By Matt Strauser
This past Tuesday, during his State of the Union address, President Obama laid out a bold new proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour from its current rate of $7.25 an hour. The White House estimates that if enacted, the reform would result in additional $3,500 in income for people whose current income is between $20,000 and $30,000. The move would also be a step towards reducing increasing inequality and reversing the decline in the real value of wages. Moreover, a recent study by Barry Hirsch, Bruce Kaufman, and Tetyana Zelenska argues that minimum wages do not decrease employment, confirming the work of scholars like David Card and Alan Kreuger. Finally, the minimum wage increase wages up the pay scale.
In addition to these obvious positives, the proposed minimum wage increase, while likely to face resistance from conservatives in Congress, has a chance to actually pass. First, increasing the minimum wage does not expand or create a government program, so it will be hard for Republicans to attack the proposal using that common trope. Second, working class social conservatives who voted for Mitt Romney and other Republicans during the last cycle may even support the measure and ask their legislators to do the same. According to ThinkProgress.com, 67 Republicans currently in Congress, many coming from the South and Midwest, have supported increasing the minimum wage. In stopping the measure, Republicans would be playing petty politics with the lives of American wage earners; the attack that they’re Mitt Romney Republicans detached from the struggles of workers would seem accurate.
Ultimately, the convergence of these factors will result in Congress coming together and passing a measure that helps working Americans…well, I hope.