The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentary speaker in the Senate, will lay the groundwork for intense debate among Democrats on how to proceed on the controversial provision. Democrats, who cannot afford to lose a single vote in their own ranks to pass the bill in a uniformly divided Senate, have split on the push to raise the federal minimum wage, which would increase it to $ 15 per hour for four years.
Set minimum wages
“We are waiting, as we all are, to hear the Senate MP talk about what will happen to the minimum wage in the legislation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., California) told reporters Thursday. “I think we have a very, very strong argument and that in our country we have a great need to approve the minimum wage.”
Raising the minimum wage is the most divisive issue of the aid package, which Democrats broadly support. The package would also provide a payment of $ 1,400 to many Americans; expand and improve federal unemployment assistance; send $ 350 billion in aid to state and local governments; and pouring new funding into vaccine distribution, food stamps and schools.
Democratic and Republican staff presented their arguments to parliament on Wednesday morning over the minimum wage provision and have been waiting ever since to hear their recommendation.
“I know we’re all in needles,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Republican Senate Senate leadership. “I think the right decision would be to say that the budget process cannot be used to pass substantive legislation.”
Democrats use a process called reconciliation to pass the aid package with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes needed for most legislation. But the conciliation also includes Senate rules on which proposals can be approved under the special procedure, including that the provision is directly tied to the budget. It needs to be determined that the measure has a significant fiscal impact that cannot be incidental to the policy proposal.
If Mrs. MacDonough decides that the minimum wage increase can be included in the package, Democrats will have to reach a consensus among themselves on how to structure it.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has said he would try to change the salary increase to $ 11 an hour.
Photo:
Sarah Silbiger – Pool via CNP / Zuma Press
While many Democrats, including the party’s progressive wing, have agreed to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, several senators have doubts about the plan. Some are concerned about the impact the increase could have on small businesses and restaurants. Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the party’s most prominent moderate, has said he would try to change the salary increase to $ 11 per hour. Other lawmakers have explored offering tax breaks to small businesses or gradually increasing the pay rise for smaller businesses.
“Putting $ 15 right now makes it very difficult in rural America, we have small businesses,” Manchin said.
Biden has said he expects parliamentarians to say that raising the minimum wage cannot be part of the bill.
In a nod to that possibility, Ms. Pelosi indicated that the House would consider legislation on minimum wages separately if it is not included in the bill.
“We will pass a minimum wage mass,” he said. However, legislation outside the reconciliation process would need 60 votes in the Senate, where Republicans have criticized the $ 15 proposal as detrimental to businesses.
If Democrats receive the green light from parliament, they will have a matter of weeks to reach a compromise between their ranks and will continue to pass the bill before federal unemployment programs expire in mid-March. With control of the Senate division between 50 and 50, Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties, but Democrats cannot lose a single MP.
If the MP indicates that the minimum wage provision does not meet the requirements, Democrats will face a different set of decisions. Some progressives have said they would push the White House and Senate lawmakers to ignore their ruling. Several senators have said they would not be comfortable doubling the rules of the House to raise the minimum wage, as White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain did on Wednesday night.
Ignoring the MP “is not something we will do,” Klain told MSNBC. “We will work within the rules of the Senate and get the bill passed.”
Republicans have argued that the package provides help that is not needed and has nothing to do with the pandemic.
“This bill is too costly, too corrupt, and too liberal,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., California) told Fox News on Thursday.
Democrats’ concerns about the minimum wage provision included in President Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package could force changes. Explains Gerald F. Seib of the WSJ. Photographic illustration: Laura Kammermann
Republicans have said they support raising the minimum wage, but they have their own differences on how to do it.
On Thursday, Susan Collins, of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito, of West Virginia, and Rob Portman, of Ohio, joined Thursday the legislation of Mitt Romney, of Utah, and Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, which would increase the minimum wage at $ 10 per hour for four years. , starting once the pandemic is over, and require all employers to use E-Verify, which allows them to check the immigration status of potential workers.
“This framework balances the needs of employers with opportunities for employees,” Ms. Capito said in a statement, saying the GOP bill demonstrated that “there are long-term solutions that can be presented and debated outside of ‘a partisan process that has merit doubts in its implementation in the name of Covid relief’.
Earlier this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said he planned to introduce legislation that would grant a quarterly tax credit to workers earning below the average wage of $ 16.50 per hour, which would be indexed to inflation. The credit will be worth 50% of the difference between the employee’s hourly rate and the average salary of up to 40 hours of work per week.
Health subsidies and support for multi-employer pensions are some of the issues on which the parliamentarian could also comment soon. The bill subsidizes 85% of the cost of premiums for health insurance coverage through Cobra, which most employers have to offer employees who have recently laid off and offers relief to multi-employer pensions who have problems.
Beyond eliminating measures that address procedural challenges, Democrats are also considering changing the bill by adding new fiscal measures to increase revenue and keep its overall price at $ 1.9 trillion, according to an aide.
The debate over raising the minimum wage has once again highlighted Ms MacDonough. A former Senate library worker and judicial attorney, she has worked in the parliamentarian’s office since 1999. Because both sides rely on the reconciliation process to pass legislation by simple majority, the parliamentarian’s resolutions have played an important role in key legislative efforts, including the Republican. efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Write to Kristina Peterson at [email protected] and Andrew Duehren at [email protected]
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