Pelosi commits to minimum-wage hike, but without a timetable
WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will try again to pass a hike in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour but offered no timetable or strategy for getting it through the Senate, where it faces opposition from some Democrats as well as Republicans.
“We will persist with the minimum wage,” Pelosi said at a news conference Thursday.
But afterward, she indicated there wasn’t yet a clear path forward. “We’ll see how we go,” she told reporters. “We’ll take it one measure at a time,” she said. “We have to raise it.”
An attempt to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2025 as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill fell short in the Senate last week, when eight Democratic caucus members voted against waiving Senate rules to include the provision in the package.
Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Tom Carper and Chris Coons as well as independent Angus King voted against including the provision.
Manchin later predicted that some sort of deal with Republicans can be struck. He has advocated raising the wage to $11 per hour. A group of Republicans led by Utah’s Mitt Romney and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has floated a plan to gradually raise the rate to $10 per hour, but it would require all businesses to verify the immigration status of their workers.
Progressives in Pelosi’s caucus said they felt able to vote for the stimulus bill on Wednesday in part because they were promised that the fight to raise the minimum wage would continue.
The House passed a stand-alone minimum wage increase in 2019, and President Joe Biden urged Congress to send him a bill after the measure was stripped from the COVID-19 package. The Democrats’ proposal would also raise the tipped wage and youth wage.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, a member of the progressive caucus, said Thursday that Democrats could try to attach a minimum-wage increase to the annual defense-policy bill, which is considered must-pass legislation. But House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith said he had not heard of the idea and wouldn’t commit to the tactic.
Pelosi, asked whether she would attach a wage hike to a spending bill needed to keep the government open after Oct. 1, said she didn’t yet know.
— Bloomberg News
Office of Congressional Ethics sees cases dip amid coronavirus pandemic
WASHINGTON — The Office of Congressional Ethics sent seven referrals of alleged lawmaker misconduct to the House Ethics Committee for the 116th Congress, the lowest number since it began undertaking investigations in 2009.
The dip from 2019 to the very beginning of 2021 is directly attributable to the coronavirus pandemic, according to several people with knowledge of the operation. Investigations the OCE sends to the House Ethics Committee have oscillated since the 111th Congress, when it sent 22. In the 114th Congress there were 18 referrals, and 11 in the 115th Congress.
Over the course of the two-year span, the independent nonpartisan entity referred matters involving Reps. Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., D-Ga., Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., and Del. Michael F.Q. San Nicolas, among others.
The OCE said Bishop used taxpayer money for Christmas parties and used campaign funds for greens fees at country clubs, golf gear and school tuition.
Palazzo, according to the OCE, used campaign money to fix up an investment property for its sale, had his congressional staff run personal errands and tried to use his position of power to get his brother, Kyle, reenlisted in the Navy.
San Nicolas, the OCE says, misused campaign funds and accepted improper contributions. Further, a former staffer, John Paul Manuel, has alleged San Nicolas had a sexual relationship with Jennifer Winn, a subordinate on his congressional staff.
The OCE does not have the authority to issue sanctions and all of the above matters have yet be adjudicated by the House Ethics Committee, a panel known for engaging in a drawn-out process and meting out light punishment.
Of the investigations conducted by the OCE in the 116th Congress, the highest percentage of the cases involved activities on matters of personal interest (20%) followed by official allowances and campaign activity (both at 18%). Travel, at 16%, was the next highest. Other matters involved outside employment and income (10%), gifts (8%) and financial disclosure (4%). Those numbers are similar to the breakdown from the 115th Congress.
— CQ-Roll Call
Rep. Jamaal Bowman calls out C-SPAN for confusing him with fellow Black congressman
Really, C-SPAN?
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., called out the public affairs network for misidentifying him as Rep. Mondaire Jones, a fellow New York Democrat, during a Wednesday debate in the House of Representatives. Both congressmen are Black.
“I’ve got love for @RepMondaire but I’m Rep. Jamaal Bowman,” Bowman tweeted. “I’m here to do my job, @cspan. Please, do yours.”
His post included a screenshot of C-SPAN’s live feed of the debate over the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package.
The screenshot shows Bowman, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester, being identified as Jones, whose districts covers a swath of mostly suburban areas north of Bowman’s.
Jones returned the favor by praising Bowman as an “exemplary public servant.”
“I am not, in fact, Congressman Bowman,” he tweeted.
C-SPAN apologized for the mix-up, but appeared to avoid taking direct responsibility.
“Mistakes were clearly made. Sincere apologies to both representatives,” the nonprofit network’s media office tweeted in response to Bowman’s post.
— New York Daily News
UN pressure on Ethiopia ramps up as humanitarian crisis deepens
The Biden administration’s new envoy to the United Nations is seeking to dial up the pressure on countries like Ethiopia and Yemen to end their conflicts as growing humanitarian crises in the midst of a global pandemic push millions to the brink of starvation.
The U.S., which holds the presidency of the Security Council this month, was joined by Ireland and other council members in pressing Ethiopia’s government to end a war that’s been raging in its northern Tigray region, warning that vast numbers of displaced people run the risk of starvation.
“Fighting in the Tigray region over the past four months has driven innocent citizens to the brink. Food stocks are depleted. Acute malnutrition is rising,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said at a council meeting on Thursday. “We cannot allow this situation to deteriorate further.”
The U.S. ambassador has made humanitarian crises a key part of her focus at the U.N., but deadlock in the Security Council has impeded meaningful action from Ethiopia to Syria to Myanmar. Diplomats have so far failed to negotiate a council statement calling to end the violence in Ethiopia because of objections from China, Russia and India to a statement drafted by Ireland.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for $5.5 billion in funding to avert catastrophe for 34 million people around the world facing food insecurity.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered an incursion into Tigray on Nov. 3 after regional forces attacked a federal military camp in the region, the culmination of months of tension between the national government and provincial authorities. While Abiy declared victory on Nov. 28, fighting has persisted
— Bloomberg News
