for today. In fact, the efforts of the “Ready for Hillary” group signed up more than 400,000 supporters in the South.

We Southern Democrats know resilience and we have never stopped believing that we can once again move our region forward with a revival of renewed opportunity and optimism. And that revival is coming.

We can see the glimmer of our Camelot in the distance, approaching like the caravan carrying an old-fashioned tent revival. Candidates across the South and Hillary Clinton can lead this caravan with their pragmatic, hard-working values and focus on policies that give all Americans a fighting chance.

Isaac Wright is the Executive Director of Correct The Record, a strategic research and rapid response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from right-wing attacks.

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Why Bernie Sanders Running for President Is Great News for Democrats

A one-horse race no more.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will formally enter the Democratic presidential primary contest Thursday, as firstreported by Vermont Public Radio. He plans to make a brief statement Thursday with a campaign kickoff event to follow in the coming weeks. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats on Capitol Hill, has been publicly flirting with a decision since the end of last year.

Sanders’ arrival on the trail represents the first meaningful challenge to Hillary Clinton and her rich, barnstorming campaign. It also means the former secretary of state will be buffeted on the left by a formidable and popular liberal opponent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is pursuing a similar route, but has failed to crack 1% support in the early polls and seems disinclined to criticize or question Clinton head-on.

For Democrats, Sanders’ decision to join the fight guarantees at least one fiery progressive foil will be sharing the debate stage with the frontrunner, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another grassroots favorite, seems content to have her say from the peanut gallery.

Why he’s running: Speaking with Bill Moyers in October, Sanders, though still undecided at the time, laid out his argument in stark terms.

“Things are getting worse,” he said. “When you look at this campaign, and you realize the enormously serious issues this country faces, right — we got a collapsing middle class. We have more wealth and income inequality today than we’ve had since the 1920s. We have all of these enormous issues. And what big money can do is put an unbelievable amount of TV and radio ads out there to deflect attention from the real issues facing the American people.”

Those “real issues” include, to wit: moving past Obamacare to single-payer health insurance funded by tax hikes on millionaires and billionaires; free college for anyone who wants to attend; a radical redrafting of trade policies he believes devalue American workers; and a new push for a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which Sanders blames for shifting the balance of electoral power to “billionaire families now able to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase the candidates of their choice.”

Sanders is betting his popularity with liberal activists — and their willingness to take him on as the closest thing to Warren, who is not running — could goose a campaign that will come out of the gates with only about 6% support in the most recent polls. The self-described independent socialist has a strong following online and will fundraise aggressively across the grassroots progressive community.

“He knows how to do the organizing that’s required,”  Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and likely bet to lead Sanders’ campaign, told the Washington Post last fall. “As a mass media person, I also think he would be a great television candidate. He can connect on that level.”

Against the odds: “I realize I’m not a household name,” Sanders told the Charlotte Observer in August 2014, but “I think the average American is a lot more frustrated with the establishment than a lot of people perceive. I think there’s receptivity for voices that are going to speak for a working class that is being battered.”

Sanders is going to give those voters all the liberal red meat they can eat. But more importantly for Democrats, his arrival means Clinton will have no choice but to sink her teeth in too.

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Possible Democratic presidential hopeful O’Malley saddened by Baltimore violence

(Reuters) – Former Maryland Governor and possible Democratic presidential contender Martin O’Malley said on Monday he was saddened by the situation in Baltimore, where violence erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after he was injured in police custody.

“I’m saddened that the City I love is in such pain this night,” tweeted O’Malley, who was mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007 before becoming governor.

Saying that “all of us share a profound feeling of grief for Freddie Gray & his family,” O’Malley added: “We must come together as one City to transform this moment of loss & pain into a safer & more just future for all of Baltimore’s people.”

Gray’s death on April 19 reignited a public outcry over police treatment of African-Americans after the killings of unarmed black men in Missouri, New York City and elsewhere.

Rioters hurled bricks, looted businesses and set fires in Baltimore on Monday in violence that injured at least 15 police officers.

O’Malley’s successor as Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard at the request of the city of Baltimore to deal with the violence.

 

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Laura Booth joins Liberal Democrats and supports General Election candidate Lisa Smart

Stockport councillor Laura Booth reveals she’s joined the Lib Dems after she was due to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove but quit the party over ‘bullying’ claims

An independent councillor at the centre of a General Election campaign row has joined the Lib Dems.

Stockport councillor Laura Booth was due to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hazel Grove but quit the party over ‘bullying’ claims last year.

Local members vehemently deny the accusations and say Coun Booth has failed to produce any evidence to back up the claims.

Coun Booth, who has sat as an independent in Stockport since leaving Labour, is now supporting Lib Dem general election candidate Lisa Smart.

As the M.E.N. revealed last week, Labour has accused the Lib Dems of ‘dirty tactics’ after an email from Coun Booth was circulated by the party to voters.

Members, including election candidate Michael Taylor, blasted her for ‘misleading’ residents, claiming her email deliberately ‘confuses’ voters into thinking a Labour councillor was backing a Lib Dem – and that the party has given up in Hazel Grove.

Mr Taylor said Coun Booth was a ‘Lib Dem in all but name’.

The Lib Dems have now revealed she has joined their party.

Coun Booth said: “Having worked closely with many local Lib Dem councillors, I have found them to be honest, hard-working people, who strive to get the best for local residents.

“I think Stockport is best placed in Lib Dem hands and therefore I feel happy to be joining them and also continuing to support Lisa Smart to become the MP for Hazel Grove.”

Ms Smart said: “I’m delighted to welcome Laura Booth to the Lib Dems.

“She is a very hardworking local councillor and is a great addition to the team.

“Everyone knows that in the Hazel Grove constituency, it is a clear fight between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.

“More and more former Labour voters are telling me that they are voting Lib Dem this time as they know it’s the only way to stop the Conservatives in our area.”

Mr Taylor insists Labour has a chance of snatching the seat and denied former Labour supporters were being wooed by Ms Smart.

He said: “Around 40pc of the Lid Dem’s support is coming over to Labour, according to a recent YouGov poll.

“Coun Booth needs to be careful of traffic coming in the other direction.

“The Lib Dems are hemorrhaging support. This is the last desperate measure of a campaign in meltdown.”

 

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CHRISTIE SAYS HE STILL HOLDS OUT HOPE FOR BUDGET DEAL WITH DEMOCRATS

But governor hints during monthly radio show that he would once again veto ‘millionaire’s tax’ to help deal with pension shortfall

Gov. Chris Christie says that this year he’s looking to negotiate a budget deal with lawmakers – possibly managing to avoid a repeat of last year’s messy budget season.

“The fact is that we have until June 30 to pass a budget and I’m confident we’ll do that,” Christie said last night during his monthly radio show on NJ 101.5 FM.

Despite that confidence, the Republican governor and Democratic legislative leaders have a lot of work to do, given that they’re far apart right now on the size of a planned contribution into the public-employee pension system and how to pay for it.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto (D-Hudson) have both talked openly this year about increasing the income tax rate on earnings over $1 million to bring in more revenue for a pension payment, something Christie has rejected on four different occasions since taking office in early 2010 and which he hinted he might do again.

“Listen, I’m not going to get into specifics of what they may or may not do,” Christie said last night. “If they choose to push a budget on their own, that’s their responsibility if they choose to do it that way.”

Last year, the Republican governor went against the wishes of the Democratic legislative leaders and significantly reduced a promised payment into the pension system when he used line-item veto powers to cut the $34 billion spending plan Democrats sent him at the end of June.

But in doing so, Christie spurred a lawsuit from public-worker unions, which accused him of breaking a state law calling for the bigger contribution — $2.25 billion compared to $681 million – and drew the attention of Wall Street credit-rating agencies, which later downgraded New Jersey’s credit ratings, primarily citing concerns about pension funding.

Those events all ran counter to statements Christie’s made as he explores running for president in 2016, including his claims that he works well with Democrats and that his handling of the pension system has been a marked improvement over predecessors who chronically underfunded the state’s numerous pension funds.

This year, then, it’s not surprising that Christie is indicating that he would prefer to negotiate a budget deal with legislative leaders and reach an agreement well before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

Pension-reform laws Christie signed in 2010 and 2011 guaranteed a payment of $3.1 billion, an amount the legislative leaders want to see the governor come close to funding. But Christie has said that amount is now unaffordable, and his $33.8 billion spending plan] for the 2016 fiscal year calls for a $1.3 billion contribution.

Last night, radio-show host Eric Scott tried to press Christie on what he would do if Democrats, as they did last year send him a proposal to increase taxes on earnings over $1 million – what’s often referred to as a millionaire’s tax – if the additional revenue were used only to boost the pension contribution.

That’s the course New Jersey voters want their leaders to take this year, according to a poll released last week by Quinnipiac University.

Asked specifically whether they approve of increasing taxes on those earning over $1 million to help cover the pension contribution, 64 percent of the voters surveyed said they would support doing so, compared to 33 percent who said they wouldn’t.

Christie seemed to indicate last night that he’s readying another veto, but didn’t come right out and say so.

“I’ve vetoed a millionaire’s tax four times, so sometimes past is prologue, but we’ll see what happens,” Christie said. “I’m not going to negotiate in public on the budget.”

Neither Sweeney nor Prieto could be reached for comment last night.

If the three men do reach an agreement on a spending plan this year it would mark the third time that Democrats have been able to work with the governor on a consensus budget since he took office in early 2010. It’s something they accomplished during Christie’s first year in office and again in 2013, when Christie was up for re-election and all 120 legislative seats were also on the November ballot.

But there was no budget deal in 2011, 2012 or last year. That resulted in the budget being signed into law only after Christie exercised gubernatorial line-item veto authority, which enables him to delete language and spending from the budget, but not make any additions.

Christie’s decision to veto a millionaire’s tax hike and an associated surcharge on corporate revenue that Democrats proposed last year to help fund the larger, $2.25 billion pension contribution resulted in enactment of the current $32.8 billion budget.

Depending on how the pension litigation plays out, the governor and lawmakers may ultimately be forced to make the larger payment before the current fiscal year ends on June 30. The unions won the first round of the case in state Superior Court in February, but Christie’s administration has appealed to the state Supreme Court. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 6.

The court has also agreed to allow Sweeney and Prieto – who have sided with the unions – to join the case as a “friend of the court,” accepting a brief yesterday that they filed last week against the governor’s wishes.

Christie has also proposed a new round of public-employee benefits changes, including freezing the current pension system in favor of a new retirement plan with features of a 401(k). But last week officials from the New Jersey Education Association pulled out of talks with a panel of experts Christie appointed last year to review the affordability of employee benefits, striking a blow to his hopes for new reforms.

He acknowledged during the radio show last night that there’s been “no progress” when it comes to his broader reform plan, which also includes a proposal to offer employees less-generous healthcare coverage.

“The fact is that they never got anywhere near coming to any final negotiations on this,” Christie said.

 

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Fallout From Corinthian Collapse

WASHINGTON — The implosion of Corinthian Colleges over the past 10 months was an unprecedented challenge for the U.S. Department of Education. But navigating the politics left in the wake of the company’s collapse may prove even trickier.

As Corinthian shut down its remaining campuses on Monday, the Education Department was again defending its role in dismantling the for-profit college chain and facing renewed pressure from congressional Democrats to relieve the federal loans of students who attended Corinthian.

The sudden closure of those campuses, which displaced approximately 16,000 students, could cost taxpayers as much as $214 million, according to a department official, who declined to be named. That figure represents the maximum possible hit to federal coffers if every student at the campuses shuttered Monday were to request a discharge of their federal loans based on Corinthian’s closure.

The actual amount of debt canceled is likely to be less, however, as students who continue their studies elsewhere would not be eligible for the closed-school discharge.

The department official said that the potential cost to the federal government of Corinthian’s closure could have been higher if it weren’t for the department’s “rapid and strong action to ensure an orderly wind-down of Corinthian’s business.”

Had Corinthian collapsed last fall before the department brokered the sale of most of the company’s U.S. campuses to the ECMC Group, the official said, taxpayers would have faced a liability of $639 million in possible loan discharges.

Corinthian had more than 72,000 students last summer when the department-imposed restrictions on its access to federal aid caused a liquidity crisis at the company. Approximately 16,000 students had been enrolled this week, according to Corinthian.

“This is a consequence of the orderly wind-down,” the department official said Monday.

Intensifying Calls for Debt Relief

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill on Monday, meanwhile, sought to step up pressure on the Education Department to forgive the federal loans of students who attended Corinthian Colleges and some other for-profit institutions.

Six Democrats sent a letter to the Education Department and the four companies it hires to collect loans, calling on the government and the servicers to immediately identify and notify students who may qualify for federal loan discharges or cancellations.

The lawmakers, along with student activists and some state attorneys general, have been pushing the Education Department to set up a clear process for loan borrowers to file claims to have their loans canceled because of their college’s misconduct.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been leading that charge, slammed the Education Department Monday for not setting up a process for handling those claims, known as “defense to repayment” claims.

“These borrowers — people who were cheated and people who have been buried in debt — just keep on paying and the government keeps on collecting,” she said at forum on student loan debt at Howard University. “This is wrong.”

The department “has all the information it needs to simply discharge the loans” of Corinthian students, Warren said. “But the department isn’t doing that.”

“We’re pushing them hard,” she told reporters after the event. She said that she had “more than once” discussed the issue directly with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Duncan said last week that the department was still deciding how to handle the defense to repayment claims, adding that “everything’s on the table.”

The department plans to provide new information on such during the first week of May, a department official said in an email on Monday.

 

 

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