One of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in the Senate is teaming up with Democrats to try to raise the federal minimum wage.
Sen. Josh Hawley is introducing legislation to more than double the minimum wage to $15 per hour, CBS News reported. Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Peter Welch has signed on as a co-sponsor.
The current rate of $7.25 per hour has been in effect since 2009. About 30 states plus Washington, D.C., have higher minimum wages ranging from $8.75 to $17.50, according to the Department of Labor.
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Hawley’s “Higher Wages for American Workers Act” would raise the minimum hourly rate in 38 states starting in 2026 and would provide additional increases in subsequent years to match inflation, according to CBS. His office told the Daily Beast that it is high time for U.S. wages to increase.
“For decades, working Americans have seen their wages flatline,” it said in a statement. “One major culprit of this is the failure of the federal minimum wage to keep up with the economic reality facing hard-working Americans every day. This bipartisan legislation would ensure that workers across America benefit from higher wages.”
The bill pits Hawley against his fellow Republicans, who have long opposed federal minimum wage increases because they increase costs for businesses. Progressive lawmakers pushed for such a policy aggressively during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t manage to pass it.
Earlier this year, Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order that required federal contractors to be paid at least $17.75 per hour. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said during his Senate confirmation hearings that he opposed raising the federal minimum wage and preferred to leave the issue up to the states.
Hawley has nevertheless been trying—so far unsuccessfully—to convince his party to take a more populist approach as working-class voters have embraced Trump.
He has raised the alarm over cuts to Medicaid in the president’s “big beautiful” budget bill that are projected to cause millions of people to lose their health care coverage, and introduced legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in February that would cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent.
Republican lawmakers have nevertheless gone full steam ahead with the Medicaid cuts, with the budget bill passing the House of Representatives on May 22 by just one vote. The Senate is now considering the legislation.
The Republican-led Congress also voted to overturn a Biden-era rule that would have limited bank overdraft fees to $5.
