Blocked Wage Increase Another Sign Of Right’s Economic Sabotage

Isaiah J. Poole

If members of the U.S. Senate had bothered to scan the news before they cast their votes Wednesday on whether to allow final debate and passage of a bill that would increase the minimum wage, they would have seen headlines like this one from Bloomberg News: “Growth Freezes Up as U.S. Business Spending Slumps.”

One would think that would have given senators pause before 42 of them voted to filibuster the legislation, which would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. After all, Tuesday’s news of a barely perceptible 0.1 percent increase in gross domestic product growth in the first three months of the year is one more sign of how a virtuous economic cycle has been broken by wrong-headed economic austerity. And a crucial part of restoring that cycle – in which businesses do well because consumers are doing well in a broadly shared prosperity – is to give people work and then make work pay.