Iowa Gets a Raise: Guv Gets Birthday Gift

by Mike Hall, Jan 27, 2007

This is how you start your tenure as governor. In Des Moines on Thursday, newly elected Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D) signed his very first bill—a minimum wage increase. The bill, which was backed by unions and community and religious, groups raises the Hawkeye state’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 in two steps.

Some 260,000 Iowans are expected to see their pay grow because of the new wage floor, says Culver—who signed the bill on his birthday:

This is a real improvement in the quality of life for many Iowans…and this is quite a birthday present…I can’t think of a better gift.

Not only was the wage increase Culver’s first signing action, the bill was the first piece of legislation passed by the state Senate and House since voters handed control of the legislature to Democrats in November.

Along with winning strong bipartisan support in the legislature—119 of 150 legislators voted for it—the wage hike is  broadly backed by the general public. According to a Des Moines Register poll, 61 percent of the state’s Republicans, 84 percent of independents and 90 percent of Democrats are behind the wage increase.

While Republicans in the U.S. Senate continue to delay and obstruct action to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $5.15 an hour for a decade, voters and state legislatures around the country are—like Iowa—moving on their own to raise state minimum wages. (Click here, here and here for a rundown of the latest  obstructionist tactics in the Senate.)

Raising the minimum wage was one of the core issues that drove voters to the polls in the fall elections. Voters in six states approved minimum wage ballot initiatives, while defeating scores of state and congressional candidates with long records of opposing minimum wage hikes. Not only did that result in new majorities in several state legislatures and new occupants in governors’ offices; it also ended a dozen years of Republican control of Congress.

U.S. House members in both parties heard the public’s call to raise the minimum wage and overwhelmingly voted for the increase in the first 100 hours of the new Congress. But Republican Senate leaders not only killed the clean, no-strings-attached House bill that does not give businesses and corporations more tax breaks, 28 Republican senators voted this week to repeal the minimum wage.

The strident opposition to raising the minimum wage, unless it’s larded up with billions in tax breaks and giveaways to business, is just bizarre. Thursday, in his kindest comments about the Republican minimum wage roadblockers, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said:

What is it about it [a minimum wage increase] that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? 

If any of you out there have the answer to Kennedy’s question, let us know. Click here.

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