The serious people keep using that word. But I do not think it means what they think it means.
Enter Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way, a former Democrat, with what he calls a “grand compromise.”
Miloscia dropped a bill Tuesday, SB 6029, that would scrap local authority to raise the minimum wage — meaning it would nix Seattle’s $15 per hour minimum wage approved last year. Instead, Miloscia’s proposal would index the wage to both urban inflation and personal income growth.
So, um, how exactly is this a “compromise,” grand or otherwise? God I hate it when politicians speak to us like they think we’re morons.
Miloscia and his crowd have already lost the minimum wage debate. Seattle has passed a $15 minimum wage, and polls consistently show that voters overwhelmingly support Democratic efforts to raise the state minimum wage to $12 an hour. In fact, polls show that voters are willing to go much higher—and public support spikes again when we add in paid sick leave! So Miloscia’s proposal that we give all these gains away in exchange for just tweaking the index by which the state minimum wage is already annually adjusted, well, from our perspective, that sounds a lot more like a capitulation than a compromise.
But in the spirit of Miloscia’s creative interpretation of the word, I’d like to respond with a counter offer: How about, if the legislature refuses to raise the state minimum wage to $12 in 2015, we “compromise” by going to the ballot with a measure that raises it to $16 in 2016? Because what Miloscia, his fellow Republicans, and WA’s business establishment need to start wrapping their minds around is that $12 is the compromise. We could get much more than that at polls. So don’t say we didn’t warn you.