If Congress won’t act on jobs and the economy, President Obama promises that he will—a message he’s expected to push in Tuesday’s State of the Union. The problem is, there’s not much the president can do his own.
In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama will announce his intention to issue an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10.
President Obama plans to sign an executive order requiring that janitors, construction workers and others working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10 an hour, using his own power to enact a more limited version of a policy that he has yet to push through Congress.
After a year of strikes and protests there’s a victory for many federal workers demanding that their government to pay them a living wage. President Obama in tonight’s State of the Union address will announce plans to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. The action affects workers currently earning less and will apply to new federal contracts.
Low-wage, federally-contracted janitors and construction workers will have a new minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, under an executive order announced by the White House Tuesday. Advocates said the full scope of the order, which will be formally announced during tonight’s State of the Union address, remains unclear, but could include hundreds of thousands of employees under future federal contracts. [...]
President Obama's promised executive order to raise the minimum wage for some government contract workers would likely affect less than half a million people and may face legal challenge.
What Obama is hoping is that his relatively narrow move will spur Congress to follow suit for all low-wage workers in the country.
During his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will announce plans to issue an executive order giving a raise to low-wage workers on new federal contracts, a move that affects thousands of people in the Washington area, the White House says.
If Congress won't raise the federal minimum wage, you can. At least for people who work for companies that get federal contracts, subcontracts and grants.
So says a group of liberals in the House and Senate who want President Obama to sign an executive order requiring federal agencies to give preference in awarding contracts to companies that pay workers no less than $10.10 an hour. [...]
One way to think about politics today is that we have a bunch of public servants making chump change who spend an inordinate amounts of time hanging out with rich people, their noses pushed up against the window of an affluent lifestyle that they can't afford. Bad things happen in this situation.
"Relative mobility" measures how a child’s ranking in the income distribution compares to her parents'. “Absolute mobility” measures how your income compares with your parent’s income.
What I learned from an Al-Jazeera America news segment last night: 16- and 17-year-olds in North Carolina could be arrested and charged as adults, in one of just two states in the nation where this is law.
WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, in a letter to President Obama, leaders for nonprofit voting rights organizations Demos and Project Vote alerted the White House that the application process for benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) currently violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
In the letter, the groups urge the Obama Administration to take immediate steps to bring federally facilitated health benefits exchanges (FFEs) into compliance with federal law.
"I really enjoyed my time at Oberlin and I felt like I was learning, but I wasn't progressing towards a job at the end of graduation," said Ned Lindau, a 2011 graduate from Oberlin College in Ohio. He noted that his liberal arts education focused on students exploring subjects that they were interested in learning, not the practicality of a job after college.
New Legislation Is Important Step Forward; Bill Can Be Strengthened
Representatives James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), John Conyers (D-MI), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Bobby Scott (D-VA), Spenser Bachus (R-AL), John Lewis (D-GA), Sean Duffy (R-WI) and others have introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, offering common sense fixes designed to modernize the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Demos President Miles Rapoport issued the following statement in response:
Could Massachusetts become the next state to enact Election Day Registration? If today’s passage by the Commonwealth’s Senate chamber of omnibus voting bill S.1975 serves as indication, it very well could.
Here’s some welcome news. At his meeting with Democratic Senators last night, President Obama indicated that he is giving serious consideration to executive action designed to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors, according to one Senator who was present.