Will a minimum-wage hike save the economy?

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Behind the fight over raising the minimum wage — and why the Senate parliamentarian is at the center of it. Plus, boomers embrace online shopping.

President Biden’s push to increase the federal minimum wage is facing significant hurdles in Congress, opposed by skeptical Republicans, centrist Democrats and many business owners. Labor reporter Eli Rosenberg lays out the cases for and against the policy as a tool of financial relief during the pandemic.

Obscure Senate procedures are also complicating the issue. Post producer Arjun Singh and lawyer Jonathan Gould explain the role of the Senate parliamentarian in deciding whether Democrats can squeeze a federal minimum-wage hike into a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package using the budget reconciliation process.

Older Americans are increasing buying groceries — and just about everything else — on the Internet. Abha Bhattarai unpacks boomers’ growing tech savvy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Elin Nakashima with Washington Post.
0:14.6	This is Post Reports.
0:16.0	I'm Martin Powers.
0:19.7	It's Wednesday, February 24.
0:24.5	Today, the fight over the minimum wage and the high profile role of the Senate parliamentarian,
0:30.6	plus a generation gets tech savvy.
0:37.1	So one of the proposals that Democrats are including as part of their 1.9 trillion stimulus bill
0:42.8	is a measure that would increase the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.
0:51.8	This has been increasingly a priority of work-minded activists and people on the left in recent
0:58.7	years.
1:00.3	And it's become a struggle now here as we debate how to fix the economy in the wake of
1:05.2	the pandemic, something else to include in the mix for the plight of workers across the
1:10.1	country.
1:13.1	My name is Eli Roseberg and I cover work and labor issues for the Washington Post.
1:23.1	And what is the current federal minimum wage right now?
1:27.0	Current federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour.
1:30.7	That was set in 2009.
1:33.0	So we're talking about quite a long gap.
1:35.8	The economy has moved quite a bit since then.
1:37.6	This is the longest amount of time that's gone without a federal minimum wage increase
1:42.4	in the country's history.
1:44.9	And that's sort of giving wind in the sales of proponents of this matter who say, now
	...

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