this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Actually George W Bush was the last person to raise the minimum wage. That's the second Bush for anyone who might not know.
Obama did nothing with it.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/government-contracts/minimum-wage
Obama issued an executive order to raise the wages of federal contractors to a minimum of $12.15/hr after the Pelosi/Schumer Congress fumbled the ball. Biden was reluctantly unopposed to signing a $15/min national bill, until the Manchin/Sinema Senate quashed it back in '21.
And it should be noted that the Min Wage hike Bush signed was only on his desk when Pelosi stapled it to the Bank Bailout of '08.
So this isn't a Dem/Rep thing, so much as it is a particular moment of convenience when certain progressive politicians can choose to exert leverage over their more conservative colleagues.
Of course Pelosi and Schumer "fumbled" it...that's because that's what they really wanted. And Biden, even though he said he would do that, he won't.
When Biden was running in the primary, he said outright that he'd veto medicare for all if it ever got to his desk. Does that sound like someone who would raise wages?
Yeah, if people could eat Democrats' excuses no one in this country would go hungry.
I don't think Pelosi personally cares if the min-wage is $7 or $15. But its not something she's willing to fight for. It's a concession she's willing to make in exchange for something else.
As to Biden's veto threat, its hard to express how much folks already on Medicare hate and fear the idea of Medicare for All. They see it (not incorrectly) as a policy that would involve diluting a pool of money that only ever seems to get smaller for them over time. The veto threat guarantees Biden keeps the elderly votes, in large part because so many old-heads are poisoned against the idea of a broader social safety net.
Then let's tax billionaires to make sure it has the money it needs. But that's never going to happen, because our government is corruption. They will literally do nothing unless they're paid to do something. Whether it's to introduce a bill or vote a particular way on a bill.
We can't, because they dictate who gets to govern in the Senate.
Congress is just a stepping stone to further personal fortune.
Exactly. But no she's not willing to even have it as a concession. She has hundreds of millions of dollars. Everything she says is virtue-signaling, but she's so out of touch that she can't even do that right.
Thanks Obama
And he had a supermajority for a time, which makes his inaction that much worse.
YES! And people still brainlessly say over and over "best president of my lifetime" about a guy that deported more immigrants than any other president combined, more than Trump, Obama was the one who started putting kids in cages, Obama that pretended Flint Michigan's water was fine, Obama allowed fracking to happen, which caused tap water in many places to become flammable. Obama took us from two illegal wars against countries that never attacked us up to at least 7. His drone bombings killed 90% civilians and those drone bombings were so frequent that they ran out of bombs for the drones.
Yes you read that right! The US military, which gets a bigger budget every year perpetually...ran out of one of their ammunitions, because they used it that much.
And under Trump, Pelosi and Schumer went out of their way to make sure the Trump administration got an even bigger military budget increase than they were even asking for TWICE!
Pelosi "TRUMP! With you! All roads lead to Putin! Now have a bigger military budget YOU RUSSIAN SCUM!"
Obama also made the deliberate choice to bow to Big Pharma and Big Insurance by killing single payer.
The military budget's interesting, though. We spend more and more every year, trillions, but if you look at the war budget as a percentage of our GDP, it's actually lower than it's been in the past.
(Which still pisses me off, but it's an interesting fact.)