march 6, 2021 Update 1:38 p.m
Senate Democrats lost eight votes in its caucus for the $15 minimum wage proposal, bringing the total votes in favor of the amendment to 42-58 when it needed 60 to pass.
Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Sen. Bernie Sanders and their colleagues got a smackdown from their own party.
A whopping 8 Democrats voted against a provision in Biden’s coronavirus relief package to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, Fox Business reported.
Independent Sen. Sanders was furious with the vote and insisted that he would continue to work for a $15 federal minimum wage.
“At a time when millions of people are working for starvation wages, when the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour has not been raised by Congress since 2007, when the President of the United States and the House of Representatives support it, it is absolutely imperative that the Senate approve an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour,” the senator said.
“If any Senator believes this is the last time they will cast a vote on whether or not to give a raise to 32 million Americans, they are sorely mistaken. We’re going to keep bringing it up, and we’re going to get it done because it is what the American people demand and need,” he said.
But it was Sen. Sinema’s dramatic vote, in which she gave a thumbs down gesture, got the most negative response from Democrats on Twitter.
The senator explained that she was not against raising the federal minimum wage but said that it should not be tied to the needed coronavirus relief bill.
She said that senators “in both parties have shown support for raising the federal minimum wage and the Senate should hold an open debate and amendment process on raising the minimum wage, separate from the COVID-focused reconciliation bill.”
“No person who works full time should live in poverty,” the senator said. But, she said, she “will keep working with colleagues in both parties to ensure Americans can access good-paying jobs, quality education, and skills training to build more economically secure lives for themselves and their families.”
But many believe that a minimum wage increase on small businesses that are in financial despair because of the pandemic would be damaged further by a minimum wage increase.
The $1.9 trillion package continues to progress in the Senate.
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