Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of treasury, is being criticized for opposing an increase of the federal minimum wage at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.
Bessent was being questioned by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who noted to Bessent that the federal minimum wage has not been increased from its current rate of $7.25 per hour since 2009.
“You don’t think we should change the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?” Sanders asked.
Bessent replied, “No, sir.”
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Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, quickly responded, writing, “Wrong. Working people deserve a raise. Raise the minimum wage.”
The last time that legislation was passed to raise the federal wage was the 2007 Fair Minimum Wage Act. That law incrementally increased the wage from $5.15 in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009, as Sanders stated.
Since then, no laws have increased the federal minimum wage. In the meantime, due to inflation, the real value of the minimum wage has gone down. According to a 2019 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would eventually increase wages for more than 33.5 million people across the country, including over 6 million people living in poverty.
According to his financial disclosures, Bessent, a hedge fund manager who donated to Trump’s campaign, is a billionaire. That is the norm among the figures whom Trump has nominated to serve in his Cabinet and who are among his closest advisors.
The average publicly known net worth of Trump’s team is $67.7 billion as of early December, compared to the roughly $1.06 million net worth of the average American family.
Despite their extraordinary wealth, key Trump allies, like billionaire Elon Musk (the richest person in the world, worth over $427 billion), have pushed for cuts to the social safety net that millions rely on. These same people, and especially Trump, favor keeping in place tax cuts that disproportionately help billionaires and large corporations.
Those tax cuts historically have been little to no help for people making minimum wage.
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