SCOTT, SANDERS INTRODUCE BILL TO RAISE MINIMUM WAGE

By Stacy M. Brown

NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent @StacyBrownMedia

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, have introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2023.

The legislation would gradually increase the minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2028.

Scott and Sanders said it would provide about 28 million Americans with a long-overdue raise.

“No person working full-time in America should be living in poverty,” Scott stated.

“Raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for business, and good for the economy. When we put money in the pockets of American workers, they will spend that money in their communities.”

Republican members of Congress have repeatedly stifled efforts to raise the minimum wage, with many claiming it would harm businesses, even causing some to close.

“The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It must be raised to a living wage – at least $17 an hour,” Sanders insisted.

“In the year 2023, a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality and recordbreaking corporate profits, we can no longer tolerate millions of workers being unable to feed their

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families because they are working for totally inadequate wages,” Sanders continued:

“Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. The time to act is now.”

The Democrats and the legislation’s 146 co-sponsors said that after more than a decade with no increase in the federal minimum wage millions of workers are working full-time jobs but are still struggling to make ends meet. see Scott, page 6A