Terence Samuel: A Minimum of Effort

Another example of the disconnect of our lawmakers and their continuing cruelty, yes, cruelty, intentional cruelty, uncaring, inability to understand or straight-out malice.

(courtesy of Tom Paine)

"A Minimum of Effort: Republicans make lots of arguments against the minimum wage -- just not good ones."
Terence Samuel
The American Prospect

Watching Congress debate the federal minimum wage is a bit of an out-of-body experience. On this, more than on almost any other issue, the majority of the people involved in the debate have little or no experience with the circumstances they invoke to advance their arguments. The base salary for a member of Congress is $158,100 a year, which puts him or her -- in their present jobs, at least -- somewhere above three times the median household income in the United States.

And last year, as more Americans fell into poverty, median household income remained slightly above $43,000 per year, while the poverty rate rose to 12.5 percent from 12.1 percent two years earlier: That’s nearly 40 million people living in poverty. Women and children bear the brunt of the hardship. Women saw an actual decline in wages for the first time in three years; there were more children in poverty, and more without health insurance, than the year before.

Still, we endured another passionate debate in the U.S. Senate this week about the minimum wage and whether an increase would help or hurt those people who live in the economic margin. Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, who supports an increase of the $5.15-an-hour base wage, put it in perspective.

“Since 1997,” he said, “the last time we raised the minimum wage, members of Congress have raised their own pay seven times in the last eight years, by $28,500. Think about that: We vote to raise our pay seven times in eight years by $28,500, but for minimum-wage workers earning $10,700 a year, we can’t vote to raise their minimum wage. Shame on the Senate.”

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