Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Republican Plan to Raise the Minimum Wage Is Self-Defeating

Senators Romney and Cotton clearly want to head off the Democrats’ higher target. But that’s a losing game for conservatives.

February 23, 2021 at 5:00 PM UTC

By Michael R. Strain

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Will jobs go away if wages are raised too much?
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour has been one of the most important goals of the progressive left, and President Joe Biden has included the “Fight for $15” in his $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal. Now two Republican senators, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Utah, have put forward their own proposal to raise the wage floor, to $10 per hour.

A major advantage of the Republican plan is that it would delay its minimum wage increase until after the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, raising the wage by 75 cents in the first year after the Covid-19 emergency has passed. In contrast, the Raise the Wage Act, supported by Biden, would kick in three months after it is signed into law. So if it’s passed next month, it would begin gradually raising the minimum wage in June.