The Current State of the 15 Dollar Minimum Wage

The Congressional Budget office released a controversial, but nonpartisan report on the 15 dollar minimum wage on Monday, but on Capitol Hill, the House pushes on with the plan.

USA Today states that the controversial report predicts that the bill will lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty, but it would also cost 1.4 million jobs. Supporters of the bill believe that the report strengthens their argument for a 15 dollar minimum wage.

“This nonpartisan report shows that increasing the minimum wage will act as a direct and targeted stimulus for struggling workers and their families,” said Representative Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia. Bobby Scott voted for the bill in the House.

The CNBC quarterly Survey Monkey Small business Survey concluded that one third of small business owners say they’ll likely lay off workers if congress raises the federal minimum wage.” While supporters of the bill believe poverty levels will be lowered. Those against the bill highlight the large job loss that could come with the new minimum wage.

“There are clearly underlying policy differences depending on partisanship,” said Laura Wronski, a research science manager at Survey Monkey via email.

Through the controversy of the report CNBC says that the house has revised the senate COVID relief bill to include the 15 dollar minimum wage. But as the bill gets closer to being sent to the senate, many Democrats are not very optimistic about it being passed.

“I put it in, but I don’t think its going to survive,” said Biden on Sunday in an interview with CBS’ Norah O’Donnell.

“We’re trying to work as well as we can with the [Senate] parliamentarian to get minimum wage to happen,” said Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a democrat of New York. But it is seeming more and more likely that the 15 dollar minimum wage will have to wait for now.