"Sometimes, I guess, there just aren't enough rocks." - Forrest Gump
To hear progressives carry on about the $15 an hour minimum wage increase being stripped from the Covid-relief bill, you'd think there was some kind of conspiracy going on. The prevailing sentiment among many House Democrats is that vice president Kamala Harris should simply override the Senate Parliamentarian when the bill comes up for a vote. Sounds simple enough, so why not just go ahead and do it?
Well, for one, it sets a dangerous precedent; one that neither President Joe Biden nor the party in general wants. After four years of watching Trump and the GOP shit all over the Constitution and every political norm under the sun, are Democrats really prepared to act in kind? If so, everything they ran on in 2020 means jack shit and the moral high ground they fought so hard to achieve is out the window. Biden knows this, and I suspect, deep down, so do Democrats. So don't look for them to die on this beachhead.
Besides, even if they were to override the Parliamentarian, it still wouldn't change the outcome. That's because the biggest problem Democrats face isn't Senate rules, it's basic arithmetic. They only have 50 seats in the Senate, good enough for the majority, but barely. To accomplish anything requires all 50 Democratic senators to agree, and unfortunately both Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have already said they are against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. So, that's that.
I said this last week and it bears repeating: progressives are going to have to get use to settling for 75 percent of what they want or it's going to be a "very unproductive" next two years. Passing the $1.9 trillion Covid-relief bill is an absolute must, with or without the wage hike. When it comes up for a floor vote in a week, progressives in both houses of Congress must bite down hard and swallow.
There will be other opportunities to address the minimum wage. The best path forward would be a stand alone bill for, say, $11 an hour which would likely garner bipartisan support in the Senate and would be a step in the right direction. Given that 29 states already have minimum wages that are higher than the current federal minimum, time is on the Democrats side here.
Look, is this a perfect solution? Of course not. In a perfect world, the minimum wage would already be $24 an hour. But then this isn't a perfect world, nor is it likely to become one anytime soon. To the critics who say $11 an hour isn't enough, I would say you're right, it isn't. But it's still better than $7.25 an hour.
It's also progress and progress is always a good thing. In fact, you can't spell progressive without it.
P.S.: an earlier version of this piece inaccurately said that Chuck Schumer could override the Senate Parliamentarian, when in fact that duty would fall to Kamala Harris. I have made the correction.
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