Raising The Minimum Wage— Or Will Cruel Conservatives Kill Hawley’s Bill Like They Killed Bernie’s?

Bernie introduced bills to raise the minimum wage to $15 ah hour in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020. In 2023 and again this year he introduced bills to raise it to $17. Conservatives killed his efforts of course; they hate working people. And not just Republicans. In 2019 the Raise the Wage Act passed the House 231-199, only to be sidetracked by a conservative coalition of Republicans and Democraps in the Senate. In 2021, Bernie tried to include a $15 minimum wage in the COVID relief bill. The House had already passed the relief bill with the minimum wage provision, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled it ineligible for inclusion under reconciliation rules. When Bernie forced a vote to override this ruling, 8 “any-blue-will-do” Democraps— Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Jon Tester (MT), Joe Manchin (WV), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Maggie Hassan (NH), Chris Coons (DE), Tom Carper (DE) and Angus King (I-ME)— joined Republicans to vote against it, resulting in a 58-42 defeat.

So now we have economic populist Josh Hawley (R-MO) teaming up with Peter Welch (D-VT) to introduce a $15 minimum wage. Most of the Democraps who helped kill Bernie’s version are gone but I wonder what Maggie Hassan, Chris Coons and Angus King will do now that it’s being introduced by a Republican instead of Bernie. Not to mention the Republicans— or at least enough of them to team up with the Democrats are get it done. I ssuppose that will depend on wht signals Trump sends his little Capitol Hill puppets.

Sahil Kapur reported that the bill would then be tired to inflation. Yesterday, Hawley told Sahil that “This is a populist position. If we’re going to be a working people's party, we have to do something for working people. And working people haven’t gotten a raise in years. So they need a raise… The truth is— people can’t afford to have a family. Families can’t support themselves. I mean, if you’re pro family, as I am, if you are a populist, if you’re pro-worker, you’ve got to do something for working people.”

It represents the latest attempt by Hawley to stake out economic populist ground that has long been associated with liberals. Other recent moves include teaming up with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on. bill to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, and voting with Democrats this year on a budget amendment to prohibit tax cuts for the wealthy if Medicaid funding is cut.

Still, Hawley admitted he’s an outlier in his party, and it’s far from clear the wage legislation will reach the Senate floor, let alone find the 60 votes needed to advance in the chamber, where the GOP controls 53 seats.

“I’d love to get a vote on it. I think it’s hard to vote against,” he said. “I say that, but probably most of my Republican colleagues vote against it happily.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he opposes Hawley’s measure, expressing the longstanding GOP stance that minimum wage hikes distort markets and make it harder for employers to hire.

“I wouldn’t support it,” Johnson said. “Because the real minimum wage is $0 when you don’t have a job. The minimum wage impacts just a small sliver of people— most people that want entry-level jobs. And so you raise the cost of an entry-level job and you don’t have them.”

Hawley has another obstacle: President Donald Trump, who has not endorsed any increase in the federal minimum wage. Trump dodged questions about the issue during his 2024 campaign.

“I think he understands the needs of working people really well,” Hawley said. “I would hope he would support this.”

Five deep red slaves states— Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee— have no minimum wage at all and Georgia and Wyoming have it pegged at $5.50. Right-wing crackpot Shawn Fleetwood tore into Hawley and analyzed it in terms of an argument straight out of the 19th century, steeped in the same tired, discredited economic dogma that gave us child labor and company towns. It’s as if the author believes the mere existence of a minimum wage is an affront to the natural order— the divine right of capital to squeeze as much as possible from labor while giving back as little as it can get away with. The idea that raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation is some kind of radical leftist plot would be laughable if it weren’t so callous. For most Americans, stagnant wages and runaway costs of living are the economic reality— not the fantasy of endless job creation through bottom-barrel wages that this piece peddles like a snake oil salesman at a Gilded Age fairground.

His invocation of cherry-picked anecdotes is the rhetorical equivalent of quoting bloodletting manuals to oppose antibiotics. “Furloughs” and price increases happen for many reasons in a dynamic economy— and blaming workers finally making a living wage for these changes is a transparent attempt to punch down. And let's be real: the author’s contempt for any bipartisan effort to lift people out of poverty is matched only by the sneering dismissiveness toward anything that smells like compassion. If this is the best defense of the free market that The Federalist can muster— hysterical pearl-clutching over Josh Hawley being insufficiently cruel to the poor— then it’s no wonder so many young Americans are questioning the system altogether.