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minimum wage
Senate-Passed No Tax on Tips Bill a 'Distraction From the Real Fight'
"We cannot tax-break our way out of an economy that continues to pay people less than it costs to live," said the group One Fair Wage.
May 21, 2025
After the U.S. Senate on Wednesday unexpectedly passed a bill that would exempt some tips from federal income tax, one labor group that campaigns for raising wages warned that while the bill would offer moderate relief to some Americans, it does not address the poverty wages facing many in the service sector—a message the group has hit on in the past.
"For all the bipartisan celebration, this bill is a distraction from the real fight," said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, in a statement on Wednesday. "If Democrats want to offer a true alternative, they need to say it loud and clear: it's time to raise the minimum wage and end the subminimum wage once and for all."
The bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday, the No Tax on Tips Act, would establish a new federal tax deduction of up to $25,000 for cash tips reported to employers by employees for the purposes of withholding payroll taxes. Qualified cash tips include "any cash tip received by an individual in the course of such individual's employment in an occupation which traditionally and customarily received tips on or before December 31, 2023," according to the bill text. Employees who made more than $160,000 in the prior tax year are not able to claim the deduction.
Currently, for tax purposes, tips are treated the same as regular wages. The bill was cosponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and was passed by unanimous vote. It will now go to the House.
The idea of getting rid of federal taxes on tipped wages was touted by U.S. President Trump on the campaign trail and then-presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris also embraced the idea.
An analysis published last year by Yale's Budget Lab found that a "meaningful share" of tipped workers already pay nothing in federal income tax and that tipped work is a very small slice of the labor market.
Less than 4% of workers in the bottom half of hourly wage jobs, people making below $25 an hour in 2023, are in tipped jobs. Thirty seven percent of tipped workers in 2022 made so little that they paid zero in federal income tax before factoring in credits, according to Yale's analysis, and for non-tipped occupations, the equivalent share was much smaller—only 16%.
A report from One Fair Wage released last summer found that the annual income of tipped restaurant workers was so low that 46% of them do not earn enough to pay income taxes based on their individual income.
According to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in addition to helping relatively few workers, exempting taxes on tips could potentially undercut pay for many more workers, would encourage tax avoidance, and would reduce pressure on employers to increase base pay, among other concerns.
According to One Fair Wage, the true relief from the country's affordability crisis will come through raising wages, not through "tax gimmicks."
"We cannot tax-break our way out of an economy that continues to pay people less than it costs to live," the group added.
EPI also calls ending taxation on tips "a distraction from proven methods for supporting low-wage workers, like raising the minimum wage and eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers."
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The GOP Hates You and Wants You to Have a Harder Life
Having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor to maintain high profits requires widespread poverty, ignorance, death, and disease. So their policy agenda is built around creating that.
May 15, 2025
Republicans in the House of Representatives voted out of committee early Wednesday morning legislation that would strip as many as 14 million Americans of their Medicaid-based healthcare, including millions of seniors in nursing homes and children living in poverty.
Ironically, red states will be hit harder by this than blue states, as they’re generally less capable of making up the loss of federal funds (Medicaid is administered at the state level with block grants from the feds).
Which provokes some serious head-scratching among the pundit class: Why would Republicans kneecap their own people? Do they really think they can get away with it, just to fund tax breaks for Elon, Mark, Jeff, and Donald? And, for that matter, why is it that red states are so vulnerable to this GOP perfidy?
Republicans are more than willing to tolerate massive, desperate levels of human suffering to make sure there’s a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, they intentionally run their states that way to produce those results.
One of the enduring mysteries of America is why the citizens of red states are generally poorer, less educated, and sicker than the citizens of blue states. To that question, I step up as your hierophant with an answer to this deep mystery that you may not have previously considered.
First, that generalization is broadly true:
- Blue states account for about 71% of America’s GDP, whereas red states only produce 29% of our income and wealth.
- The median family income in blue states is $74,243. In red states it’s $63,553. Individual states highlight the disparity: New Jersey’s median income is $89,703, while Mississippi’s is $49,111.
- Counties that voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 are more diverse, being 35% nonwhite compared to 16% nonwhite populations in counties that voted for President Donald Trump.
- Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are better educated, with 36% of their population having some college education compared to Trump’s counties at 25%.
- Residents of blue states live 2.2 years longer, on average, than residents of red states.
And, second, it’s undeniably true (and documented with each hotlink below) that Republican-controlled red states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:
- Spousal abuse
- Obesity
- Smoking
- Teen pregnancy
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Abortion (at least before Dobbs; now it would be “forced births”)
- Bankruptcies and poverty
- Homicide and suicide
- Infant mortality
- Maternal mortality
- Forcible rape
- Robbery and aggravated assault
- Dropouts from high school
- Divorce
- Contaminated air and water
- Opiate addiction and deaths
- Unskilled workers
- Parasitic infections
- Income and wealth inequality
- Covid-19 deaths and unvaccinated people
- Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)
- People on welfare
- Child poverty
- Homelessness
- Spousal murder
- Unemployment
- Deaths from auto accidents
- People living on disability
- Gun deaths
But are all these things happening because Republicans simply hate their citizens and explicitly want high levels of poverty, ignorance, death, and disease?
Turns out there’s a much simpler answer.
The problem for red states is that Republicans worship cheap labor, because it drives up profits for the fat cats who own American businesses—and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor to maintain high profits requires widespread poverty, ignorance, death, and disease.
That poverty, of course, brings along with it the long list of social ills above, but Republicans are more than willing to tolerate massive, desperate levels of human suffering to make sure there’s a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, they intentionally run their states that way to produce those results.
If you have any doubts about this, if that sounds like hyperbole, simply look at the policies the GOP has promoted for the past century:
- Republicans hate unions, because unions raise wages and benefits for workers, shifting them from poverty into the middle class. Once thus empowered, those uppity middle-class people then start to demand “unreasonable” things like overtime pay (Project 2025 would functionally end it), healthcare, paid vacations, paid sick leave, and paid family leave.
- Republicans hate Social Security and have worked to gut, privatize, or outright end it ever since FDR signed it into law in 1935. They do this because elderly workers in poverty are a great source of compliant, cheap labor. Former President Ronald Reagan’s changes in Social Security benefits have led to millions of Boomers having to take gigs as greeters, waiters, etc., for low wages; prior to Reagan’s changes in the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) and his raising the retirement age to 67, you could safely retire on Social Security in most parts of America at 65. Now, Republicans want to raise that age to 69 or 70.
- Republicans hate universal or inexpensive healthcare (and real Medicare for the elderly) because having massive medical debt provides a large pool of desperate workers willing to work crappy jobs for pathetic wages to pay it off. It’s why the 10 states that refuse to expand Medicaid for low-income workers are all Republican-controlled. Medical debt is a non-issue in every other developed country in the world, but here in America 79 million people are struggling to pay off doctors’ or hospital bills (7 million of those debtors are elderly, many the victims of the Medicare Advantage scam).
- Republicans hate the minimum wage because it cuts into profits. That’s why the minimum wage in blue states can be more than twice that of red states (Washington State is $17 per hour versus Texas’ $7.25 per hour). When most families are barely earning enough to get by, employers have their pick of distraught, panicked workers willing to work for subsistence wages.
- Republicans hate empowered women because forced pregnancies create more potential workers and unwanted children exacerbate poverty. Thus their 50+ years of opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and their embrace of abortion bans.
- Republicans promote hatred of racial, religious, and gender minorities because when Americans are at each other’s throats they’re not organizing to throw off the GOP-corporate yoke. It’s hard to remember that the billionaires have stolen fully $50 trillion from the middle class over the past 44 years of the Reagan Revolution when you’re constantly distracted with hysteria about Black Haitians, Brown Mexicans, and trans students who just want to use the damn bathroom.
- Republicans hate education because it’s the main tool for people to lift themselves out of poverty and thus demand higher wages and better benefits. Before the Reagan Revolution, every American who wanted to and could pass the entrance exams could go to college; many universities (like the entire University of California system) were free, and you could pay your tuition at most other colleges like I did in the 1960s working weekends as a dishwasher at Bob’s Big Boy in East Lansing, Michigan and pumping gas at the Esso station across the street. This is also why so many red states are gutting their public education systems with private school vouchers. Less education, more poverty; more poverty, more cheap labor.
- Republicans hate atheism and embrace a neofascist form of Protestant Christianity and a bizarre, right-wing version of Catholicism that goes by a Latin name because both are hierarchical and male-dominated, just like corporate culture. It’s why the Confederacy was explicitly Christian. “Don’t worry about how much you’re paid, boy, or bother organizing into a union; just keep picking that cotton and you’ll get your reward in heaven when you die.” After all, according to the Bible your fate was preordained “before the foundation of the world,” as was that of your boss, who must have been selected for particular grace by God or he wouldn’t be so rich.
- Republicans hate food stamps, housing supports, aid to women and dependent children, and every other form of what they call “welfare” because these programs slightly reduce the desperation of people who might otherwise be easily forced to work for a pittance.
- Republicans hate environmental protections because they cut into profits; who cares if the lack of them creates things like the “Cancer Alley”—which hits children particularly hard—that runs through Texas and Louisiana?
- Republicans hate unemployment insurance because it reduces the privation people can experience when they lose a job. It’s why all the blue states offer at least 26 weeks of benefits, but red states often radically reduce that (Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky; 12 weeks; Alabama: 14 weeks; Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri: 16 weeks).
So, the next time somebody asks why Republican policies so often hurt their own people, just tell them, “It’s all because of the cheap-labor Republicans and their loyalty to their greedy billionaire owners.”
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Progressives Mark Mother's Day With Calls to 'Honor Our Moms With Action'
"Today on Mother's Day, let's remember every mother deserves a livable wage, affordable childcare, paid family leave, and the ability to retire with dignity," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
May 11, 2025
As the Republicans who narrowly control both chambers of Congress plot cuts to programs that serve the working-class to pay for tax giveaways to the wealthy, progressive lawmakers on Sunday marked Mother's Day by renewing calls for policies that would improve the lives of U.S. families.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), founder of the Congressional Mamas' Caucus, said in a video shared to social media that "this Mother's Day, we're gonna fight to protect Medicaid, we're gonna fight for childcare, and we're gonna fight to make sure that our children have access to clean water."
Other representatives featured in the video also pledged to fight for federal programs, including Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income individuals; Head Start, which provides early childhood education and programming for working-class parents; and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps.
President Donald Trump's administration recently reversed course on Head Start cuts by leaving them out of the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget—at least for now—but, as USA Todaynoted earlier this month, "other preschool and after-school programs may be in jeopardy as the Republican-controlled Congress wrestles over the federal budget this summer."
As part of that budget battle, GOP lawmakers are targeting programs including SNAP and Medicaid. In a U.S. House of Representatives floor speech, Tlaib declared that "too often, mothers are left behind in this chamber."
"In the richest country in the world," the mother-of-two argued, "no mother should worry about feeding her children or affording basic care. Ending child poverty is a policy choice. I introduced the End Child Poverty Act to provide universal child benefit for every child in our country and cut child poverty by 60%. Paid leave, affordable childcare, and universal school meals should be guaranteed, not privileges."
Tlaib also noted the Black Maternal Health Caucus' Momnibus Act, a bill she co-sponsors that aims to address the nation's maternal health crisis, and a new Mamas' Caucus campaign to battle GOP efforts to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid. She said that "this Mother's Day, I'm asking all of you to not only thank our mothers, but do it with action as we recommit to fighting for the dignity and health of every mother in our nation."
Like Tlaib, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) used Mother's Day to recognize the U.S. maternal health crisis.
"As we honor our mothers, we must also recognize that too many are being failed by a system that should protect them," he said on social media. "In the U.S., Black women are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, regardless of income or education. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. Over 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable. This is unacceptable."
"We will continue fighting for mothers today, tomorrow, and every day for their right to safe, dignified care, bodily autonomy, compassionate treatment, and healthy equity in America," Jackson added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Sunday advocated for his Child Care for America Act, which aims to make childcare $10 per day for families but raise the pay floor for industry workers to $24 an hour.
Khanna, Jackson, and Tlaib have all backed the fight for Medicare for All—and the related bill for that was reintroduced late last month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
"Today on Mother's Day, let's remember every mother deserves a livable wage, affordable childcare, paid family leave, and the ability to retire with dignity," Sanders said Sunday. "America must become a nation which treats all mothers and their kids with the respect and dignity they deserve."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) honored her own mom on Mother's Day by resharing, in a series of social media posts, the story about how she supported their family by securing a minimum wage job.
"After my daddy had a heart attack, he couldn't work for a while. Bills piled up. We lost our family station wagon. It looked like the house would be next to go. At night, I'd overhear my parents talk, and that's when I learned words like 'mortgage' and 'foreclosure,'" she recalled. "One day, I walked into my parents' bedroom. My mother's face was red and puffy. A dress was laid out over the bedspread—the dress that only came out for weddings, graduations, and funerals."
"'We are not going to lose this house,' she kept saying. 'We are not going to lose this house.' She'd never worked outside the home. She was terrified," Warren continued. "But she knew what she had to do. I watched her put that dress on, put on her high heels, and blow her nose. She walked to Sears. She got a minimum wage job. And that minimum wage job saved our house and saved our family."
"Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour—a wage that has not increased in over 15 years. With that, a family living on minimum wage is living in poverty."
The senator said that "this story is written on my heart. I'm remembering my mother's courage this Mother's Day. I'm thinking about all the mamas out there fighting for their families. And I'm thinking about all the ways the deck is stacked against mothers and families today. A mother today would not be able to work a minimum wage job and keep everyone afloat. Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour—a wage that has not increased in over 15 years. With that, a family living on minimum wage is living in poverty."
"And, without quality, affordable childcare, mothers have been shoved out of the workforce," she noted. "They will feel the consequences—in lost earnings, in lower Social Security benefits—for the rest of their lives. And, notably, most women who get abortions today are already mothers. Many are working multiple jobs that don't pay enough to support their children. Abortion bans make it even harder for those families to make ends meet."
While GOP policymakers are working to restrict reproductive freedom and cut safety net programs, Warren made her priorities clear: "I'm working to give every mother and every family a fighting chance—and I'm in this fight all the way."
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