-After 10 years of cold indifference,
we have raised the minimum wage
for millions of hardworking Americans.
-The last time we saw the federal minimum wage increase,
Justin Bieber looked like this.
♪ No ♪
-So why are politicians cruising
so slowly toward raising the minimum wage?
-Are we there yet? -No.
-Bernie Sanders thinks it's because
they've been paying more attention
to those deep-pocketed business groups.
-Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar Tree, Wendy's, Burger,
Uber, Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, Home Depot, Lowe's.
-And to those corporations that benefit the most
from low-wage workers.
-No one in America can live with dignity,
can raise a family on $11 or $12 an hour.
-And a whole bunch of politicians in both parties
seem to be coming around to the idea.
-And we will persist with the minimum wage.
-We want to reward hardworking people.
-I don't pay ya to breathe! -You hardly pay us at all.
-You have many Republicans who represent states
where an increase in the minimum wage has passed by the voters.
That puts them in a very difficult situation.
-This is Congressman Bobby Scott.
He introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2021.
-There's no county in the United States, for example,
where a full-time minimum-wage worker
can afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment.
Not just in high-income areas.
Not a single county, a full-time worker.
And that's not right.
-If the US had kept up with inflation,
minimum wage would be around $20 right now.
Instead, it sits at just $7.
25 an hour.
The bill also makes it so that we won't go another decade
without raising the minimum wage.
-And this legislation increases the minimum wage
gradually to $15 an hour by 2025,
but then increases it with inflation
so that we don't have to have these long gaps again.
-Still, not everyone is on board.
-We know the result of a $15
federal minimum-wage increase all at once -- 1.
4 million lost jobs.
That's not what we need in the middle of a pandemic.
-Trying to do that big of a jump overnight
would be really tricky on the economy.
-That's Heidi Shierholz.
She's a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
-From the economic perspective, we want workers
to get higher wages as quickly as possible,
while balancing giving businesses time to adjust.
-So if you think it's okay to have a $10 minimum wage,
we don't even get there this year.
-In the last Congress, the Republican-led Senate
didn't give much attention to the federal minimum wage.
But in the new Congress, House Democrats
have already passed this bill.
But the Senate sucked the fun out of that real quick.
-Ms Sinema. Ms Sinema, no.
-Some said they want to debate it
as a freestanding bill.
Other opponents say it will cause job loss
or primarily benefit teenagers with little experience
who just want extra spending money.
-Welcome to Good Burger, home of the good burger.
Can I take your order?
-But that's not totally accurate,
according to Shierholz.
-1 in 10 workers who would get a raise is a teenager.
People who would be affected by this minimum-wage increase
on average contribute half of their household's total income.
These jobs deeply matter.
-According to the Congressional Budget Office,
raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour
by 2025 would increase wages for at least 17 million people
and lift almost 1 million people out of poverty.
But it would also put 1.
4 million Americans out of work.
Is that outcome worth it?
-We keep hearing about the minimum wage
either being bad for small businesses or good for workers,
and that seems to be the parameters of the debate.
-This is Colleen Doody.
She's a history professor at DePaul University.
-And that ignores the fact that in 1938,
when Franklin Roosevelt and his administration
introduced the first federal minimum-wage legislation,
they did so as part of a stimulus package.
-Put a floor below which industrial wages shall not fall.
Millions of industrial workers receive pay so low
that they have little buying power.
-People at the bottom 20% of the wage earners
spend more of their income than those at the top,
who tend to save more of their income.
So if we're thinking how do we stimulate the economy,
encouraging consumption by putting money into
the pockets of those people, who are then gonna go out
and buy stuff is an effective strategy.
-So if we waited a decade, why now?
-Post-COVID context is making everyone really think about,
"Okay, what do we do
in the aftermath of the Great Recession?"
One thing that we learned in the aftermath of the Great Recession
is that even if you get jobs back,
it doesn't necessarily imply they're good jobs.
It doesn't necessarily imply
that you are gonna see strong wage growth.
And there's also a lot of investment
in having the kind of recovery that's not just strong,
but it's also equitable.
And a higher minimum wage is a key part of that.