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A minimum wage hike passed the House of Representatives. Now comes the Senate battle--and the pivotal vote of John Warner. |
ROCKY GAP--OK, let's just
OK, now let's multiply that by four weeks and, voilá, there's your monthly salary, $824--again, before taxes.
With this salary, how do you pay for food, rent, phone, electricity, or anything else for that matter?
This is not a hypothetical situation. Hundreds of thousands of hardworking people in this country are not getting a fair deal. They work, and work, and work some more, yet they cannot afford the basics for survival.
They are house cleaners, day care workers, coffee slingers, care givers, bookstore workers, retail clerks, janitors. They are a part of the fabric that keeps our society and our economy going.
They deserve to get paid a living wage--a wage that can stop the poverty treadmill. Raising the minimum wage is a first step and the least we can do.
The 110th Congress claims it has heard the voice of the people. Democratic members of the House of Representatives announced their "100-hour agenda," and raising the minimum wage was a key piece of that plan; it has now been accomplished.
I applaud these efforts--but it's not just up to the House. The U.S. Senate needs to do the right thing and also support raising the federal minimum wage.
We Virginians are also watching to make sure the efforts to raise the minimum wage are not polluted with tax breaks for the rich, or other pork barrel spending measures that would dilute a minimum wage increase. We have not forgotten the slyly crafted trifecta legislation of 2006 that connected a minimum wage hike to the abolishment of the Estate Tax.
We need legislation unburdened by add-ons that can start addressing some of the systemic problems that create a class of working poor, many of whom cannot sustain themselves
Sen. Jim Webb already announced his support for
Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. Since then, the minimum wage has lost about 20 percent of its value. The real purchasing power of the minimum wage is the lowest it has been since 1955.
Minimum wage earners are not just teenagers working for spending money. In fact, 80 percent of workers who would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $7.25 are adults. The average minimum wage worker brings home more than half of his or her household's weekly income.
Single parents are disproportionately represented in the ranks of minimum wage workers--almost 4 million parents of children under 18 work for minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage would have a real impact on their ability to care for their children.
Families earning less than a living wage have to make hard choices. Parents have to decide between paying rent, keeping the heat on, paying for health care, and keeping food on the table.
No parent should have to make these choices.
In addition, our current minimum wage's impact falls disproportionately on people of color. African-American and Latino workers are more likely to get the minimum wage. Latinos are twice as likely to live in poverty as whites; African-Americans are almost 2 times as likely to live in poverty as whites.
Raising the minimum wage to bring it closer to a living wage will help us all, as well as close this racial poverty divide.
Let's keep it real--a take-home paycheck of $206 after 40 hours of work is a crime. Don't you agree, Sen. Warner?
DENISE SMITH of Rocky Gap
