A $15 minimum wage would hurt families – Will Dems vote for reckless policy or face facts?

It’s the wage increase that reduces families’ incomes.

That’s the verdict of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on a proposed $15 minimum wage, which the House of Representatives will vote on this week. Rather than putting money in workers’ pockets, the CBO finds that it could leave nearly 4 million of them without a job.

Democrats campaigned in 2018 on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised the 106 percent increase in the current minimum wage would be a top priority of a new Democratic Congress. It hasn’t worked out that way. Moderates in her caucus recoiled at an unprecedented wage mandate that would apply equally in Miami and Milford, Chicago and Cheboygan.

These concerns are justified: Studies from Seattle and San Francisco found that experiments with a $15 minimum wage resulted in a spike in restaurant closures and a net reduction in many employees’ wages (whose loss of work hours offset their wage increase). Just last week, Restaurants Unlimited – a restaurant group with a majority of its locations in high-cost markets out west – filed for bankruptcy and closed six locations, citing the cost of a higher minimum wage.

Even one-time supporters of $15 have rethought the wisdom of the policy. Bill Phelps, co-founder of the franchise Wetzel's Pretzels, once praised California's $15 minimum wage – until he saw first-hand the negative impacts on businesses and employees.