Giving Americans a Raise

The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for more than eight and a half years. If Congress fails to pass an increase by December of this year, it will be the longest stretch of stinginess in American history. The states are sick of waiting.

In the past sixteen months, eleven states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wage. In February Rhode Island's legislature overwhelmingly voted to pass HB6718, hiking the state's minimum to $7.40 by the start of 2007. Governor Donald Carcieri had threatened to veto the bill, but, facing tremendous opposition, he dropped his effort and signed it into law. And in March Michigan's Republican-dominated Senate unanimously approved a measure that would increase the state's minimum by 44 percent over the next two years. Michigan, which had stalled at the federal standard for the past nine years, will have one of the most generous minimums in the country, $7.40, by July 2008.

Michigan's wage hike "came out of nowhere," according to Senate Democratic leader Bob Emerson of Flint. Republican leaders acted quickly in response to a rapidly moving ballot drive that sought to add an amendment to Michigan's Constitution requiring the state's minimum to rise annually with the rate of inflation. Signatures for the ballot measure were pouring in, and a recent poll showed that 80 percent of Michiganders favored a higher minimum.

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