Posted on 10/16/2026 8:00:43 AM PDT by DFG
It’s been 17 years since the federal minimum wage was raised, though that could soon change if U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, has his way.
The junior senator from the Grand Canyon State rolled out his plan to bankroll the first wage increase since 2009, with his 32-page “Saving the Middle Class and Restoring the American Dream” middle-class jobs plan coming out this week. Gallego is proposing to raise the minimum wage gradually in phases starting in 2027. By 2030, the wage would be $20 an hour. The current rate is $7.25 under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
But critics warn the wage hike could end up in losses of jobs in a world where customers are already placing their orders at kiosks at McDonald's.
According to an estimate from a conservative nonprofit research organization, the Employment Policies Institute, Gallego’s plan would cut 2.3 million jobs nationally. The institute noted California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $20 fast food minimum wage, which the Legislature passed, cost the state thousands of jobs. The state's minimum wage for other jobs is $16.90 an hour, although the wage is higher for certain healthcare workers. The minimum wage in the city of Los Angeles rose on July 1 to $18.42 an hour.
Gallego is arguing that people need to earn at least $20 an hour to meet the growing cost of living. His plan projects that raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour would raise Arizonans’ annual wages by just over $2,400.
While Gallego’s team did not make the Phoenix native available for an interview with The Center Square before deadline, he did discuss it on NBC News over the weekend.
“I always felt like, you know, if I put 40 hours’ worth of honest work together, I would have enough to support my family, and then feel comfortable enough to go to a movie,” he told NBC News. “That’s not happening anymore, and so that’s the most important focus of this plan.”
Gallego’s plan has drawn an immediate reaction from the state he represents in the nation’s capital.
Among those is Danny Seiden, CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
During an interview with The Center Square, Seiden said Gallego’s plan, which would also impose a 10% excise tax on data center gross receipts and end all tax deductions for data centers to pay for the raise, is misguided.
“I think the market is much better suited to do this than a politician in Washington, D.C.,” Seiden told The Center Square. “And I think the market would tell you there's actually been labor shortages, and they're way above minimum wage. There are all kinds of special signing bonuses paid trying to get these workers trained."
Gallego’s proposal also has drawn heavy skepticism from people like Jon Riches, vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix.
Riches told The Center Square that attempts to raise the minimum wage typically have the opposite effect on workers, driving up unemployment rates and depreciating wages in the long run.
Others, such as Mike Huckins of the Greater Phoenix Chamber, see Gallego's proposal as well-intended but ultimately fruitless. He told The Center Square the senator's plan would do more harm than good.
“We can raise living standards without closing the door on entry-level workers, because they're the ones that are most likely going to get hurt by those kinds of policies,” said Huckins, the chamber's senior vice president of public affairs and information technology operations. “So, we think the better path better path on this is to improve skills, improve housing, improve childcare - all those things that right now are a little bit of a barrier to getting people to work and to advancing their careers.
Growing union membership
Another key part of Gallego’s plan is to triple union membership by 2035 by automatically certifying a union with more than 50% of workers who have signed authorization cards and expanding opportunities for entering union career fields.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Arizona’s unionized employee rate (4.1%) was the tied with Idaho for the sixth lowest rate nationally in 2025, ahead of Utah (3.8%), South Carolina (2.7%), Arkansas (2.8%) North Carolina (2.5%) and South Dakota (2.3% each).
Longtime economics scholars, such as Kelvin Wong, a clinical associate professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, understand where Gallego's proposal is coming from.
Still, even with Arizona's unionized labor force near the bottom of the pack nationally, analysts such as Wong believe that such a decision could lead to a wave of unintended consequences.
"From an economics standpoint, the minimum wage kind of has trade-offs," Wong told The Center Square. "You have the fairness issue, where you are helpful to people that are earning low wages, and you can provide a better, living wage for them."
The trade-off is a loss of jobs, Wong said.
Where Arizona stands
Right now, Arizona’s $15.15 minimum wage ranks 10th nationally, more than double the federal standard, according to Common Sense Institute of Arizona’s 2026 Job Killers Report. That standard is tied to the Consumer Price Index, meaning the wage standards increase as inflation does.
Katie Ratlief, the institute's executive director, said the report’s findings make it clear that wage hikes hurt, more than help, the average worker.
“I think minimum wage issues in Arizona are often passed at the ballot box, and they pass because people want their neighbors and their kids and their friends to have jobs where they can make enough money to afford to live and achieve the American dream,” Ratlief told The Center Square. “That makes complete sense.
“The problem is when you're setting wage policy at the ballot box, or in this case, even worse, out of Washington, D.C., there will be collateral damage and that damage, generally, ends up being entry level workers, teenagers and people who are just trying to get on that first rung of the economic ladder," Ratlief said.
Economists like Wong see the appeal of using the bully pulpit as a way to drag salaries back in line with inflation, especially in an election year. He also cited the fact that roughly 1% of Arizona workers, per his estimate, are currently making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, meaning the impact might be intangible for most workers.
"I do think it makes sense for politicians to propose ways that kind of say, 'Hey, we're looking out for you, and here's how we're going to do that - by suggesting a raise in the federal minimum wage'," Wong said. "So, to me, it seems like a good strategy, and addressing that is a huge issue right now in this country."
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Gee, Ruben, that's nice. But why are you being so cheap? $20 is nothing for people who put in an honest day's work. The minimum wage should be $200 per hour. Then they could really support their families. They probably still couldn't go to a movie though.
LOL! Ruben knows what’s best for us though. /s
just make it $50/hr
IF I AM RUNNING A SMALL BUSINESS WITH 5 EMPLOYEES——
4 OF THOSE EMPLOYEES WILL HAVE A JOB NEXT WEEK & 1 WILL NOT...ETC ETC ETC
NOTHING LIKE A PERSON WHO HAS NEVER HAD TO ACTUALLY SIGN PAYROLL CHECKS TELLING ME HOW TO RUN MY BUSINESS.
How about reps punch a time clock and get paid $20 per hour for only the time they actually work.
> his 32-page “Saving the Middle Class and Restoring the American Dream” <
Come on, Senator Gallego. There is no mention in the title of fighting Climate Change or helping children. Do better next time, senator.
Or this being the last election to save Democracy from Dictator Trump. Don’t forget that too.
Anyone trying to pursue the American dream on a minimum wage job is delusional. The purpose of the minimum wage was for new entrants to the labor force, often inexperienced, young minority workers. If an increase goes into effect, employers are forced to cut costs, so they look for the worker whose absence would be least missed in the production process. This is often the inexperienced, young, minority workers. Since 1932, every increase in the minimum wage has seen unemployment increase for the very people it's suppose to help. Gallego needs a lesson in economics.
In 1970, min wage was $1.60 in SoAz where I grew up.
Today, he $1.60 pencils out to $13.56 - and this number depends on just what ‘inflation calculator’ you use.
Shadow stats -
How ShadowStats Inflation Tracking Works
• Official vs. Alternate Series: The official BLS calculator measures price changes using modern methodologies that incorporate substitution and hedonic (quality) adjustments. ShadowStats provides two alternate estimates:
• Pre-1990 Methodology: Reflects inflation calculated under the rules used prior to 1990.
• Pre-1980 Methodology: Reflects inflation calculated using pre-1980 concepts that tracked a fixed-weight cost-of-living basket.
• Cumulative Divergence: Methodological shifts implemented by the U.S. government over the decades (such as geometric weighting and quality adjustments) tend to lower reported official inflation relative to older fixed-basket calculations.
The FedGov has twaddled the numbers for so long - ‘inflation’ is what they want the number to be - one that makes them look ‘best’.
Illegal aliens do not necessarily get the minimum wage, or working conditions in compliance with labor laws generally.
The $20 federal minimum wage plan is a price support. Has nothing to do with being a "living wage".
The purpose pushing US citizens out of the low end of the labor market and onto welfare.
20 dollar/ hr wages lead to 20 dollar burritos and burger combos.
Another comie trash moron. Hint/tip: make sure you do like CaCaLand’s gov’na did, Newscum; make sure that you personally grant exemptions to those businesses that give you a donation. Panera did that and got out of the mandated monkey-skill salary demand that put thousands out of work.
The dude has never had a job in the private sector yet is trying to tell the private sector how to run a business.
The minimum wage needs to be raised. To say otherwise is plain ignorance. It’s a political issue that the right keeps flubbing. Just tie ME raise to SS COLA. That takes the politics out of it.
Adjusted for inflation, the 1974 MW of $1.65 would be $11.28 today. Taxes were lower then.
The problem with a federal minimum wage is that neither costs nor expenses are uniform across the country. Around here, probably the only folks getting paid the federal minimum are illegals.
Are hourly workers under paid and treated like crap? Yes. Is the solution almost tripling a federal minimum wage? No.
AZ Sen. Gallego’s $20 federal minimum wage plan draws criticism for potential impact
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
The post-17th Amendment (17A) ratification senator's proposal is a classic, constitutionally indefensible (imo) federal campaign gimmick to win election year votes imo.
More specifically, consider that evidently most post-17A ratification lawmakers discovered that they could promise voters who have evidently never really studied the fed's constitutionally limited powers every unconstitutional federal social spending and civil rights policy under the sun to get themselves elected. Constitutionally naïve voters eventually took the bait and elected these crooks, and then reelected them!
Then once in office, criminal-minded lawmakers immediately violate their oath to protect and defend the Constitution by simply fulfilling their campaign promises for unconstitutional federal policies like minimum wage.
In this case, the states have never expressly constitutionally given the big bad federal government the specific power to establish a national minimum wage.
In fact, not only does the term "minimum wage" not appear in the Constitution, but Justice Joseph Story had used "wages of labor" as an example of a power that the Commerce Clause does NOT give to Congress.
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people [emphasis added]."
"The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution [all emphases added]? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments [emphases added]." —Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2:§§ 1073--91
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
The Minimum Wage:
A lazy politician’s tool to shake down employers to keep taxpayer dollars flowing.
and boost inflation ...
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