Democrats toil to salvage minimum wage increase

WA S HINGTON» Democrats sought on Friday to salvage their bid to push through a large increase in the federal minimum wage as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, pressing to preserve a key liberal priority without imperiling the chances of an urgently needed pandemic aid package.

A day after a top Senate official effectively knocked the wage increase out of the pandemic aid bill, Democrats rushed to find alternative ways of meeting their goal to impose a $15-perhour floor for tens of millions of workers across the country.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and other top Democrats, were considering a plan that would penalize corporations that pay workers less than $15 per hour, a senior Democratic aide said Friday.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, leader of the Finance Committee, said the stillevolving proposal would impose an escalating tax on the payrolls of large corporations, starting at 5%, if any of the companies’ workers earned less than a certain hourly wage. It would include what Wyden called “safeguards” to prevent companies from laying off workers and replacing them with contract employees to avoid the tax.

“While conversations are continuing, I believe this ‘Plan B’ provides us a path to move forward and get this done through the reconciliation process,” Wyden said in a statement.

The effort faces long odds in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans and some centrist Democrats are opposed to the idea of more than doubling the minimum wage as part of the stimulus plan. But signaling the Democratic Party’s reluctance to abandon the effort, the House was poised to push through the stimulus package, with the wage increase included, by early Saturday.

The sweeping measure, which was expected to pass almost entirely along party lines, also would provide billions of dollars for schools, vaccine development and distribution, an extension and expansion of weekly federal unemployment benefits and another round of direct payments to American families.

The minimum wage increase “is a value. This is a priority, and we will get it done. But let’s not be distracted from what is happening in this legislation,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.