Reply #47: I am reluctant to sign this timid and inadequate proposal [View All]

Though I appreciate your motive, Saphire Blue, and I absolutely support raising the Federal Minimum Wage. It is a gross injustice that any employer can get away with paying anyone - for any job anywhere, the current Federal Min (States can and do raise the minimum on a State level).

To raise the minimum wage to its' 1968 level would take it to over $8hr, last I looked. Locally, we are working on getting a Minimum Living Wage passed - roughly $10hr (I won't go into all the details). This would take a one-job family of four JUST to Federal Poverty Guideline IF the worker had year-round full-time employment. Many minimum wage jobs do not provide that level of hours, so it is unlikely that even a two-minimum Living Wage family of four would be living in any luxury.

Why is Senator Kennedy - one of our better Senators, to be sure - putting forth this timid proposal? What will $7.25 equal in two years? The FPG are adjusted each year. Will it take a single mother of one or two UP TO poverty level in a few years?

I agree that the Dems should campaign on wages, that would certainly give those of us going door-to-door a reason to exhort people to get registered and GOTV.

But I would like to see them put forward more than this meagre proposal - even if it got bargained down, what a selling point against the R's (I hope only Rs) who fight it - they will have to go on record as against fair, living wages for workers. THAT would give me an answer when the poor and disenfranchised on whose doors I knock tell me there is no reason to go out and vote because "they're all the same."