Harkin, Miller Eager to Push an Even Bigger Raise
By David Harrison
Roll Call Staff

Few members of Congress were more pleased to hear President Barack Obama call for an increase in the minimum wage than Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. The two have been working on increasing the minimum wage for years, routinely introducing legislation that would raise it over several years and peg it to inflation.

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“While we believe the president’s proposal is lower than what is needed, there is no question that last night he threw the door open for a robust discussion on the importance of raising the minimum wage,” the two said in a joint statement released the day after the State of the Union address.

Last year, Harkin and Miller introduced bills that would have incrementally raised the minimum wage to $9.80 an hour. This year, they’re readying legislation that would boost it to $10.10 over the next couple of years, higher than Obama’s proposal of $9 an hour. A Harkin staffer said the bill should be introduced within a few weeks...Even at $10.10 an hour, “we still won’t have fully recovered the value it had 40 years ago,” she said. At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was at $10.56 in today’s dollars, Kern said.

The lawmakers are also proposing to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, which has been set at $2.13 an hour since 1991. The Labor Department defines a tipped worker as anyone making at least $30 a month in tips. But employers must make up the difference if the worker’s tips and salary do not add up to $7.25 an hour.

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