House Passes Biden's $1.9 Trillion Covid Relief Package

Saturday, February 27, 2021

The House of Representatives voted early Saturday morning to approve President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package, a major step toward enacting the first legislative priority of the new administration as the devastating fallout from the spread of Covid-19 has left Americans in dire need of further relief.

Posted by retort at 01:49 PM | 7 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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...Now that the bill has passed the House it will next go to the Senate.

Making the effort more complicated, the Senate is expected to strip out a provision in the legislation increasing the federal minimum wage after the Senate parliamentarian ruled against including it under the procedure known as reconciliation, which Senate Democrats are using to pass the bill with a simple majority vote. The bill would then have to go back to the House for a separate vote before it could go to Biden to be signed into law. ...

It is going to be interesting to see what happens with the minimum wage provision. Will there be a compromise in the $11 dollar range?

My first job, working a summer between years in college, I was paid $1.25 an hour....

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2021-02-27 02:24 PM | Reply

"Will there be a compromise in the $11 dollar range?"

$11 isn't enough, but I can see how the bump from $7.25 to $11 is all that some people (conservatives) can handle.

What would be the harm in a minimum wage that is also a living wage?

Can any conservative explain why that would be bad?

$11 is a living wage in Oklahhoma, I'm pretty sure. $7.25 means you're still eligible for welfare.

#2 | Posted by snoofy at 2021-02-27 02:42 PM | Reply

The "market-based" assertion is that people are paid based on the value of the work they do. The problem with that is that the $value of work does not consider the fact that much of such work is "essential". How can something that is essential not pay a living wage, when non-essential work does?

#3 | Posted by WhoDaMan at 2021-02-27 03:05 PM | Reply

@#2 ... Can any conservative explain why that would be bad? ...

There's this...

A $15 minimum wage could lift 1.3 million out of poverty -- and cost 1.3 million jobs
www.vox.com

...A $15 federal minimum wage would likely boost pay for 27 million US workers, lifting 1.3 million households out of poverty, according to an analysis released Monday by congressional economists.

But the income boost may come with a cost: It could trigger 1.3 million job losses.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released this conclusion in a report that analyzes the economic impact of the Raise the Wage Act, a House bill that would gradually double minimum hourly pay by 2025.

The report comes as members of Congress prepare a vote to increase the federal minimum wage for the first time in more than a decade. It's only the second study ever to focus entirely on the impact of a $15 minimum wage, and its findings are less rosy than the first one....

#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2021-02-27 03:37 PM | Reply

A series of rigorous studies by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, significantly advanced the research on minimum wage employment effects. Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders compared all neighboring counties in the U.S. located on different sides of a state border with different minimum wage levels between 1990 and 2006 and found no adverse employment effects from higher minimum wages.

The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment's Spacial Heterogeneity and Minimum Wages: Employment Estimates for Teens Using Cross-State Commuting Zones found "no discernable disemployment effect, even when minimum wage increases lead to relatively large wage changes." Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? analyzed the 1990-2009 period (an earlier version analyzed 1990-2007). Carefully controlling for more factors than previous minimum wage studies, the researchers found the answer is no.

In a 2013 report, Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?, the Center for Economic and Policy Research spotlighted two recent meta-studies analyzing the extensive research conducted since the early 1990s; they conclude that "the minimum wage has little or no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers. The most likely reason for this outcome is that the cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms' overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers." The Center report explores varied means of adjustment by employers such as increased worker productivity and diminished wage gap between lower and higher paid employees, noting, "But, probably the most important channel of adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost savings to employers." www.businessforafairminimumwage.org

#5 | Posted by WhoDaMan at 2021-02-27 10:27 PM | Reply

There is no correlation between what might be a living wage in rural Texas and the Bay Area of Northern California. None. In most of the San Francisco area a meager living age would be about $25 per hour.

Just another example of how the USA is numerous countries stuffed into one.

#6 | Posted by moder8 at 2021-02-28 09:52 PM | Reply

It would be great to have a minimum wage that is variable based on the cost of living in a particular state. The minimum wage should be tied to increases in the cost of living. The state data is available. Also, it should at least exceed the poverty level.

Many low-wage jobs are "essential". How is it that essential jobs don't pay a living wage, but all the high-paying jobs are "non-essential"? How can the essential-ness of a job not be reflected by pay?

IOW, if a job is "essential" (i.e., somebody must do that job), how is it not worth a living wage?

#7 | Posted by WhoDaMan at 2021-03-01 01:56 PM | Reply