The Minimum Wage Is 85 Years Old This Week-- Our Corporate Masters & Their GOP Servants Want It Dead

When the 1930 elections came around, the Republicans were still in control of both chambers. The effects of the Great Depression that Republican policies brought were just getting started. Hoover had just beaten Democrat Al Smith in a massive landslide two years earlier and it wouldn’t be until 1932 that FDR would rid into the White House with his own landslide. Meanwhile voters were aware that the GOP had done them in. In 1930, the Republicans lost 52 seats in the House and 5 seats in the Senate. After the election, they hold a 2-seat majority in the House and a 1-seat majority in the Senate and kept pushing their ugly reactionary policies, making the Depression worse.

The voters got even in 1932. Going into the election, the Republicans had 218 seats. 101 of them were lost. In the Seante. Where the Republicans still held 48 seats, they lost 11 and the new reality was a 58-37 Democratic majority. The House had a 313-117 Democratic majority (+5 seats for the Democratic-allied Farmer-Labor Party). The Republicans were unchastened by their losses and kept advocating for policies that voters hated. So in the 1934 midterms, they lost 14 more seats in the House and a startling 10 more seats in the Senate, leaving them with a miserable 25 Senate seats to the Democrats’ 69.

When the 1936 elections rolled around the GOP was certain that the Democratic overreach had been enough for the voters and that they had reached their bottom and had no place to go but up. They double down on their reactionary agenda and the voters were very clear with them. As Roosevelt was winning a 46 state to 2 state reelection, House Republicans shed 15 more seats, leaving them with just 88 to the Democrats’ 334 (+ 8 Progressives and 5 Farmer-Labor). And in the Senate, the GOP donnybrook continued: 5 more seats lost, leaving the Democrats with a 75-17 majority.

You may be wondering why we’re poking around in ancient history. There’s a reason. New Zealand (1894), Australia (1907) and the UK (1909) had instituted minimum wage laws. Massachusetts followed in 1912 and by 1923, 14 more states and Washington DC had passed minimum wage laws. Soon after being elected, FDR said that “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” BOOM! That was war. It’s still going on.

The Supreme Court at the time was as conservative and in the pocket of Big Business as the one we have today. It kept striking down minimum wage laws as unconstitutional. FDR tried in 1933 with the National Industrial Recovery Act, which set minimum wage and maximum hours on an industry and regional basis. Big Business and their Republican allies in Congress started screaming “Socialism” and the Supreme Court promptly struck down the law. The public was furious, which led to those election results above.

Buoyed by public support, Roosevelt told the Supreme Court he would add new members if they continued their obstruction. Congress then passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which included a minimum wage of $0.25/hour (equivalent to $5.41 in today’s buying power). Afraid of what Roosevelt and the Democrats would do, the craven Supreme Court found it constitutional. Ironically, the Senator who first proposed the Fair Labor Standards Act (1932) was former KKK-member Hugo Black (D-AL) who was also FDR’s first Supreme Court nominee. (He served on the Court from 1937-1971, having replaced reactionary shithead Willis Van Devanter.)

A revised version of Black’s proposal in 1938 became the first national minimum wage law in the U.S., which included the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and a provision to ban children from working in dangerous situations. The FLSA gave raises to 700,000 workers. Republicans were furious and fought these provisions tooth and nail… leading to an unprecedented third term for Roosevelt. I know still ancient history. But…

Tuesday— in the face of the same solid Republican opposition— Bernie unveiled a new $17 minimum wage bill— with 146 co-sponsors in the House and 29 in the Senate. Since 2009, Republicans and a handful of conservative Democrats have blocked— continue to block— any increase in the minimum wage. In 2021 all 50 Republicans were joined by 8 conservative Democrats to kill the last attempt to raise the minimum wage (to $15). The 8 scumbag Democrats:

• Joe Manchin (up for reelection next year)

• Kyrsten Sinema (up for reelection next year)

• Jon Tester (up for reelection next year)

• Angus King (up for reelection next year)

• Tom Carper- finally retiring; good riddance

• Chris Coons

• Jeanne Shaheen

• Maggie Hassan

And as long as we’re on the topic, this is the time for voters in several states to get revenge on the Republicans who voted against raising the minimum wage and who are up for reelection next year are:

• Rick Scott (FL)

• Mike Braun (IN) is running for governor instead

• Roger Wicker (MS)

• Josh Hawley (MO) who may be replaced by Lucas Kunce

• Deb Fischer (NE)

• Kevin Cramer (ND)

• Marsha Blackburn (TN)

• Ted Cruz (TX)

• Mitt Romney (UT)— yeah... not always a moderate

• John Barrasso (WY)

Oh, I just realized that Tuesday was June 25 and it was on June 25 that FDR— recently belittled and sneered at by Georgia crackpot Marjorie Traitor Greene— signed the original minimum wage bill in the FLSA on June 25, 1938. So kind of a birthday celebration. Traitor Greene not invited. Bernie noted in his announcement that “Estimated to benefit nearly 28 million workers, or 19 percent of the working population, the Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would raise the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour over five years, eliminate the tipped sub-minimum wage over seven years, eliminate the sub-minimum wage for workers with disabilities over five years, and eliminate the sub-minimum wage for youth workers over seven years.”

Aaron Regunberg, the progressive in the Rhode Island special election to replace Dave Cicilline, told me this morning that "The fact that millions of Americans work full time and still are caught in poverty is simply obscene. It is far past time for us to pass a $17 minimum wage, and I am grateful for the leadership of officials like Bernie Sanders in fighting for measures like this, which are so critical to building an economy that works for everyone, not just the corporate CEOs at the very top." I can't wait to see him in Congress kicking ass on these kinds of issues. Please consider giving him a hand to get there.

In 1938 the conservative arguments haven’t changed at all, even though they’ve been completely discredited and proven wrong. They argued in 1938 and every year since, that the minimum wage itself is a regulation that harms businesses, reduce job opportunities and stifles economic growth. The opposite has proven true over and over and over.

Bernie: “The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It must be raised to a living wage— at least $17 an hour. In the year 2023 a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we can no longer tolerate millions of workers being unable to feed their families because they are working for totally inadequate wages. Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. The time to act is now.”

Bobby Scott (D-VA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, is the sponsor in the House. In the announcement statement he said that “No person working full-time in America should be living in poverty. The Raise the Wage Act will increase the pay and standard of living for nearly 28 million workers across this country. Raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for business, and good for the economy. When we put money in the pockets of American workers, they will spend that money in their communities.”

Over the last 50 years, $50 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of America to the top 1 percent. Today, the value of the current federal minimum wage, $7.25 per hour, is the lowest it has been since 1956 and has declined by nearly 28 percent since it was last increased in 2009. While approximately 5 million tipped workers in the U.S. depend on tips for nearly three-quarters of their income, the tipped sub-minimum wage has remained stagnant at just $2.13 per hour since 1991. The current median wage for approximately 120,000 workers with disabilities is just $3.50 per hour.

Meanwhile, across every state in the country, a living wage for a worker in a family with two working adults and one child is greater than $17 per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Family Budget Calculator. However, nearly 30 percent of workers in the U.S., over 44 million people, make less than $17 per hour. Many of these low-wage workers face persistent economic insecurity, struggling to put food on the table and afford basic necessities, including housing, health care, and childcare.

American workers are among the most productive in the world. Yet, in industry after industry, the share of revenues going to wages has dropped, while the share going to profits and stock buybacks has soared. In fact, if the minimum wage had increased with productivity over the last 50 years, it would be $23 an hour today. If it had increased at the same rate that Wall Street employee bonuses have increased, it would be more than $42 an hour.

Since 2013, twelve states— New Jersey, South Dakota, Arkansas (twice), Alaska, Washington, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Nevada, and Nebraska (twice)— have voted on ballot initiatives to raise their state’s minimum wage. Every single one of these initiatives passed, none with less than 55 percent of the vote. In the November 2022 midterm election, two states that elected Republican governors, Nebraska and Nevada, also approved minimum wage increases. In 2020, the citizens of Florida, with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, also voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Senate Democrats who have not signed on as cosponsors, at least not yet:

• Chuck Schumer (NY)

• Joe Manchin (WV)- up for reelection next year

• Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ)- up for reelection next year

• Jon Tester (MT)- up for reelection next year

• Angus King (I-ME)- up for reelection next year

• Tom Carper (DE)

• Chris Coons (DE)

• Jeanne Shaheen (NH)

• Maggie Hassan (NH)

• Mark Kelly (AZ)

• Jacky Rosen (NV)- up for reelection next year

• Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)

• Bob Menendez (NJ)- up for reelection next year

• Martin Heinrich (NM)

• Ben Ray Lujan (NM)

• John Hicknelooper (CO)

• Michael Bennet (CO)

• Jon Ossoff (GA)

• Raphael Warnock (GA)

• Bob Casey (PA)- up for reelection next year

• Mark Warner (VA)

If I were Bob Casey or Jacky Rosen, I'd be looking for Bernie real fast and offering to sign on as a cosponsor. Rosen, an especially shitty senator and especially in danger, had better be doing a little more than just begging for money online if she hopes to be reelected next year. She has zero to offer except to say that the Republican-- whomever that will be-- who runs against her is even worse. If she doesn't get behind that minimum wage bill in a big way, that argument will have far less salience.

Maebe A Girl, the progressive candidate running to replace Adam Schiff in L.A.-Burbank-Glendale, could show them how to do it. "The federal minimum wage hasn't risen since 2009— most of our time since then has been under Democratic presidents," she reminded me today. "With the rapidly rising inflation and ballooning costs of food and rent, the federal minimum wage ABSOLUTELY has to go up. It's far past time, and many rural areas are seeing the same cost of living and rent increases we're seeing here in the cities. We can't let corporate interests get the better of working people." We need more people like Bernie, Aaron and Maebe in Congress. You can contribute to Maebe's and Aaron's campaigns here.