“$15 an hour is the floor,” the Congressional Progressive Caucus tweeted Saturday, even as $7.25 has been in place since 2009.
Progressive Democratic lawmakers marked the 12-year anniversary of the last minimum wage hike on Saturday, demanding a substantial raise and slamming “starvation wages.” Congress last raised the federal minimum wage to its current level of $7.25 per hour on July 24, 2009. Since then, inflation has increased substantially while the lowest-paid workers in the country continue to earn the same amount they did more than a decade ago. This is the longest period the country has gone without the federal minimum wage increasing since it was first implemented in 1938. “It’s officially been 12 years since the minimum wage was last raised — to $7.25 an hour, in 2009. In 2021, we can’t be content with anyone making starvation wages,” the official Twitter account for the Congressional Progressive Caucus tweeted on Saturday. “$15 an hour is the floor. Raise the wage.” Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and chair of the CPC, pointed out that inflation has increased substantially while the federal minimum wage has remained the same. “In the last 12 years, inflation has increased by 26.6%. But the minimum wage hasn’t gone up a single cent. It’s time to #RaiseTheWage,” Jayapal tweeted. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, made a similar Twitter post.
