Senate Democrats will abandon plans to help raise workers‘ pay through tax penalties and other economic incentives that some lawmakers had considered as an alternative for hiking the federal minimum wage, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Some lawmakers last week floated a „plan B“ in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill that would have punished corporations that paid workers below a certain threshold.
Senators had floated the backup plan Thursday and Friday, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a proposed federal minimum wage increase to $15 per hour didn’t meet the requirements that Democrats must follow to pass the stimulus bill without Republican support.
The „plan B,“ championed by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have punished billion-dollar corporations that didn’t pay workers enough using various tax incentives.
Lawmakers were considering a variety of penalties, including a 5% levy on a big corporation’s total payroll if any workers earned less than $15 per hour.
The fate of the Biden administration’s first major legislation now rests in the Senate after the House passed its version of the bill early Saturday largely along party lines.
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