When Washington voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative to index the state’s minimum wage to inflation back in 1998, naysayers made “doom and gloom” predictions that turned out to be more Chicken Little than anything else.
Nine other states (AZ, CO, FL, MO, MT, NV, OH, OR, VT) followed suit, and more recently, some (at first blush) surprising advocates for stronger minimum wage laws have emerged. Among them: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Independent), who advocate indexing the federal minimum wage to inflation and increasing the minimum wage, respectively. (President Obama previously endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $9.50, then indexing it based on the Consumer Price Index.)
Given that context, it’s more than a little surprising to see a group of Washington legislators file three different bills this year, each aimed at undercutting Washington state’s best-in-the-nation minimum wage in some fashion: Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: minimum wage, ALEC, michael bloomberg, Minimum wage, mitt romney, obama, public policy, washington state
