Every blue state except New Hampshire now has a minimum wage ahead of the federal minimum. So do red states with a significant blue presence like North Carolina, Florida, and Arkansas.
The number of states with higher minimum wages will continue to increase rapidly, and the amounts of the minimum wages mandated will continue to increase significantly. There is not a great need for Washington to promote a low-level minimum wage increase, although doing so is better than doing nothing at all.
What is needed is for Washington to come out with a minimum wage increase that speaks meaningfully to both individual and public aspirations for minimum wage workers to be free from poverty. It violates the American creed to have work go without a meaningful reward.
The level of the minimum wage is a politically powerful issue because it is a major moral issue. It is a major moral issue because it speaks to the value that we as a society put upon each working person and their dependents.
There are various approaches Congress can take. The first is advocate forthrightly for an increase in the minimum wage that would keep people out of poverty. This is something that has been done in the past: in 1968, when I was working in Washington as a U.S. Senate intern, the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, the equivalent today of about $9.50 an hour. (My $87 a week intern salary came out to about $2.20 an hour.)
For 2007, a wage that would keep people with two dependents out of poverty (barely, and assuming only 4% inflation this year) would be $8.25. That minimimum wage would have to continue to increase year by year in order to keep people out of poverty in face of relentless inflation.
A second approach is to advocate for a meaningful role for the federal government. A situation where many states--including all of the most populous states except Texas--are pushing through higher minimum wages than the federal government has is to undermine federal authority. A minimum wage of $1 higher or $2 higher than the highest state figure would reassert forcefully the vital role of the federal government in this area and raise the living standards of millions of Americans in this process.
A third approach would be to follow the lead of Barak Obama's amendment to the Senate immigration bill and expand the concept of prevailing wage--now used in the construction industry--across the board. Obama, for instance, employs it in areas where employers seek federal permission to bring in immigrants outside the immigration quotas because of a shortage of U.S. workers willing to do the job at a salary employers are willing to pay. A minimum wage that is 80% or 90% of the prevailing wage in just about every area would get many millions of people out of poverty or near poverty.
A fourth approach would be to take any of the above approaches and achieve it over time. My latest draft of a minimum wage increase for Pennsylvania, where I have recently been a leader of successful efforts to raise it to $7.15 in 2007, is to set minimum wage targets of $8.15 in 2008, $8.75 in 2009, and $9.35 in 2010. This would keep a minimum wage worker out of poverty if he has two or fewer dependents and if inflation stays under 4% annually.
Whatever approach or combination of approaches that Congress uses, there should be an emphasis on boldness and significance. FDR promised the American people a New Deal, not an amelioration of social conditions. Truman promised a Fair Deal, not a fair attempt to make things better. LBJ promised a Great Society, not a society that would often be better than average.
The time for Democratic timidity is over. Those who want the Democrats to gain significant power in Washington should understand that the Democrats need to pursue significant purposes in order to get that power.
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