On Friday Senate Democrats voted to pass the budget resolution for Covid relief package. (You know, the $2,000--I mean, $1,400--promised by Biden on the campaign trail).
Well, that whopping $1.4 trillion (whoops, I see it has jumped to $1.9 trillion) price tag was not enough for the Democrats. They have also prepared to enact long-term increases to the minimum wage (see page 45). You may have heard that bad news already. The new minimum wage will be $15 an hour.
In slightly less negative news, it will not be that drastic the moment the bill is passed. It will only go from $8.25 to $9.50 at the passage of the bill. But that ramps up to $11.00 the following year, $12.50 in the next, then $14.00, until finally it reaches $15.00 in four years.
It gets worse, though. Immediately following, Congress reneged on any responsibility for managing the minimum wage after four years. The official act of Congress will be to punt it to--you guessed it--a bureaucrat.
No more pesky accountability to the people! Our dear leader will now get to appoint an unelected official who decides the future of this policy. There are rules for determining the new minimum wage, but they will only ensure that it goes up faster than it ought.
This is not hyperbole. We just had our last election where we could look at our representatives and tell them that hiking the minimum wage for the sake of hiking the minimum wage is grounds for replacement.
This is what we are struggling to prevent through the Convention of States. Our legislature is supposed to make these decisions, because they are supposed to be accountable to us. They have decided they no longer want that accountability. But they will keep the power over our lives.
We can change all that. We must change it. Multi-trillion dollar budgets passed by the slimmest of majorities with one foot out the door for the weekend cannot continue to be the norm of every congressional session.
It is clear that we can only look to ourselves for the solution. We the People need to press on to adopt the Convention of States and rein in the ridiculous processes used to strip away our rights. We must restore accountability in the federal government.
