April 30 2014
A proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10, an underpinning of President Obama’s economic agenda and an issue that Democrats hope to leverage against Republicans in the midterm elections, failed in the Senate on Wednesday.
The vote was 54 to 42, with 60 votes needed to advance the measure.
All but one Republican voted to sustain a filibuster against the measure, saying that the increase would damage the fragile economy and force businesses to cut hundreds of thousands of jobs.
One of the top minimum wage stories of 2020 was the same as one of the top minimum wage stories of 2019: Congress—Republicans, specifically—continued to block a federal minimum wage increase, every day setting a new record for how long the U.S. minimum wage has stayed the same. That record was broken on
June 16, 2019, and the value of the $7.25 an hour minimum wage continues to erode as living costs go up. Republicans do not care.