House Passes Minimum Wage
As part of the Democrats "First 100 Hours" agenda, the House passed a bill Thursday, 315-116, to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by 2009. (The States who voted against the raising of the minimum wage are shown in the graph in red. Those for in green, and split states are in grey.) The bill now moves to the Senate. The past 10 years of a Republican-lead Congress was the longest stretch without any increase in the minimum wage since it was established in 1938. The increased paychecks will affect hundreds of thousands of workers. According to the Associated Press, Democrats intend to give billions in tax breaks to make it easier for small-businesses who hire low-income workers to swallow. Convenience Store News observes that this raise in minimum wage means higher payroll costs for employers.
"It is an economic reality that if the federal minimum wage increases by 41 percent, it will put upward pressure on all labor costs for small businesses, which continue to be the engine of economic growth in the United States," the National Retail Federation complained in a letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California."
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