Other lawmakers, including some Republicans, have argued that the pandemic relief package should be scaled down, with items such as the minimum wage provision left for another legal battle later in the year. Most House Republics voted against a stand-alone minimum wage bill in 2019, citing a report by the Congressional Budget Office that estimated the provision would put an estimated 1.3 million Americans out of work. Senate Republicans, who are in charge of the chamber, did not take it up.
“This is an agenda item for the government, so be it,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told reporters. “Should it be included as part of a Covid lighting package? I think it takes the focus off the priority, which is the immediate need today. ”
‘Hey,’ she adds, ‘you’re getting the car keys now. And so let’s do legislation, but you do not have to think that you have to get it all in one package. ”
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters in January that “we are not going to earn a minimum wage of $ 15 in it” and that Mr. Biden would be better off reaching Capitol Hill and negotiating a compromise.
Mr. Sanders and Democrats argued that there is little time to win over their Republican counterparts, who in 2017 embarked on similar reconciliation efforts to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act and a comprehensive tax recovery.
But to secure the first increase in the federal minimum wage since 2009, Sanders and Liberal Democrats can afford even under conciliation to lose little support, if any, from the rest of the caucus.
Several legislators, including Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, chair of the House Budget Committee, have expressed skepticism that the provision of minimum wages could be enforced by the rules of the conciliation process, which set strict parameters to prevent the process from being abused. Under the so-called Byrd rule, Democrats can not include any measure that affects the social security program, increase the deficit after a certain period determined in the budget resolution or the income or spending does not change.