New Bill to Raise Minimum Wage

Legislation to Help Workers, Local Businesses

U.S. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) has introduced legislation, H.R. 5368, which would raise the minimum wage and provide tax relief for small businesses. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and to the Committee on Education and the Workforce for consideration.

English’s bill approaches the issue of the minimum wage from two broad angles: 1) Raise the minimum wage for workers; 2) Expand tax relief for small businesses. Workers earning the current minimum wage of $5.15 per hour would see an increase over four years to $7.50 and by increasing the earning limit, workers receiving Social Security disability payments would be able to continue receiving those benefits. In the tax portion of the legislation, English proposes to increase and make permanent full small business expensing of equipment, reform the home office deduction, and exempt the welfare-to-work and work opportunity tax credits from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

English was an original sponsor of the 1996 Quinn-Riggs-English amendment to raise the minimum wage to $5.15.

For additional information:

* http://www.house.gov/list/press/pa03_english/mw.html
* http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:68:./temp/~bdPIFf::|/bss/d109query.html|