On Thursday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) responded to Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) proposal to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour by saying that “I’m delighted that Sen. Murphy is talking about this and I think the voting record of a lot of us, the Democrats that had led on this before is we’re willing to do it, it was $15, plus inflation adjustments.”
Co-host Joe Mathieu asked, “I want to ask you, quickly, with our small amount of time remaining here, Congressman, if you think raising the minimum wage would help. … Chris Murphy, the Senator from Connecticut, Democrat, is up with a bill to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour. It would be incremental. Big companies would have six years to get there from what is now 7.25. Small companies would have a 13-year runway. Is that something that could gain support?”
Casten answered, “So, look, first, we voted and passed legislation out of the House two terms in a row in the 116th and 117th Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15. The Senate never took it up. … I’m delighted that Sen. Murphy is talking about this and I think the voting record of a lot of us, the Democrats that had led on this before is we’re willing to do it, it was $15, plus inflation adjustments. Great to have the conversation, we want to have more money in people’s pockets. But let’s see that the Senate can actually pass this stuff. I think, as a separate matter, the reason we have an affordability crisis is because of a foreign policy that’s driving up the price of gasoline needlessly that we don’t have to have, a tariff policy that’s raised the cost of a whole lot of imported goods. And let’s fix those problems and solve the root cause. Yes, of course we all want to have more income in our pockets at the end of the day as well. But if you’re driving in a car with the emergency brake on, first take off the emergency brake, and then hit the gas.”
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