 So I can only speculate on what Joe Biden's true intentions are here I don't actually think that he wants to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour I think that he only made this promise on the campaign trail because if he didn't promised at least a $15 an hour minimum wage he wouldn't have been viable during the Democratic Party primary So I think he probably just said what he needed to say to advance But now you can tell that he's looking for any excuse he can possibly find to not fight for the $15 an hour minimum wage I mean even before the Senate parliamentarian made her recommendation He was already privately signaling to governors that he wasn't going to have the votes needed to pass the $15 an hour minimum wage But now since the Senate parliamentarian is saying we can't pass this using budget reconciliation He is basically throwing up his hands and saying well, that's it. I mean we tried but it's all over now folks My hands are tied the Senate parliamentarian an unelected person has spoken and this individual alone is Overriding me the president of the United States. It's just ridiculous And it's not a not an excuse that voters of the Democratic Party are going to accept come 2022 But thankfully there are individuals who are elected to Congress that are actually willing to fight One of them, of course is Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders who is pledging to force a vote on the $15 an hour minimum wage And he's saying we're gonna ignore the Senate parliamentarian So as Alexander Bolton of the Hill reports Sanders on Monday declared He would not back down on his signature wage initiative after Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough Ruled last week that a provision setting the minimum wage at $15 an hour would not be eligible under special budget rules Democrats are using to avoid a filibuster while passing their coronavirus relief bill My personal view is that the idea that we have a Senate staffer a high-ranking Senate staff for deciding whether 30 million Americans get a Pay raise or not is nonsensical We have got to make that decision not a staffer who's unelected So my own view is that we should ignore the rulings the decision of the parliamentarian Sanders told reporters Sanders said he will force a vote on an amendment raising the federal minimum wage this week And that right there is exactly what I want to see. I want to see leftist members of Congress Actually fight because to just accept that there's nothing left that can be done is Absolutely preposterous. I think that David Sturroda made a phenomenal point in a new article for the Daily Poster He said that these issues historically Whatever a president is choosing to focus on like that really determines whether or not that issue lives or dies Presidents alone can use their bully pulpit to elevate the salience of particular issues Determine how important that issue is so if Joe Biden doesn't think a federal minimum wage increase of $15 an hour is important He could just lose interest in it and that issue would die because the president is choosing to move away from that So we can't let that happen and that means you have to keep the pressure on but not just in the Senate and the house as Well, and I think that elected members of Congress in the house namely members of the squad newest members They are not backing down here and as Hannah Trudeau of the Daily Beast reports minutes after the Senate parliamentarian advised against keeping the proposed $15 minimum wage hike in the American Rescue Plan Key house Democrats formed a group chat over text message to discuss tactics for pressuring President Joe Biden to keep his crucial campaign pledge On Friday evening and into the weekend prominent progressives tick to cable news to criticize what they considered to be a bureaucratic hurdle To moving the country past stagnantly low wages Senator Bernie Sanders the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee told CNN's Anderson Cooper that the decision was upsetting Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on many Hassan's inaugural segment on MSNBC that they should override the parliamentarian Asserting that constituents and people across this country put Democrats in power to raise the baseline wage after a weekend of activity Ro Khanna sent a one-page letter with 22 Democrats early on Monday Including those involved in the text exchange and other top members like Ocasio-Cortez to Biden and vice president Kamala Harris calling on them to refute McDonald's Recommendation overruling the parliamentarian would go against long-standing Senate norms But it is not without precedent Khanna's letter cites a moment when in 1967 former vice president Hubert Humphrey Bucked the rules authorities guidance to reduce the filibuster threshold from two-thirds of those present to three-fifths Among other instances some progressives are now turning their attention specifically towards Harris to do so who could ultimately overturn McDonald's stance and this is exactly what I want to see and I think that focusing their attention on Kamala Harris Specifically is really important because Kamala Harris She's always tried to pretend as if she's more progressive than other corporate Democrats, but in actuality She's not she is someone who is a neoliberal corporate Democrat. She backed away from Medicare for all She has a history of jailing poor black and brown folks for not sending their kids to school or smoking weed So this individual if she truly wants anyone to think that she's actually a progressive and not a fraud Now is the time to put up or shut up Use the power that you have to override the Senate parliamentarian and if you don't act here You're telling us that you don't actually support a $15 an hour minimum wage You're telling us that when you run in 2024 or 2028 anything that you say is bullshit because whatever you run on That's just campaign promises that you will abandon the minute it becomes Politically expedient or convenient. You'll use any excuse imaginable. So keeping the pressure on them is Absolutely key in this moment because again if Joe Biden Chooses to give up on this issue then as the president what he says Usually goes so we can't let that happen We have to maintain pressure and we have to make sure that elected progressives do not stop fighting Because the minute they accept Joe Biden's lame excuses that oh, I can't pass this because the Senate parliamentarian said so That's when this issue dies. So progressives like Bernie Sanders and the squad They have to keep this alive and I'm glad that that's what they're doing