Faced by Republicans in Congress who most of the time effectively check-mate his agenda, President Barack Obama will use an executive order to require that janitors, construction workers and other workers who work for federal contracts get a minimum $10,10 an hour. Obama will still press for action from Congress but he’ll use the executive order to get at least part of his plan in place.
In recent days, White House officials have stressed that Obama plans to use the phone and the pen during 2014 after a year in which most of his proposals fizzled as Republicans in Congress dug in their heels and used their power in the House in particular to halt his proposals. This use of the executive order will serve as a kind of template:
The order, which Mr. Obama will highlight in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday night, is meant to underscore an increasing willingness by the president to bypass Congress if lawmakers continue to resist his agenda, aides said. After a year in which most of his legislative priorities went nowhere, Mr. Obama is seeking ways to make progress despite a lack of cooperation on Capitol Hill.
The minimum wage plan provides an example of what he has in mind. Mr. Obama called on Congress during last year’s State of the Union address to raise the minimum wage for workers across the board, only to watch the proposal languish on Capitol Hill, where opponents argued it would hurt businesses and stifle job creation. With prospects for congressional action still slim, Mr. Obama is using the executive order covering federal contractors to go as far as he can on his own.
“You can be sure that the president fully intends to use his executive authority to use the unique powers of the office to make progress on economic opportunity, to make progress in the areas that he believes are so important to further economic growth and further job creation,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday.
But the minimum wage order will also illustrate the limits of that approach. If Congress increases the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25 as Mr. Obama has sought, 21 million employees will eventually get a raise unless their jobs are eliminated, according to estimates by a liberal research organization. Mr. Obama’s order will affect relatively few at first because it will apply only to new or renewed contracts, and even down the road at most it might affect several hundred thousand workers.
Even so, Mr. Obama’s vow to use his executive authority more robustly has drawn criticism from Republicans who say he has already stretched and, in some cases, exceeded the bounds of his power, much as he once accused President George W. Bush of doing.
So does the use of executive orders have an actual meaning in qualitative terms, or is it just for show? It can be argued either way, but it has an impact, even if limited. USA Today:
David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, said the announcement of the pay hike is “a good step going forward” but is limited in its reach.
“It’s not going to have the same impact that Congress increasing the federal minimum wage for all workers would have, and because it only applies to new contracts or contracts that are renegotiated, it may take a little while before current employees of federal contractors see the increase in their pay,” said Cooper, whose organization has been advocating for a minimum wage increase.
In a call with officials at the Economic Policy Institute on Monday night ahead of the announcement, a top economic adviser to the president — Jason Furman — told the group that the White House believes the executive action could impact roughly 250,000 people, according to Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at EPI.
While the order might be limited in its reach, supporters who have urged Obama to take executive action for low-paid federal contractors welcomed the news. The decision follows a push by liberal lawmakers on Obama to take action as well as a series of one-day strikes by fast food workers at the Pentagon and Smithsonian who called on Obama for a hike in wages.
Ed Kilgore notes that using an executive order does have a political benefit:
It won’t affect that many people, and can’t really be “costed out” at this point. But it will help build public momentum for an across-the-board minimum wage boost, and another occasion for conservatives to explain to us that we really need a lower minimum wage or none at all.
This is one of those subjects where public opinion is pretty resolutely on the side of Democrats. So using it to dramatize Republican obstruction while helping real live people earn a better living is precisely the kind of thing Obama should be doing tonight.
And, by many accounts, it sounds as if this will be just the opening salvo.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.