The Daily Beast
Progressive people will not accept a loss of $ 15 minimum wage
REUTERS Minutes after the Senate MP advised against maintaining the proposed $ 15 minimum increase in the US bailout plan, key House Democrats formed a group discussion via text message to discuss tactics to put President Joe Biden under pressure to to keep important promise. progressive became known Thursday night, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) brainstorming at night with Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Marie Newman (D-IL), Cori Bush (D-MO) and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) on how to effectively control the shared bargaining power of left-wing lawmakers used to advance the wage goal with the White House. “We all felt something had to be done,” Khanna told The Daily Beast about the late-night strategy session. “It was really a joint effort.” When a first-year congressman woke up on Friday morning, he was still annoyed by the gloomy news from the Senate. Bowman, a new recruiter in the Squad, took his child to school and brought a phone call to the White House immediately afterwards, an act that would have been unthinkable in the past. However, in a sign of shifting dynamics from previous administrations, Bowman enjoyed a particularly open, ongoing conversation with senior officials during the first weeks of Biden’s first term. “We can accept no response that ends with ‘our hands are tied’. We must exercise all our authority in any way necessary to get us to the $ 15 minimum wage, ”Bowman told The Daily Beast in an extensive interview. “And oh, by the way, we need a minimum wage of $ 15 like we did ten years ago.” The New York predecessor’s call to the White House was just one part of an behind-the-scenes attack that took place after Elizabeth MacDonough, a Member of Parliament, concluded that the inclusion of the wage increase in the plan to alleviate the $ 1.9 billion pandemic was in violation of the rules. On Friday night and over the weekend, prominent progressives addressed the cable news to criticize what they see as a bureaucratic obstacle to moving the country. past stagnant low wages. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the decision was “disturbing”. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said at Mehdi Hasan’s inaugural address on MSNBC that they “should dominate the parliamentarian” and claim that “voters and people across the country are putting Democrats in power” to raise the basic wage. Following the weekend of activity, early Monday, Khanna sent a 22-page letter to 22 Democrats, including those involved in the exchange of text and other top members such as Ocasio-Cortez, to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris asking them to to “refute” MacDonough’s recommendation. Khanna, a leading progressive who co-chaired Sanders’ presidential campaign, was also ‘in touch’ with the White House on the issue. “The outdated and complicated Byrd rule, rooted in limiting progress, must not be an obstacle to the improvement of people’s lives,” reads the letter citing the provision – the Byrd rule – in which the wage increase was rejected, condemned. White House secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was “disappointed” with the result. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) added the word “deep” to the president’s sentiment. But White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who learned from Khanna’s letter, indicated last week before the ruling that the government would not dispute it either. Psaki followed up on Klain’s previous statements and told reporters on Monday: “This is not an action we want to take.” ‘Everyone says we have to pay $ 15. Everyone understands that we need to do this before the medium term. How are we going to do that then? Khanna said. “What is our alternative?” Overtaking the parliamentarian would be contrary to the senate’s norms, but it is not without precedent. Khanna’s letter mentions a moment when former Vice President Hubert Humphrey suppressed in 1967 the government’s leadership ‘to lower the filibuster threshold from two-thirds of those present to three-fifths’. Some progressive people are now turning their attention. specifically toward Harris for doing so, which could eventually overturn MacDonough’s stance. The pressure comes as many on the left watch the vice president skeptically, dating back to last year’s Democratic presidential election, when some raised the issue of her record on criminal law and health care. When Biden announced last August that she was the candidate to be his candidate, supporters of thriving candidates generally remained silent and struck a more diplomatic tone than the entire cycle was charged on her in an attempt to oust former President Donald Trump to beat. Building Power in Biden’s White House After Biden won the general election, there was earlier hope that Harris might push Biden to the left if he needed a push. In her short tenure in the Senate, she is considered one of the most progressive voting records in the House. While on the shortlist for VP, she even got rhetorically closer to Sanders, but some still consider her cautious. “I don’t think the pressure points on Biden’s government include Kamala Harris,” said Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction, who served twice as a delegate for Sanders. “Harris is not from the progressive wing of the party, and there is no reason to believe that she will strongly advocate for progressive positions.” While talks on alternatives continue, those on the left are mostly against the idea of possibly trying to raise the federal minimum wage through a stand-alone bill, acknowledging that it is unlikely to succeed in a 50-50 Senate. Two Conservative Democrats, sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Cinema (D-AZ), both scrambled to include $ 15 in the current COVID package; Manchin only supports an amount of $ 11. To that end, some elected officials express a desire to hear directly from the Biden government about another possible solution. Multiple lawmakers have suggested the idea of a high-level meeting with a group of Democrats and Biden to explain the strategy going forward, arguing that it would be a constructive step to talk to the president. A source with knowledge of the talks told Daily Beast. The White House and the vice president’s office did not immediately return a request for comment: “What are you going to do with $ 7.25 an hour in any part of this country?” Bowman said. “We have people living in poverty. Abject poverty. [A] A minimum wage of $ 15 will put more money in people’s pockets, they will spend more money and we will make the economy work in the right way. ‘ Read more at The Daily Beast. 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