Minimum wage hike: Senate GOP seeks to neutralize key election-year issue

http://www.thehill.com/news/041404/wage.aspx

Senate Republicans are crafting legislation that would raise the hourly minimum wage by more than a dollar, in an attempt to take a hot-button election-year issue off the table.

The Senate GOP package would be coupled with business-friendly measures to help industry swallow a phased-in $1.10 increase in the nation’s minimum wage.

Sources say Senate Republicans are hoping to convince business leaders that an increase in the minimum wage is likely this year and that their legislative solution is more palatable than Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-Mass.). Kennedy has proposed raising the minimum hourly wage from $5.15 to $7.

“Senate Republicans recognize they need to have an alternative,” an industry lobbyist said.

The min. wage was last raised in 1996, meaning that min. wage workers have seen small pay cuts every year due to inflation.

All this "increase" in the min. wage means is that their pay cuts will be a little bit smaller.

$1.60 per hour then, adjusted for inflation, would be worth $8.56 today (see http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl). Since then it has declined in value by nearly 40%. My own modest proposal is for 10% increases in each of the next 8 years, which would bring it pretty close to $11 even.