The GOP is its worse enemy. If you doubt this I have two words for you: Donald Trump. Heck, here are two more words: Ted Cruz.
Somehow the nightmare scenario is here for the GOP where it's least favorite Senator and Donald Trump are the finalists. Cruz is technically in government but has spent his time mostly in self promotional games to blow the government up.
Time and again, the GOP has just said no. And lived to regret it. Think of what it could have gotten from Obama in 2012. Raising the Medicare retirement age, chained CPI on Social Security. But this wasn't good enough for the GOP and those ideas are now gone forever-thankfully.
Or take the Bush tax cuts. In 2011 the Dems were willing to keep the tax cuts for everyone making less than $1 million dollars. The GOP just said no and they had to agree in 2013 to a deal that ended the tax cuts for everyone making over $450,000.
On the minimum wage, they've done the same thing.The Washington Post frames it well:
"GOVERNORS OF the nation’s most and fourth-most populous states, California and New York, respectively, have signed a$15-per-hour minimum wage into law. In the District, a judge has just ruled that proponents can try to get a $15 minimum on the ballot in November; Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)supports accomplishing the $15 goal legislatively. What the success of the $15 minimum wage movement shows, in part, is that politics abhors a vacuum. In the absence of action by the Republican-controlled Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, states and cities encompassing about 65 percent of the U.S. population have decided to enact higher minimums, though usually less than $15. Maybe the GOP should have taken President Obama up on his request for a $9 minimum when he offered it back in his 2013 State of the Union address."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/15-is-the-wrong-goal-for-minimum-wage-advocates/2016/04/05/64b0d6ce-fa90-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html
$9 dollars an hour. Amazing that was just three years ago. Now it's gotten away from them. $15 is the new demand. Which to be clear, is fine with me.
As for the Democrats, some argue Hillary should accept the $15 MW herself. She currently is advocating $12 at the federal level which is one third higher than Obama's ask in 2013.
http://www.mtv.com/news/2861829/the-15-minimum-wage-is-winning/?utm=share_twitter
"That doesn’t mean that the difference between her $12 minimum-wage proposal and Sanders’s $15 one is small. Yannet Lathrop, a researcher and policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project, told MTV News that one quarter of workers nationwide would benefit from a $12 minimum wage, while three dollars more per hour would help 42 percent. Nearly the same percentages of millennial workers stand to benefit from a raised minimum wage, Lathrop said."
"So why not just go full Bernie on this? Clinton, in the past, has expressed worries that certain cities that aren’t major metropolises may not be able to sustain a nationwide $15 wage without significant job losses. “Asking low-margin businesses to make up for insane rents by paying their workers more could simply result in more unemployment, especially for less-educated and young adults who tend to rely on minimum wage jobs,” Jordan Weissman wrote in Slate last week. But even he admitted that that might not matter. After all, Fight for $15, an offshoot of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), began as an attempt to address the concerns of low-wage Brooklyn residents. That number was the middle ground between the Obama-endorsed but still-too-low $10 and the politically impossible $20. As unrealistic as it may have sounded years ago to politicians and media, $15 was the middle ground for activists. Now it’s becoming the standard."
"I hear Clinton’s argument, but I still feel she should shoot higher and adopt Sanders’s position. It’s one of the few areas of remaining disagreement between the two where she should budge — not because he’s making a particularly good argument for it, but because the activists are. Similarly, I’d like to think that Sanders was spurred, at least in part, to adopt his platform on the minimum wage by young people like Walker who refused to accept the mere blessing of employment and pushed for more. Hopefully, they’ll inspire Clinton in the general election, too, should she move forward."
http://www.mtv.com/news/2861829/the-15-minimum-wage-is-winning/?utm=share_twitter
I just don't think as far as political calculus goes, it makes a big difference. I don't deny that the impact of an extra $3 is significant, but politically Dems aren't going to get $15 or $12 overnight-we are currently still at $7.25.
As Smith documents, she doesn't oppose $15 at the state level-obviously, as she was with Cuomo as he celebrated the new milestone.
One possible advantage of her staying at $12 for now is giving ourselves more room for what the economists call a natural experiment.
As the cost of living across states varies considerably, it scenario where there was a $12 federal as a floor where other states could and would increase as necessary might be ideal in terms of testing it out.
I have to say that the difference is considering the political realities, symbolic rather than substantive.
Somehow the nightmare scenario is here for the GOP where it's least favorite Senator and Donald Trump are the finalists. Cruz is technically in government but has spent his time mostly in self promotional games to blow the government up.
Time and again, the GOP has just said no. And lived to regret it. Think of what it could have gotten from Obama in 2012. Raising the Medicare retirement age, chained CPI on Social Security. But this wasn't good enough for the GOP and those ideas are now gone forever-thankfully.
Or take the Bush tax cuts. In 2011 the Dems were willing to keep the tax cuts for everyone making less than $1 million dollars. The GOP just said no and they had to agree in 2013 to a deal that ended the tax cuts for everyone making over $450,000.
On the minimum wage, they've done the same thing.The Washington Post frames it well:
"GOVERNORS OF the nation’s most and fourth-most populous states, California and New York, respectively, have signed a$15-per-hour minimum wage into law. In the District, a judge has just ruled that proponents can try to get a $15 minimum on the ballot in November; Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)supports accomplishing the $15 goal legislatively. What the success of the $15 minimum wage movement shows, in part, is that politics abhors a vacuum. In the absence of action by the Republican-controlled Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, states and cities encompassing about 65 percent of the U.S. population have decided to enact higher minimums, though usually less than $15. Maybe the GOP should have taken President Obama up on his request for a $9 minimum when he offered it back in his 2013 State of the Union address."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/15-is-the-wrong-goal-for-minimum-wage-advocates/2016/04/05/64b0d6ce-fa90-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html
$9 dollars an hour. Amazing that was just three years ago. Now it's gotten away from them. $15 is the new demand. Which to be clear, is fine with me.
As for the Democrats, some argue Hillary should accept the $15 MW herself. She currently is advocating $12 at the federal level which is one third higher than Obama's ask in 2013.
http://www.mtv.com/news/2861829/the-15-minimum-wage-is-winning/?utm=share_twitter
"That doesn’t mean that the difference between her $12 minimum-wage proposal and Sanders’s $15 one is small. Yannet Lathrop, a researcher and policy analyst with the National Employment Law Project, told MTV News that one quarter of workers nationwide would benefit from a $12 minimum wage, while three dollars more per hour would help 42 percent. Nearly the same percentages of millennial workers stand to benefit from a raised minimum wage, Lathrop said."
"So why not just go full Bernie on this? Clinton, in the past, has expressed worries that certain cities that aren’t major metropolises may not be able to sustain a nationwide $15 wage without significant job losses. “Asking low-margin businesses to make up for insane rents by paying their workers more could simply result in more unemployment, especially for less-educated and young adults who tend to rely on minimum wage jobs,” Jordan Weissman wrote in Slate last week. But even he admitted that that might not matter. After all, Fight for $15, an offshoot of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), began as an attempt to address the concerns of low-wage Brooklyn residents. That number was the middle ground between the Obama-endorsed but still-too-low $10 and the politically impossible $20. As unrealistic as it may have sounded years ago to politicians and media, $15 was the middle ground for activists. Now it’s becoming the standard."
"I hear Clinton’s argument, but I still feel she should shoot higher and adopt Sanders’s position. It’s one of the few areas of remaining disagreement between the two where she should budge — not because he’s making a particularly good argument for it, but because the activists are. Similarly, I’d like to think that Sanders was spurred, at least in part, to adopt his platform on the minimum wage by young people like Walker who refused to accept the mere blessing of employment and pushed for more. Hopefully, they’ll inspire Clinton in the general election, too, should she move forward."
http://www.mtv.com/news/2861829/the-15-minimum-wage-is-winning/?utm=share_twitter
I just don't think as far as political calculus goes, it makes a big difference. I don't deny that the impact of an extra $3 is significant, but politically Dems aren't going to get $15 or $12 overnight-we are currently still at $7.25.
As Smith documents, she doesn't oppose $15 at the state level-obviously, as she was with Cuomo as he celebrated the new milestone.
One possible advantage of her staying at $12 for now is giving ourselves more room for what the economists call a natural experiment.
As the cost of living across states varies considerably, it scenario where there was a $12 federal as a floor where other states could and would increase as necessary might be ideal in terms of testing it out.
I have to say that the difference is considering the political realities, symbolic rather than substantive.
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