The Daily Populous Wednesday October 23rd, 2024 day edition
Authored by telegraph.co.uk and submitted by TheTelegraph

Kamala Harris has announced plans to more than double the federal minimum wage if she wins the presidency.

The Democratic candidate has backed raising the current minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to at least $15.

It has remained frozen for the last 15 years: the longest stretch without an increase since standard pay was introduced in 1938.

She told NBC: “At least $15 an hour, but we’ll work with Congress, right? It’s something that is going through Congress.”

In the same interview, on Tuesday evening, Ms Harris distanced herself from Joe Biden’s economic record and said she would take a more aggressive stance on lowering costs for Americans.

With polls consistently showing voters trust Donald Trump’s handling of the economy more than the vice-president, Ms Harris has been under pressure to announce more eye-catching policies to win back working-class voters.

The vice-president has seen recently her momentum stall in the presidential race against Trump, with a recent Telegraph poll giving the Republican a slim advantage in several swing states that decides who will win the White House.

Trump suggested in 2020 that he would “consider” raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. On Sunday, he did not answer a question from reporters when asked about his current stance on the issue.

Bernie Sanders, the Left-wing Vermont senator, pushed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 during his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. He has since increased his demands to $17.

California, Ms Harris’s home state, has one of the highest state minimum wages in the US at $16.

The Center for American Progress, a think tank founded by former Barack Obama adviser John Podesta, has said that increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 would boost the pay of 1 in 4 US workers — nearly 40 million — and lead to an annual wage increase as large as $8,000 for some of the lowest-wage workers.

In 2021, the Democrat-aligned Economic Policy Institute think tank said that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 would increase total wages by $107billion.

The federal minimum wage is paid for most hourly-rate jobs. If a state’s minimum wage is higher, it is the default.

However, there are some exemptions, for example some workers with disabilities, employees under the age of 20 and full-time students do not have to receive the federal minimum wage. Workers who receive tips can also be paid less, though employers must make up their pay to the minimum wage if this is not reached through the mandated hourly rate of $2.13 plus tips.

At a campaign stop this weekend, Ms Harris said: “I absolutely believe that we must raise minimum wage.” She added that a worker on the current minimum wage would make “poverty wages” of $15,000 a year.

Raising the federal minimum wage would require an act of Congress.

Speaking to Hallie Jackson on NBC News Ms Harris said: “Mine will not be a continuation of the Biden administration.

“I bring my own experiences, my own ideas to it, and it has informed a number of my areas of focus, most of which are... lowering costs.

“I have been travelling the country. I am very clear; the cost of groceries is still too high. The voters know it, I know it.

“So part of my plan includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries.”

Ms Harris also told NBC News that she wanted to bring down housing costs.

Later in the interview she praised Mr Biden for his work to “fix so much of what has been broken in terms of the economy because of Donald Trump’s mismanagement”, adding: “I have no reluctance in saying that.”

Ms Harris has been gradually putting distance between herself and Mr Biden since she entered the presidential race in July with his endorsement.

When asked earlier this month on ABC News’ The View whether she would have done anything differently from Mr Biden, she answered: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The clip has been replayed constantly in attack adverts from the Trump campaign.

Last week, she appeared to suggest that she was staying close to Mr Biden out of a sense of duty.

“To be very candid with you, vice-presidents are not critical of their presidents… it does not make for a productive and important relationship” she said.

Techialo on October 23rd, 2024 at 02:20 UTC »

Good start, but reattach it to the GDP. You know, like it was before Reagan.

Stop worshipping his corpse while we're at it.

snoo_spoo on October 23rd, 2024 at 01:17 UTC »

It's depressing how many years we've been trying to bring minimum wage up to $15.

recalculating-route on October 23rd, 2024 at 01:12 UTC »

Trump, on the other hand, complained to one of his pep rallies about having to pay overtime