Minimum Wage
The Parliamentarian of the Senate decreed this week that the incredibly arcane, confusing, and understood by seven persons not currently working in the Senate rules prohibit including the “raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour” portion of the COVID relief bill that is in and of itself, an effort to get around the incredibly arcane, confusing and understood by seven persons rules. This is how the Senate operates; rules, norms, and practices that are revered and respected. It makes a conservative smile to think of a place that reveres precedent. Don’t look for President Biden to take to Twitter or wherever else he takes to, to protest this decision. He’s a man of the Senate and he respects it.
He leads a party though—much like the other one—that is increasingly hostage to its base, and the liberal base of the Democratic Party is NOT HAPPY with having to achieve a national minimum wage change through the Senate process that includes the filibuster. Interestingly enough, they give away the entirety of their case when party panjandrums (Sanders, Wyden) vow to pass an amendment that would “penalize” “large corporations” that fail to pay the $15 minimum. Why not penalize all corporations that don’t pay the minimum? Well, because they know that while the higher wage will lift the incomes of some, it will drive the average wage above what the market will bear in many localities, and jobs will be cut. Additionally, large corporations are generally happy to pay this increased wage, as it helps squeeze smaller competition. Put another way, the minimum wage is harmful to small businesses, and even large businesses employing people in less competitive wage markets.
Speaking of the Senate…
I had a gentlemanly spar on Twitter recently with a friend of mine who is decidedly anti-Senate (he was in a bit of a dander over confirming Biden appointees), in that he (and others) feel that there is something terrible and anti-democratic and terrible about the fact that the forty million residents of California have the same representation as the residents of Wyoming who number 1.5% thereof. He made some noise about “equal representation under the law” and “one person one vote”.
The thing is, the Senate IS anti-democratic. By design. That is its purpose. Or was its original purpose, when the Founders vested the selection of Senators in the state legislatures, because the Senate was going to be where the states had their say in things (the 17th Amendment ended this to direct election as we have today, the worst Amendment ever except for Prohibition). The House, large and garrulous, was to be the chamber where democracy was closest to the people (though it was far from direct democracy). In that body, California’s “power” is 53 times that of Wyoming's, as membership is apportioned to population.
When I brought up the founding and how the Senate being as it is was—you know—sort of RIGHT THERE IN THE CONSTITUTION—he informed me that it wasn’t the way James Madison wanted things. Well, I’m no Constitutional scholar, but my understanding of the way things played out in Philadelphia that hot summer of 1787 is that there were a bunch of dudes from the various colonies there, some thinking they were there to make a few alterations to the Articles of Confederation and some (like Madison) who thought they were there to remake the whole Republic. They all had ideas and views and they hammered them out and they came up with a document and said “take it or leave it” and the states ratified it (after they said , “well, ok, we’ll amend it right away”). So while Madison was a wonderful genius of political science and a Tier 1 Founder—that he didn’t get his way is….irrelevant.
Well then my interlocutor went on to throw some shade on that Philly House Party by reminding me that their wisdom (or lack thereof) was demonstrated by their having had the inhumanity to consider slaves to be 3/5 of a person! This one is always interesting, because the math isn’t always obvious. First of all, the South, the ones holding the slaves in servitude, were the ones who wanted slaves counted as full people. Had the Northern colonies acceded to this, the southern states would then have enjoyed 40% MORE POWER (representation) in the House of Representatives (you remember the House, right, the chamber that is better than the Senate because it is more democratic). While it may strike the modern, tender ear as off kilter to say, the position of the Northern colonies—that slaves shouldn’t count in population AT ALL— was the more humane position, in that it would have DECREMENTED southern power (also known as “slave power”) in the lower chamber by 60%.
Not that any of this really matters though, as without such a compromise, there would not have been a Constitution. Same goes for the Senate, the place where the little guys (NJ, DE, CT etc) gained an equal (with the big boys) voice. No Senate, No Constitution, No Union. That simple.