YES: The most needy workers deserve a similar rate of increase
SEN. JACK REED
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Our government should not just focus on economic policies that benefit Wall Street, we need to take care of people who live on Main Street as well.
A minimum wage hike is sorely needed and long overdue. The federal minimum wage, which stands at $5.15 per hour, hasn't increased since 1997. Since then, inflation has not only wiped out that pay increase but reduced the real value of the minimum wage to its lowest level in half a century.
Meanwhile, members of Congress have awarded themselves $31,600 in pay raises over the last nine years. That's why legislation linking congressional pay raises to increases in the federal minimum wage is gaining support. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as congressional salary increases since 1997, the wage floor would now be nearly $6.50 per hour ...
No one who works full time should have to live in destitution, but the current minimum wage isn't enough to bring a single parent with one child over the poverty line -- even if the parent works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Five million more Americans have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office -- 37 million Americans now live in poverty, including 13 million children ...
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