WASHINGTON – A Democratic senator introduced a bill Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage to $20 per hour by 2029, setting a new benchmark for progressives hoping to hike the wage floor.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) told HuffPost he believes President Donald Trump’s populist talk on economic issues could provide an opening for real negotiations, even though most Republicans have resisted an increase for the past 15 years. Democrats, he said, should at least be “throwing it out there.”
“You’re seeing a lot of kind of populist moves by this president that sometimes we could end up finding ourselves in alignment,” Gallego said. “Who knows, maybe there is an opportunity for us to have some movement.”
It’s a fitting for Gallego to stake out a bold position on the minimum wage — he ran for Senate partly in response to his predecessor, former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), voting against a $15 per hour minimum wage with a thumbs-down flourish in 2021.
Unless Trump were to embrace a higher minimum wage this year, there’s no chance the Republican-controlled House or Senate would approve one. Congress hasn’t passed legislation to raise the federal minimum wage since 2007, under then-President George W. Bush. Former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden pushed for increases but were stymied by GOP opposition.
The federal minimum wage remains just $7.25 per hour – the salary equivalent of $15,000 per year – and prevails in any state that doesn’t mandate a higher one. Higher state-based minimum wages and inflation in recent years have decreased the relevance of the federal floor, with only about 1.1% of workers making the federal minimum in 2024, the last year for which data is available.
Gallego said it’s smart to stake out an aggressive position on the minimum wage not only to attract voters concerned about affordability, but to make sure Democrats are ready to act if they control Congress next year.
“We’re going to be in a better situation as a country, I think, next year, potentially even with us now taking back the Senate,” he said. “And if that’s the case, then this should be one of our core tenets as a caucus.”
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Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and dozens of Democrats co-sponsored legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour. With his proposal for a $20 wage floor, Gallego has seemingly leapfrogged the leading progressive in Congress.
As for Trump, he has already shattered Republican orthodoxy on free trade, and in an effort to respond to affordability concerns, he’s pushed for looser monetary policy and a cap on credit card interest rates. But he hasn’t shown much interest in the minimum wage during his second term, except to lower it for federal contractors. He has flip-flopped repeatedly on the issue over the years, at times signaling openness to raising it, only to reverse himself.
“Well, I would leave it and raise it somewhat,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly in 2016, contradicting himself in the very same sentence.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Gallego is one of the many Democratic officeholders trying to stand out at a time when there’s no clear standard-bearer for the party ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Gallego declined to say if he’s running for president.
“What we are focused on between now and 2026 is making sure that we’re putting the Democrats on the right path for victory,” he said. “We can’t lose sight of why we lost the [2024] election. We are out of alignment [with] where the voters are. Voters care about standard of living, cost of living, immigration, immigration enforcement, border security.”
