Minimum wage hikes face opposition from Republicans AND Democrats

President Biden’s push to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour faces significant hurdles in Congress because of strong opposition from Republicans, skepticism from some centrist Democrats, as well as obscure Senate procedures.

Biden proposed the $15-an-hour minimum wage hike in his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, which congressional lawmakers are starting to debate. Republicans are expected to oppose the measure. If Biden wants bipartisan support for his overall stimulus proposal, he would probably be forced to jettison the wage hike.

Democrats are also laying the groundwork to pass their stimulus package through “reconciliation," a Senate procedure that allows legislation to pass with a narrow majority, avoiding a filibuster. However, that process is supposed to be used for matters related to spending, taxes and the budget, meaning there’s a chance the wage hike could be struck as inadmissible under Senate rules.

Even if Biden can overcome the parliamentary obstacle, it is not clear the $15-an-hour wage measure would win the unanimous support of 50 Democratic senators to pass it through reconciliation. Only 38 have so far co-sponsored legislation to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, although virtually all Democratic senators have said they support some increase in the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

“There’s unanimity among Democrats that we have to raise the minimum wage. The question is how high and how fast," said Jim Kessler, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and now executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist think tank.

The fight over the minimum wage proposal threatens to expose divisions in the Democratic caucus and could prove an early test of Biden’s ability to force Congress to follow his agenda. It could also prove an enormous help to millions of workers across the country, especially those in retail and service sector industries whose job security has been tenuous because of coronavirus pandemic shutdowns.

The federal minimum wage is worth about 17 percent less than it was in 2009, when it was last raised, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would amount to a raise for approximately 28 million workers, the group said in 2019.

Biden campaigned for president on a $15-an-hour minimum wage platform, as did the two Georgia Democrats who gave the party their Senate majority with victories in January.