This guy is not going to hold a vote on raising the minimum wage.
About 28 million people will see their pay go up whenever Congress gets around to raising the minimum wage to $9.80. (Which is to say, not a minute before Democrats retake Congress.)
But who are those people? According to the Economic Policy Institute's Doug Hall and David Cooper:
- Women would be disproportionately affected, comprising nearly 55 percent of those who would benefit.
- Nearly 88 percent of workers who would benefit are at least 20 years old.
- Although workers of all races and ethnicities would benefit from the increase, non-Hispanic white workers comprise the largest share (about 56 percent) of those who would be affected.
- About 42 percent of affected workers have at least some college education.
- Around 54 percent of affected workers work full time, over 70 percent are in families with incomes of less than $60,000, more than a quarter are parents, and over a third are married.
- The average affected worker earns about half of his or her family’s total income.
A far cry from the pimpled teenagers working part-time to buy designer jeans and movie tickets that Republicans conjure up every time they're asked about raising the minimum wage.
There are a lot of reasons to want Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker Pelosi again, but this kind of basic, bread-and-butter issue has to be high on the list. Having a full-time job should put you above the poverty level, but unless you are supporting only yourself, the minimum wage does not do that. And Speaker Pelosi is the only way to change this situation, since despite the widespread popularity and economic benefit of increasing the minimum wage, Republican politicians range from just not giving a damn about the livelihood of millions of working poor people to being actively hostile to the idea of making work pay enough to live on. Many Republican politicians don't even know what the current minimum wage is—but they know they don't want to raise it.
Please, give $3 to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House in 2013.
