Minimum Wage Raise Is Dead (And GOP Is Rejoicing)

Our economy was already in trouble before the pandemic hit this country. While the rich were getting richer, the working and middle classes were struggling to stay up with inflation. And the gap between the wealth and income of the top 1% and the bottom 90% was larger than before the Great Depression, and it was continuing to grow.

The pandemic just made things even worse. The rich kept on getting richer, while millions lost their jobs.

The biggest thing to correct the economy, and make it fairer for everyone, would be to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The relief bill proposed by President Biden included that minimum wage. The bill would not only provide money necessary to fight the Coronavirus, but would start putting the U.S. economy back on track. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen now.

The Democrats were trying to pass that relief bill by using the reconciliation process. A Senate rule says that process can only be used for items that involve taxing and spending. And on Thursday, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the provision to raise the minimum wage did not meet that criteria -- and therefore could not be included in the bill.

Frankly, I don't understand that ruling at all. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would affect both taxing and spending. Many of those receiving the raise would start paying taxes (which they don't do now because they live in poverty), and many (perhaps millions) would no longer qualify for government benefit programs (food stamps, etc.) which would affect government spending in a positive way. 

Republicans are celebrating the decision. They only care about the rich, and have always opposed raising the minimum wage. In fact, some of them have proposed doing away with the minimum wage and letting businesses pay even less than $7.25 and hour (the current minimum wage). They are still trying to claim that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. That's not true, and has been disproved in all the states and cities that have raised the wage.

This means there will be no minimum wage raise for the next two years. That's because the Republicans, while they don't control the Senate, have enough votes to kill any attempt by filibustering it to death. It would take 60 votes to pass a minimum wage bill in the Senate, which means at least 10 Republicans would have to support it. That is simply not going to happen, because there are 10 Republican senators that give a damn about workers.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has provided its first disappointment. It is going to wimp out and accept defeat. Senate experts say Vice-President Kamala Harris could overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and keep the minimum wage proposal in the bill -- but the administration has signaled that it will accept the ruling. They are afraid the relief bill would not pass the Senate with the minimum wage proposal in it.

President Biden says he still supports the $15 an hour minimum wage and will continue to fight for it.

Sadly, those just sound like empty and meaningless words now.

Even sadder is that the American public supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Note the chart below, which reflects the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between February 19th and 22nd of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,201 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.7 points, and for registered voters is 3.0 points.

Economist Predicts Economic Boom After Virus Controlled

Donald Trump has been predicting a booming economic recovery for months now, but it hasn't happened. It hasn't happened because Trump bungled the response to the pandemic, and is currently bungling the roll-out of vaccinations for American citizens.

Fortunately, he will be gone in less than three weeks, and we will have a new president -- one that will act to control the virus and protect citizens.

And when that happens, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (pictured) is predicting the economy will enter a booming recovery that will last for a significant period. 

Here is part of what Krugman wrote in The New York Times:

Science has come to our rescue, big time, with the miraculously fast development of vaccines against the coronavirus. True, the United States is botching the initial rollout, which should surprise nobody. But this is probably just a temporary hitch, especially because in less than three weeks we’ll have a president actually interested in doing his job.

And once we’ve achieved widespread vaccination, the economy will bounce back. The question is, how big will the bounce be?

Our last economic crisis was followed by a sluggish recovery. Employment didn’t return to 2007 levels until 2014; real median household income didn’t regain the lost ground until 2016. And many observers expect a replay of that story, especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate and engage, once again, in economic sabotage under the pretense of being fiscally responsible.

But the crisis of 2020 was very different from the crisis of 2008, in ways that make our prospects look much better this time around.

The last economic crisis involved a Wile E. Coyote moment: The private sector suddenly looked down, realized that there was nothing supporting extravagant housing prices and extremely high levels of household debt, and plunged. The result was an extended period of depressed spending. The only way to have avoided multiple years of high unemployment would have been sustained, large-scale fiscal stimulus — and the G.O.P. prevented that.

This 2020 crisis, by contrast, was brought on by a headwind out of nowhere, in the form of the coronavirus. The private sector doesn’t seem to have been particularly overextended before the pandemic. And while we shouldn’t minimize the hardships faced by millions of families, on average Americans have been saving like crazy, and will emerge from the pandemic with stronger balance sheets than they had before.

So I’m in the camp that expects rapid growth once people feel safe going out and spending money. Mitch McConnell and company will, no doubt, do what they always do when a Democrat occupies the White House, and try to sabotage the recovery. But this time the economy won’t need support as badly as it did during the Obama years.

And I suspect, although with less confidence, that the boom will go on for a long time. Why? Because like a number of other people, I’m getting optimistic about the future of technology. . . .

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz around new physical technologies that reminds me of the buzz about information technology in the early 1990s, which presaged the productivity surge from 1995 to 2005. Biotechnology finally seems to be coming into its own — hence those miraculous vaccines. There has been incredible progress in renewable energy; I’m old enough to remember when solar power was considered a hippie fantasy, and now it’s cheaper than fossil fuels. There’s room for more skepticism about the near-term prospects for things like self-driving vehicles and lab-grown meat, but the fact that we’re even talking about such innovations is a good sign for the future.

This new wave of innovation doesn’t have much to do with policy, although progress in renewables can be partly attributed to the Obama administration’s promotion of green energy. But the Biden administration, unlike its predecessor, won’t be anti-science and won’t try desperately to preserve the coal-burning past. That will help us take advantage of progress.

I’m less confident in my techno-optimism than I am in my expectations for a rapid employment recovery once we’ve been vaccinated. But all in all, there’s a pretty good chance that Joe Biden will preside over an economy that surprises many people on the upside. Happy New Year.

Biden Picks His Team To Lead His Health Agenda

Xavier Becerra

Secretary of Health and Human Service

Dr.Vivek Murphy

Surgeon General

Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Director of Center for Disease Control

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Will remain as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Biden Chooses Competent Professional For His Economic Team

When Biden announced his National Security picks, he chose competent professionals who knew the job and could hit the ground running. He did the same with his choices for economic posts.

They are all experienced, competent, and professional. Even better, most of them came from working and middle class backgrounds. They know what it's like to have to work hard to make a living, so they understand what most citizens are experiencing. That's a far cry from the rich CEO's Trump chose for his cabinet -- people who had no conception of what workers have to do to make a living.

All-Female Communications Team For Biden Administration

The chart above shows the Biden picks for the White House communications posts. For the first time in the history of this country, that communications team will be composed only of women (all of them imminently qualified).

Here are the seven Biden/Harris picks and a little about each of them:

Elizabeth E. Alexander, Communications Director for the First Lady

Elizabeth E. Alexander served as a Senior Advisor on the Biden-Harris Campaign. Alexander spent the first years of the Obama-Biden administration as the Press Secretary to Vice President Biden, a role which followed her time as then-Senator Biden’s Communications Director on Capitol Hill. She has worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorneys’ offices in Washington, DC and Alexandria, Virginia, where she also served as a counselor to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Previously, Alexander worked as Press Secretary for the United Nations Foundation, Press Secretary to Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, Communications Director for Congressman Adam Schiff, and Deputy Press Secretary for Senator Chuck Schumer. Before joining the Biden-Harris campaign, Alexander was a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, where she led the firm’s gender inclusion and workplace equality communications offering. Originally from Texas, Alexander is a graduate of Texas A&M University and Georgetown University Law Center.  She lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and two young sons.

Kate Bedingfield, White House Communications Director

Kate Bedingfield served as Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director for the Biden-Harris Campaign. She served as Communications Director for Vice President Biden and as Associate Communications Director, Deputy Director of Media Affairs, and the Director of Response in the Obama-Biden White House. Prior to the Obama-Biden administration, Bedingfield served as Communications Director to U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen on her successful 2008 Senate campaign, Deputy National Press Secretary on the John Edwards for President campaign and Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 when Democrats won back the House. Bedingfield has also served as the Chief Spokeswoman and Vice President of Corporate Communications at the Motion Picture Association of America and as the Vice President of Communications at Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Originally from Georgia, Bedingfield is a graduate of the University of Virginia. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, son and daughter.

Ashley Etienne, Communications Director for the Vice President 

Ashley Etienne served as a Senior Advisor on the Biden-Harris Campaign. Before that, Etienne served as Communications Director and Senior Advisor to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the first woman and person of color to hold the position. Etienne was Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Cabinet in the Obama-Biden administration and also led communications on President Obama’s signature My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Prior to the Obama-Biden administration, she served as Deputy Communications Director and Spokesperson for then-House Democratic Leader Pelosi, Communications Director for House Democrats on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Spokesperson for the Corporation for National and Community Service, and as a Spokesperson in Virginia for the Obama-Biden Campaign in 2008. Etienne has provided strategic counsel to clients while at Dewey Square Group and as president of her own consulting firm, Etienne & Associates. Originally from Texas, Etienne is a graduate of Sam Houston State University and Johns Hopkins University.

Karine Jean-Pierre, Principal Deputy Press Secretary 

Karine Jean-Pierre was Senior Advisor to President-Elect Joe Biden and Chief of Staff to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on the Biden-Harris Campaign. Prior to her role on the campaign, she served as Chief Public Affairs Officer for MoveOn.org and an NBC and MSNBC Political Analyst. Jean-Pierre served as Regional Political Director for the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Obama-Biden administration and as Deputy Battleground States Director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. She served as Southeast Regional Political Director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Deputy Campaign Manager for Martin O’Malley for President, Campaign Manager for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Initiative, and Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Legislative and Budget Affairs for two members in the New York City Council. Previously, she worked at the Center for Community and Corporate Ethics, pushing major companies to change their business practices. Born in Martinique and raised in New York, Jean-Pierre is a graduate of Columbia University.’

Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary 

Jen Psaki currently oversees the confirmations team for the Biden-Harris Transition. During the Obama-Biden administration, Psaki held several senior roles, including White House Communications Director, State Department Spokesperson under then-Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy White House Communications Director and Deputy White House Press Secretary during the financial crisis.  She is a veteran of three presidential campaigns having served as traveling press secretary during the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008,  as traveling press secretary and senior advisor in 2012 and as deputy press secretary for John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. Psaki was a spokesperson at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 when Democrats won back the House of Representatives and has also served as Communications Director to former Congressman Joe Crowley. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Transition Team, Psaki was the Vice President for Communications and Strategy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a CNN contributor. Psaki is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and lives in Virginia with her husband and two children.

Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson for the Vice President

Symone Sanders served as a Senior Advisor on the Biden-Harris campaign. In 2016, Sanders became the youngest presidential press secretary while working on U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s then-presidential campaign. Before joining the Biden-Harris campaign, Sanders was a CNN political commentator and served as principal of the 360 Group LLC, where she provided strategic communications guidance to organizations, businesses, individuals, campaigns and candidates. Sanders is the former chair of the Coalition of Juvenile Justice Emerging Leaders Committee and former member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice, where she worked to raise the profile of young voices in the fight for juvenile justice reform and bring millennial perspectives to policy conversations. Originally from Nebraska, Sanders is a graduate of Creighton University. She currently lives in Washington D.C. with her partner.

Pili Tobar, Deputy White House Communications Director 

Pili Tobar served as the Communications Director for Coalitions on the Biden-Harris Campaign. Before joining the campaign, Tobar served as the Deputy Director for America’s Voice, where she advocated on behalf of immigrants. She has also served as the Hispanic Media Director for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, National Director of Hispanic Media and Western Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic National Committee, Communications Director for Congressman Ruben Gallego, and Communications Director for the Latino Victory Project. Originally from Florida and raised in Guatemala, Tobar is a graduate of the University of Miami. She lives in Washington D.C. with her wife and daughter. 

Trump Refuses To Allow Transition Process To begin

In the past, outgoing administrations immediately provided money and office space for the incoming administration as soon as the winner of the presidential election was known. Both outgoing Republican and Democratic administrations have done this to insure the government had a peaceful and successful transfer of power.

But that is normality -- and the Trump administration is not normal. The GSA administrator, who is by law supposed to do this, has refused to do so. Trump and his sycophants are evidently going to make the transition process as difficult as they can. That's a shameful maneuver that ignores what is good for the country.

Here is part of how The Washington Post describes this controversial decision:

A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power. 

The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as give access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner. . . .

But by Sunday evening, almost 36 hours after media outlets projected Biden as the winner, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy had written no such letter. And the Trump administration, in keeping with the president’s failure to concede the election, has no immediate plans to sign one. . . .

“No agency head is going to get out in front of the president on transition issues right now,” said one senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. The official predicted that agency heads will be told not to talk to the Biden team. . . .

The delay has implications both practical and symbolic.

By declaring the “apparent winner” of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.

Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.

And they get access to senior officials, both political appointees of the outgoing administration and career civil servants, who relay an agency’s ongoing priorities and projects, upcoming deadlines, problem areas and risks. The federal government is a $4.5 trillion operation, and while the Biden team is not new to government, the access is critical, experts said.

This is all on hold for now. . . .

As the campaign wound down, President Trump gave signals that he would not easily hand over the reins to his successor, if there was one. But for people who have been through them, a presidential transition is a massive undertaking requiring discipline, decision-making and fast learning under the smoothest circumstances. Each lost day puts the new government behind schedule.