OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion
The Democrats’ left-wing faction, as well as ‘progressive’ activist organizations, are pressuring Kamala Harris to break another longstanding Senate precedent and ignore the chamber’s parliamentarian ruled that the $15-an-hour minimum wage hike in the House’s $1.9 trillion COVID ‘relief’ bill cannot be approved through the budget reconciliation process.
Translation: They want Harris to cheat the system so they can get their way, regardless of the standing rules.
The leftists point out that during his campaign, Joe Biden promised to enact a $15-an-hour minimum wage, which is more than double the current wage of $7.25, set in 2009, which is one reason why the House included a provision for doing so in the massive bill, only a percentage of which, Republicans say, actually goes to COVID relief.
The plan hit a roadblock, however, after Elizabeth MacDonough, a lawyer who has served as the chamber’s parliamentarian since 2012, ruled last week that the wage increase provision is outside the terms of the reconciliation process, laid out in the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1974.
Democratic leftists want Harris to ignore MacDonough so they can ram through the wage increase on a simple majority vote — without any Republicans.
Otherwise, under current Senate rules, a separate bill to raise the minimum wage would be subject to a 60-vote filibuster threshold.
That said, the Biden administration has signaled that the White House isn’t on board with breaking the Senate’s rules, though Harris could use her power as the chamber’s president to do so.
“That’s not an action we intend to take,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday.
The push by leftists including “Squad” members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), as well as the head of the House Progressive Caucus Rep. Pramilla Jayapal, was Dead on Arrival anyway.
More moderate Democratic voices such as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have already said they’re not keen on overriding MacDonough.
And Biden likely knew the provision was going to hit a snag under the reconciliation process anyway — that is if can recall his many years in the Senate these days.
Still, the Washington Examiner notes, he attached the wage provision to another one that would authorize $1,400 payments to most Americans as well as funding for vaccine distribution.
Other liberals cautioned against trashing the parliamentarian’s ruling.
“They have to understand that the political calculus is absolutely not in their favor. To overrule the parliamentarian is simply to have the bill fail,” said Reecie Colbert, an op-ed columnist. “Why go through this Kabuki theater of overriding the parliamentarian to then have a COVID relief package that’s now in danger?”
That hasn’t stopped left-wing Dems from complaining about the White House’s decision.
During a podcast interview, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who has never spent a day as a U.S. senator, said the administration was using “selective institutionalism” in reaching its decision.
“Suddenly, we care about deference to Congress, and deference to rules, and deference to the parliamentarian about minimum wage, and we don’t have that same deference when it comes to bombing in the Middle East?” he complained. “I don’t think that people feel we have fought hard enough to get this through.”