By: Dominic Rushe; The Guardian
US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.
As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.
Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations? They declined to appear.
The senators heard from low-wage workers from McDonald’s and Walmart. Terence Wise, a McDonald’s employee from Kansas City, Missouri, said his low pay had led to his family becoming homeless.
“My family has been homeless despite two incomes. We’ve endured freezing temperatures in our purple minivan. I’d see my daughter’s eyes wide open, tossing and turning, in the back seat. Try waking up in the morning and getting ready for work and school in a parking lot with your family of five,” said Wise.
“That’s something a parent can never forget and a memory you can never take away from your children. You should never have multiple jobs in the United States and nowhere to sleep.”
Sanders cited a government accountability office (GAO) report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year.
Walmart spent $8.3bn on stock buybacks in 2017, the Walton family, the chain’s founders, are worth over $200bn and have increased their wealth by $50bn since the start of the pandemic, said Sanders. And yet the company “cannot afford to pay its workers at least $15 an hour”.
“If Walmart thinks they’re going to avoid answering that question because they’re not here today, they’re deeply mistaken. The American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the wealthiest family in America,” said Sanders.
The hearing comes at a tense moment for minimum wage advocates. Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour from its current level of $7.25. The proposal is part of his $1.9tn Covid stimulus package.
But that package faces stiff opposition from in the Senate with the Republican minority set to vote against it and some Democrats opposing the wage rise.
A recent Congressional Budget Office concluded 27 million Americans would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage to $15, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty. But the CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years. The Economic Policy Institute, and others, have called the report “wrong, and inappropriately inflated”.
Republican Senator Mike Bruin told the hearing that an increase would be unfair on states with a lower cost of living and would hurt small businesses.
“We need to slow it down,” he said. “The main result is you are going to hurt Main Street,” he said.
