U.S. Senate Democrats tried it again and as predicted, a raise in this country’s paltry minimum wage failed one more time.Split largely along party lines, the Republican-controlled Senate said ‘no’ to raising the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour for the nation’s lowest paid workers, an annual salary that falls below the poverty line.
And the poverty cycle continues, just as it has since 1997, when the minimum wage was last raised.
Meanwhile, lawmakers push for tax cuts for the wealthiest in this nation, including the estate tax, which is for estates of $2 million or more and affects only 1 percent of the country.
Poverty affects far more, yet the Senators had no problem with keeping it the same while raising their own pay by $30,000 over the same nine years.
It is unconscionable that this debate still rages on while the working poor struggle every day to put food on the table for their families, or simply buy the basics.
One Republican senator, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, described it as a “classic debate between two very different philosophies.” And he’s right, but not in the assessment he put forward.
He called it one philosophy that “believes in marketplace, the competitive system and entrepreneurship” while the other believes “the government knows better and that topdown mandates work.”
It’s the same simple, black and white description in which the Republican majority wants to couch its arguments, but the real world isn’t black and white. It’s real people struggling to make a living while CEOs of major companies make 300 times what their average workers make.
There is no relief coming for the least of these, and there’s certainly no trickling down of better economic times ahead for them either.
Because Congress refuses to face the real issues, the gap continues to widen, and the cycle of poverty simply continues.
