Steve Cortes, a veteran of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, has added it alongside conservative populist staples “border sovereignty” and “toughness in trade” as part of a three-pronged “American First economic nationalist agenda to lift wages.”
“Let’s embrace the $15-an-hour minimum wage,” Cortes announced in a video circulated throughout the Conservative Political Action Conference. “It makes economic sense, and it has been unchanged in this country since 2009. It is long past time for an increase."
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Cortes further brought up the idea’s popularity in a state that has grown crucial to Republican political fortunes, and which was also the site of CPAC, moved from Maryland's Washington suburbs because of the pandemic. A ballot initiative raising the minimum wage to this amount passed in Florida with 61% of the vote at the same time Trump was trimming out President Biden in the Sunshine State.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, all to varying degrees Trump allies, are up for reelection in Florida next year. The state’s other senator, Rick Scott, is chairing the National Republican Senatorial Committee to return the 50-50 chamber to GOP charge.
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Though there have been rumblings regarding this matter beyond Florida. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, offered a $15-an-hour minimum wage for firms with revenues of $1 billion or more. He would index this figure to the national median wage after 2025.
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"For decades, the wages of everyday, working Americans have remained stagnant while monopoly corporations have consolidated industry after industry, securing record profits for CEOs and investment bankers,” Hawley stated. “Mega-corporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it."
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Hawley has further presented legislation forming an advanceable tax credit connected to hours worked for workers being paid less than median wage by smaller businesses, calling the $200 billion plan the “Blue Collar Bonus.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who has increasingly attempted to place himself as a Trump-friendly populist, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican who represents a state the former president twice won by over 40 points, have joined with relative centrists such as Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rob Portman of Ohio to pair an increase in the federal minimum wage with stepped-up immigration enforcement.
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Their bill would only increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour, making it a nonstarter to most Democrats. Even Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia centrist who is the main Democratic opponent of $15 an hour, favors $11. Still, it could be the basis of some future compromise.
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