Mitt Romney figured this out 20 years in the past. Now we simply want him to recollect.
In August 1963, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom. The “freedom” half is what individuals keep in mind, as a result of the march, and Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, led to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The “jobs” half referred to as for a “huge federal works program” and “full and honest employment,” together with a $2 federal hourly minimal wage.
On the time of the march, the minimal wage was $1.15 per hour for many employees and $1 per hour for employees in retail, transit, building, gasoline stations, and repair jobs. The next week the federal hourly wage minimal was scheduled to rise to $1.25.
The marchers didn’t get their minimum-wage hike. It will be one other 11 years earlier than the federal hourly minimal wage reached $2, and by then $2, because of inflation, was the equal of $1.26 in Aug. 1963—just one penny greater than the stingy hike that the marchers had protested. In comparison with the present minimal wage, although, $2 per hour was a princely sum. It was the equal of $10.72 per hour as we speak. If that doesn’t sound like a lot to you, remember the fact that the federal minimal wage for the final dozen years has been caught at $7.25. That’s much less even than the $1 rock-bottom minimal in August 1963. (All these calculations are derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.)
Think about if, after the March on Washington, the variety of water fountains marked “White” and “Coloured” had quadrupled. That’s kind of what’s occurred, six a long time later, to the 1963 march’s protest in opposition to a miserly minimal wage.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump was everywhere in the map on the minimal wage in 2016, suggesting variously that it was too excessive, that it shouldn’t exist in any respect, and that it ought to exist solely on the state degree. Lastly he settled on elevating it to $10, however as president he by no means lifted a finger to make it occur. (In an October debate Trump attacked Joe Biden for supporting a $15 wage minimal, then mentioned wage minimums must be set on the state degree, after which, when it was identified that he’d just lately mentioned he’d contemplate a $15 federal minimal, mentioned “I might contemplate it to an extent.”)
Which brings us to as we speak, when Democrats within the Home and Senate re-introduced the Elevate the Wage Act. The invoice would improve the federal wage minimal progressively to $15 by 2025, at which period numerous “sub-minimum” wages for tipped employees, younger individuals, and disabled employees would get replaced by the federal minimal. The invoice would additionally index the wage minimal to will increase in median wage progress, eliminating the need for Congress to struggle over minimal wage sooner or later.
Republicans hate having to argue in regards to the minimal wage, as a result of polls present it’s extraordinarily standard; on the state degree, poll initiatives to extend wage minimums seldom fail. Even Republican voters are inclined to favor growing the minimal wage. That’s why Trump felt so conflicted by the difficulty; he was torn between eager to do the favored factor and never wanting Larry Kudlow’s head to blow up. Kudlow was director of Trump’s Nationwide Financial Council, and no one hates the minimal wage greater than he does.
Then-Senate Majority Chief Mitch McConnell managed to maintain the Elevate the Wage Act off the Senate flooring after the Democratic-controlled Home handed it in July 2019. That spared Republican senators from having to vote in opposition to a minimal wage hike at a time when the wage minimal was set at a degree that the 1963 marchers would have thought-about desk scraps. However now the Senate is Democratic, and there might be a vote. That offers Republicans an opportunity to rid themselves of this difficulty perpetually by voting in future indexing.
This isn’t rocket science, nevertheless it appears to elude most Republican officeholders. As Paul Glastris has identified, President Invoice Clinton used the minimal wage difficulty very successfully to beat up his Republican challenger, Bob Dole, in 1996. As a candidate for Massachusetts governor in 2002, Mitt Romney grasped that this was a loser difficulty for Republicans, and he got here out in favor of indexing state minimum-wage hikes. He continued to favor indexing on the presidential marketing campaign path in 2012 till Kudlow, then a CNBC pundit, cowed him into retreating.
Romney acquired it proper the primary time. Now that he’s acquired extra spine, he ought to present it off by reverting to his earlier place, and getting another Republicans to affix him. If any of them fret that they’ll be caving in to civil rights marchers from 1963, they need to know {that a} federal minimal of $15, after inflation, is about two bucks lower than what King demanded in August 1963. Like the opposite dream that King spoke of that day, a genuinely respectable wage minimal will possible stay out of attain for a while.