Cohen Highlights New Report Showing 60,000 Ninth District Citizens Will Get a Raise if Minimum Wage is Increased

[MEMPHIS, TN] – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today highlighted a new report from Oxfam America showing that an estimated 60,000 citizens in the Ninth District will get a raise if Congress increases the national minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. The esteemed international relief and development organization’s new report also showed that roughly 548,000 Tennesseans, about 22% of the state’s workforce, stand to benefit from an increased national minimum wage.

“Throughout my career, I have always fought to ensure that hard-working Memphians can earn a living wage and won’t have to struggle to provide for themselves and their families,” said Congressman Cohen. “No one who works hard and plays by the rules should have to raise their family in poverty. When I came to Congress in 2007, I was proud to vote for an increase in the federal minimum wage, but since then the cost of basic necessities has risen and the minimum wage has become less valuable. I am disappointed that Republicans continue to block a vote to increase the minimum wage and give 60,000 Ninth District residents a much-deserved and long-overdue raise.”

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would give at least 25 million hard-working Americans – including six million working moms – a raise, lift as many as six million people out of poverty, and infuse more than $32 billion into our national economy. Businesses like Gap and Costco have already embraced paying a higher minimum wage because it strengthens their bottom line, yielding more productive employees, less turnover, and more customers who have more money to spend. More than 600 economists, including seven Nobel Prize winners, have also endorsed an increase in the minimum wage.

Even though a strong majority of Americans (65%) support raising the minimum wage, Republicans in Congress are blocking action in both the Senate and the House. The Fair Minimum Wage Act (H.R. 1010) was introduced by Rep. George Miller on March 6, 2013, and has 195 cosponsors, but House Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to bring the bill to a vote. That is why Congressman Cohen joined 194 of his colleagues in signing a discharge petition to force action on this widely supported legislation. The discharge petition will require the House to consider the legislation, which would increase the minimum wage over three years from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour and index the minimum wage to the inflation rate, once a majority of Members of Congress (218) have signed the petition.