Senate MP decides against including minimum wage in Covid relief

Senate MP decides against including minimum wage in Covid relief

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While Democrats have insisted the increase should be included – and the leadership expressed its disappointment in Thursday night’s decision – removing it may make it easier to pass the bill, senior Democratic sources say because it is a messy battle over whether it should be removed from the bill and whether there should be compromise.

“President Biden is disappointed with this outcome because he suggested he would have the minimum wage of $ 15 as part of the U.S. bailout plan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “He respects the decision of the parliamentarian and the process of the Senate.”

The ruling is tentatively, not a defeat, seen as the removal of the bill in the Senate, a Biden administration official told CNN.

House President Nancy Pelosi said Thursday night the provision would remain in the House Bill on which the chamber would vote Friday. However, the parliamentarian ruled that the increase to $ 15 per hour did not meet the strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the Senate’s reconciliation process. This means that the House will approve its bill, that the Senate will have to remove the minimum wage provision, and ultimately the House will have to pass the bill again at the end of the process.

But the ruling likely makes it easier for Senate Leader Chuck Schumer to get his members in line with the bill, as the rise in the minimum wage has been a major bottleneck for moderates like Sens. Arizona’s Kyrsten Cinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. .

There are no viable options to use the procedures in the Senate to keep the wage increase in the bill.

White House officials, who are aware of the possible math problem with the Senate Democrats as the minimum wage increase in the final package, were counting on the provision being stripped, the administration official told CNN.

Although there were discussions about what would happen if it were not, President Joe Biden’s top advisers were pretty sure it would come out – something Biden himself hinted at several times in public.

The official’s ruling keeps a major obstacle out of action, officials acknowledge. While Biden will make an effort to pass an independent increase, officials know that due to Republican and Democratic opposition, it has no way in the Senate.

“We are deeply disappointed in this decision,” Schumer said in a statement following the ruling. “We are not going to give up the fight to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 to help millions of struggling American workers and their families. The American people deserve it, and we are committed to making it a reality.”

The parliamentarian’s decision marks the end of a few weeks’ effort by Senate Budget Speaker Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, to repeal the provision in the bill.

“I do not completely agree with the decision of the Senate MP,” Sanders said in a statement Thursday night. “The (Congressional Budget Office) has made it absolutely clear that raising the minimum wage to $ 15 per hour has a significant budgetary impact and should be allowed under conciliation. It is difficult for me to understand how drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is considered in line with the Byrd rule, although raising the minimum wage is not, “Sanders added, referring to the rule – named after the late Senator Robert C. Byrd – which prohibits” include foreign “measures as part of the budget process Democrats are using to send the Covid-19 aid package to Biden’s desk in early March.

In the House, the progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told CNN earlier this week that she would still support the Covid relief package if the parliamentarian was the one to remove the provision for the minimum wage, but not if it were the politicians. to take it out. For Ocasio-Cortez, members of her own party who removed or reduced the minimum wage would drop the bill. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democrat from Minnesota, paid tribute to the sentiments.

Senate MP Elizabeth MacDonough, a little-known but powerful Senate official, was put in the spotlight this week, with Democrats eager to see if the minimum wage increase in the president’s emergency relief package would survive. MacDonough is the first woman to serve in the role of Senate MP – a non-partisan role – since the position was created in the 1930s.

This story has been updated with additional details.

Annie Grayer and Phil Mattingly contributed to this report.

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