Kamala Harris Will not Give Many Particulars On 1 Key Situation

Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign posted a web page stuffed with coverage positions on Monday, and it was no shock that the vp helps elevating the federal minimal wage.

However how excessive does she suppose it ought to go?

The marketing campaign web site doesn’t provide a quantity, and a marketing campaign spokesperson declined to offer specifics when HuffPost requested Monday morning.

The federal minimal wage is simply $7.25 per hour and prevails in any state that doesn’t mandate the next one. It hasn’t been raised in 15 years, primarily as a result of Republican opposition.

Most people broadly helps giving it a lift, and plenty of states, together with crimson ones, have accomplished so within the absence of congressional motion. Some state charges at the moment are greater than double the federal stage.

However Democrats aren’t in complete settlement on what the nationwide goal ought to be. Harris would possibly wish to keep away from getting pinned down on a selected quantity and alienating supporters who suppose it ought to be both increased or decrease than what she proposes.

Democrats as soon as coalesced round $15, due to the success of the union-backed Combat for $15 marketing campaign, which started in quick meals in 2012 and later unfold to different low-wage sectors. However many progressives now say a yearslong phase-in towards $15 can be inadequate, particularly following a interval of elevated inflation, which has blunted a number of the affect of minimal wage coverage.

Final yr, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed mountaineering the federal wage ground to $17 in 5 years and eliminating the “tipped” minimal wage that enables eating places to pay servers as little as $2.13 per hour earlier than gratuities. Harris additionally helps ditching the tipped minimal wage, in keeping with her coverage web page.

Sanders’ invoice, the Increase the Wage Act, gained 31 co-sponsors, that means 18 lawmakers who caucus with Democrats have declined to signal on. A companion invoice within the Home pushed by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) has attracted 171 co-sponsors out of 211 Democrats.

Harris pledged to help a $15 federal minimal wage throughout her unsuccessful 2020 run for the White Home, a customary place for Democrats in that yr’s main.

Though Harris hasn’t laid out the particulars for a minimal wage hike this time, her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, has by no means had a coherent imaginative and prescient for the minimal wage. He has contradicted himself so typically on the problem that The Washington Submit’s fact-checking operation as soon as created a “guide to all of Donald Trump’s flip-flops on the minimum wage.”

Whereas campaigning for president in 2016, Trump used one in every of his favourite formulations for ducking a transparent coverage place: he was “looking at” a minimal wage improve. “I’m very different from most Republicans. You have to have something you can live on,” he mentioned on the time.

However only a few days later, Trump sounded much more like a daily Republican, saying the federal authorities ought to keep out of it. “I actually think that the states should make the decision,” he mentioned.

A pair months after that, Trump urged he would elevate the federal minimal wage — and likewise not elevate it.

“I would leave it and raise it somewhat,” he mentioned.

At no level throughout his one time period as president did Trump push his fellow Republicans to extend the minimal wage.