From wesa.fm / Associated Press
Every year after Pennsylvania’s governor makes his budget pitch to the House and Senate, lawmakers hold weeks of budget hearings with state departments and agencies to get a sense of the way money is being spent, and what should change.
They kicked off this week with the Independent Fiscal Office, which is tasked with issuing reports on state finances.
Over the two hours IFO officers sat before the House Appropriations Committee Monday, one subject kept coming up: the minimum wage.
Governor Tom Wolf wants to raise the wage from $7.25 an hour to $12, and then gradually up to $15.
Fellow Democrats, like House Appropriations Minority Chair Matt Bradford, largely agree.
He called the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum “simply unacceptable,” and a “poverty wage” that is “not commensurate with the dignity that work should come with.”
The majority chair thought the opposite.
“Minimum wage jobs are jobs that you’re only supposed to stay in temporarily, and move on,” Republican Stan Saylor said.
He added, “Minimum wage is not a real job to sustain a family…it is not a place we expect American citizens or Pennsylvania citizens to be sitting at for the rest of their life. And if you are, you’re not being aggressive enough at getting the job training dollars we have out there and moving forward.”
The IFO has estimated that a gradual increase to a $12-an-hour minimum wage would eventually do away with about 30,000 jobs statewide. Director Matthew Knittel said that number would likely be higher if the wage was raised all at once, as Wolf wants […]