Democrats torpedo $15 minimum wage hike
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party effectively ended efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of the COVID-19 stimulus package making its way through Congress. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been increased since 2009, and the dropping of the raise will leave millions of workers in utter destitution.
The White House and Congressional Democrats have falsely sought to present themselves as having their hands tied, holding up the advisory ruling of the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, as an excuse. McDonough, an unelected official appointed to her role by the Democrats in 2012, ruled that the wage hike is not allowable in a bill using the budget reconciliation process.
But the decision by the Democrats to abandon the wage hike is one of choice, even preference, not necessity.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in her role as Senate president, has the ability to overrule the Senate parliamentarian. Or, if the Democrats had any inclination to press the issue, they could have fired McDonough and replaced her, as the Republicans did in order to move tax cuts through the Senate under then-President George W. Bush in 2001.
The Democrats have rejected these options out of hand, however. On the contrary, for weeks Biden has signaled his expectation—all but explicitly stating his desire—that the wage raise would not survive the Senate, and a White House official told CNN that the parliamentarian’s ruling is viewed as a positive development, “clearing the way” for the bill, now set to be watered down even more in the Senate.
Some Senate Democrats, including Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders, have subsequently sought to save face by saying they are exploring utilizing tax incentives to encourage major corporations to raise wages. However, such a proposal, in the unlikely chance it is approved by both the parliamentarian and all 50 Democratic senators, would inevitably be a toothless measure, exempting large sections of employers while subsidizing others.
Tellingly, Biden has shown that when it comes to defending the interests of US imperialism, he sees not the slightest need for deference to parliamentary or legal norms. While Democratic officials were taking to the airwaves to bemoan their powerlessness to overcome arcane Senate rules to raise the minimum wage, US missiles were raining down on Syria, in an attack ordered by Biden with no pretense of Congressional authorization or respect for international law.
Weeks into the Biden administration, the Democratic Party is once again demonstrating its total subservience to the interests of the financial oligarchy and its opposition to any significant measures to address the needs of the working class.
The Democrats’ predictable cynicism, duplicity and spinelessness over the $15 minimum wage hike, a central campaign promise by Biden, at the same time exposes the bankruptcy of the perspective espoused by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and other pseudo-left promoters of the Democratic Party that it is a “lesser evil” which can be pushed to enact progressive reforms.
The $15 minimum wage itself is and would have been a poverty wage, grossly inadequate to meet the cost of living in large portions of the US. The Democratic proposal would not have seen the federal minimum reach $15 until 2025, by which point its buying power would have been even further eroded by inflation.
Moreover, if the federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and productivity gains since 1968, it would now be at roughly $24, underscoring the paltry character of the $15 amount.
But even this meager amelioration of desperate social need has shown to be virtually impossible to enact under both Democratic and Republican administrations, both of which subordinate every decision to the needs of big business and the financial oligarchy.
The current federal minimum wage of $7.25—roughly $15,000 a year before taxes for a single worker—amounts to below-starvation rations. The nearly 12 years since its last increase is the longest stretch without a rise in its history, going back to the first enactment of a national minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, amidst the explosive class battles of the Great Depression.
The extended freeze of the federal minimum wage over this time is not an accident. The period following the economic crisis and recession of 2008-09 was characterized by an enormous redistribution of wealth upwards, from the majority of the population to the top of society, carried out by the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama and accelerated under his successor, Republican Donald Trump.
Social inequality skyrocketed from 2009 to 2020, seeing the longest rise in the stock market in US history, with the S&P 500 market index more than tripling during that time, and total US billionaire wealth ballooning from around $1.3 trillion to roughly $4 trillion.
The dizzying runup in share values and the fortunes of the very richest have been based upon on two processes: First, the virtually endless supply of cheap money by the Federal Reserve and central banks, which has been vastly increased since the onset of the pandemic. Second, the dramatic intensification of the exploitation of the working class, exemplified by Obama’s restructuring of the auto industry in 2009, slashing the wages of new hires in half.
These low-wage conditions, perpetuated by both the Democrats and Republicans through the suppression of the minimum wage and other means, have become critical to the operations of American capitalism, the artificial inflation of stock values, and the maintenance and growth of the fortunes of the financial oligarchy.
The function of the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party, along with pseudo-left backers such as the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and Socialist Alternative, is to attempt to cover up this basic reality and try to convince workers and young people that progressive reforms can still be achieved under capitalism, in general, and the Democrats, in particular.
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and leading DSA members supported Biden in 2020, holding him up as an alternative to the reactionary policies of Trump. In campaigning for Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, Sanders presented Democratic control of the Senate as the road to far-reaching reforms, tweeting: “A $15 minimum wage, fighting climate change and expanding health care are at stake in today’s Senate runoffs.”
It has taken less than two months for this claim to be exploded, as has every fraudulent political guarantee by Sanders before it. Biden and the Democrats are neither capable nor willing to raise the living standards of workers, meaningfully address climate change, put a stop to the US war machine, or resolve any of the other major social problems confronting humanity.
In control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the Democrats will aggressively defend the same fundamental class interests as their Republican counterparts, namely, those of the capitalist ruling class. This will entail both increasingly brutal attacks on workers domestically—including the attempts to reopen schools and workplaces while the pandemic continues—and predatory and potentially catastrophic imperialist aggression abroad, as the airstrikes on Syria last week show.
The only alternative is one which is based on the working class, the development of the class struggle, and a socialist program. The decimation of workers’ living standards and the grotesque enrichment of the ruling class poses objectively the necessity of expropriating the oligarchs and placing the major corporations and banks under workers’ democratic control, redistributing this immense wealth on the basis of social need, as part of the fight for socialism internationally.
Exclusive: ICE to Release Migrants Further into U.S. — Away from Texas Border Cities
California Dedicating $28 Million for ‘Tens of Thousands’ Asylum Seekers Biden Is Letting In
California is joining the Joe Biden
administration in welcoming immigrants inside the country based on asylum claims. The state plans to dedicate up to $28 million to provide “quarantine hotel rooms,” medical care, and other services.
The California Department of Finance issued a memo on Thursday announcing the aid for foreigners, even as the state’s citizens and their jobs and businesses are suffering because of coronavirus restrictions.
The Department said it would make the money available to migrants entering through the San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego, California, where they will quarantine for seven to 10 days.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the development:
Tens of thousands of largely Central American asylum seekers are stuck in Mexico under a 2019 policy adopted by former President Donald Trump that forced them wait outside the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings.
President Biden reversed that order this month, allowing migrants with credible asylum claims to enter the country while their cases are considered, as has historically been the approach.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has started to let 25 people through the San Ysidro port of entry each day, according to the state Department of Finance memo, with a goal of eventually processing up to 300 people per day.
The Chronicle reported H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the finance department, said California was “stepping in to help the Biden administration implement its ‘far more humane’ immigration policy because of the additional challenges of the pandemic.”
Palmer said he hopes that the federal government will reimburse the state.
“We now have a situation that has not existed in recent years where the state government and the federal government are rowing in the same direction,” Palmer said. “We are doing what we can on the front end to make sure this is done seamlessly.”
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com
California: ‘Rich Get Richer’ During Coronavirus Pandemic
California’s wealthy elite have been doing vey well during the coronavirus pandemic, despite economic shutdowns that have devastated small businesses and caused widespread job losses and disruption.
The Associated Press reported this weekend:
At the end of 2020, California had lost a record 1.6 million jobs during the pandemic. Nearly a half-million people stopped even trying to look for work. Business properties saw their value plummet more than 30%.
But California’s bank account is overflowing. As of January, the state’s tax collections were $10.5 billion ahead of projections. By the end of the fiscal year on July 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature could have a $19 billion surplus to spend.
…
[W]ith the pandemic forcing the closure of bars, restaurants, theme parks, sporting events and small businesses, lower-wage workers bore the brunt of the losses while the wealthier worked from home. The economic losses started at the bottom of the income ladder and so far they haven’t made their way up to the top.
With the rich doing well, thanks to the growing dominance of Silicon Valley, the rising stock market, and the health of Hollywood’s streaming entertainment industry for a stay-at-home nation, state revenues have soared far beyond expectations.
Earlier this year, as Breitbart News and others noted, the state reported so much revenue that it is likely to be required to return some to taxpayers under a provision adopted in 1979 known as the Gann limit.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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