Senior lawmakers appear to have abandoned plan to use tax penalty to force measure through
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12.35pm GMT
David Sirota writes for us today on that minimum wage issue:
When a Republican is president, Democratic politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency is an all-powerful office that can do anything it wants. When a Democrat is president, these same politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency has no power to do anything. In fact, they will tell you a Democratic president cannot even use the bully pulpit and other forms of pressure to try to shift the votes of senators in his own party.
Related: Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That’s not true | David Sirota
12.27pm GMT
There’s a solid group of Democrats who thing the way forward for the minimum wage policy is to overturn the decision of the Senate parliamentarian, and there is a #Keep15In movement rapidly forming. They are planning a digital meeting at 9am EST today (that’s 1400 GMT).
Reps Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib and Andy Level Levin will be joining a women of color-led coalition who have set up the event, which will call on the Biden-Harris administration to disregard the Senate parliamentarian advisory opinion and press ahead.
We are women of color, people of color, women, low-wage workers and organizations that represent and support them. We are writing to urge you to use the full power of your office to bring essential financial relief to all working people in America, by ensuring that a $15 federal minimum wage is included in the budget reconciliation process, regardless of the opinion of the parliamentarian.
As president of the Senate, vice president Harris has the constitutional power to disregard the recommendation of the Senate parliamentarian and include this provision in the Covid relief legislation.
12.11pm GMT
Jeff Stein reports overnight for the Washington Post on the news that senior Democrat lawmakers appear to have abandoned a potential “plan B” for getting a $15 per hour minimum federal wage through the Senate in its existing form. Last week the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that its inclusion in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Covid recovery plan breached Senate procedure. Stein writes:
Last week Senate finance chair Ron Wyden and Senate budget chair Bernie Sanders said they would instead seek to add tax penalties on large corporations that fail to pay $15 an hour — an idea viewed as less likely to be struck down by the parliamentarian and still helpful to some minimum-wage workers.
But now senior Democrats — including Wyden and Sanders — are walking away from that backup effort. Economists and tax experts have said that the tax outlined by Sanders and Wyden could be easily avoided and difficult to implement, with large corporations able to reclassify workers as contractors to avoid potential penalties. “I would be extremely nervous about trying out a brand new idea like this with virtually no vetting,” Jason Furman, a former Obama administration economist, said on Friday.
12.05pm GMT
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics on Monday, the day after Donald Trump made a return to public life with his talk at CPAC. Here’s a catch up on where we are, and what we might expect from today…