Thomas Richard Carper is an American politician and former military officer serving as the senior United States senator from Delaware, having held the seat since 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, Carper served in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1993 and was the 71st governor of Delaware from 1993 to 2001.
John Elmer Linder is an American politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 2011. His district was numbered the 4th from 1993 to 1997, the 11th from 1997 to 2003, and the 7th from 2003 until 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Thomas Hodge Allen is an American author and former politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives representing Maine's 1st congressional district, and the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2008 against Republican incumbent senator Susan Collins. Allen lost to Collins.
Payroll taxes are taxes imposed on employers or employees, and are usually calculated as a percentage of the salaries that employers pay their employees. By law, some payroll taxes are the responsibility of the employee and others fall on the employer, but almost all economists agree that the true economic incidence of a payroll tax is unaffected by this distinction, and falls largely or entirely on workers in the form of lower wages. Because payroll taxes fall exclusively on wages and not on returns to financial or physical investments, payroll taxes may contribute to underinvestment in human capital, such as higher education.
A payroll is a list of employees of a company who are entitled to receive compensation as well as other work benefits, as well as the amounts that each should obtain. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks performed, payroll can also refer to a company's records of payments that were previously made to employees, including salaries and wages, bonuses, and withheld taxes, or the company's department that deals with compensation. A company may handle all aspects of the payroll process in-house or can outsource aspects to a payroll processing company.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is a congressional caucus affiliated with the Democratic Party in the United States Congress. The CPC represents the most left-leaning faction of the Democratic Party. It was founded in 1991 and has grown since then, becoming the largest Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 is a US Act of Congress that amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to gradually raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. It was signed into law on May 25, 2007 as part of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007. The act raised the federal minimum wage in 3 increments: to $5.85 per hour 60 days after enactment, to $6.55 per hour a year later, and finally to $7.25 per hour two years later. In addition, the act provided for the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa to make the transition to the federal minimum wage on alternate timetables.
Mark Hamilton Schauer is an American politician who served as a U.S. representative for Michigan's 7th congressional district from 2009 to 2011.
In the United States, the minimum wage is set by U.S. labor law and a range of state and local laws. The first federal minimum wage was instituted in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but later found to be unconstitutional. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act established it at $0.25 an hour. Its purchasing power peaked in 1968, at $1.60 In 2009, it was increased to $7.25 per hour, and has not been increased since.
Travis Wayne Childers is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for Mississippi's 1st congressional district from 2008 to 2011. The district included much of the northern portion of the state including New Albany, Columbus, Oxford, Southaven, and Tupelo. A member of the Democratic Party, Childers previously served as Chancery Clerk of Prentiss County from 1992 until his election to Congress. On March 1, 2014, Childers announced that he was running for the United States Senate. He won his party's nomination for the Senate seat in the Democratic primary on June 3. He lost the general election to Republican incumbent Thad Cochran.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 29 U.S.C. § 203 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The Act was enacted by the 75th Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938.
Froilan Cruz "Lang" Tenorio was a Northern Mariana Islander politician who was the fourth governor of the Northern Mariana Islands. Elected in 1993, he served one term from January 10, 1994 to January 12, 1998. During his governorship and most of his political career, Tenorio was a member of the Democratic Party of the Northern Mariana Islands, which was not then affiliated with the American Democratic Party. However, he later switched his affiliation to the Reform Party, a party he founded. Froilan Tenorio would later switch back to the Democrat in 2005 and then to the Covenant Party in 2009.
The economic policy of the Barack Obama administration, or in its colloquial portmanteau form "Obamanomics", was characterized by moderate tax increases on higher income Americans designed to fund health care reform, reduce the federal budget deficit, and decrease income inequality. President Obama's first term (2009–2013) included measures designed to address the Great Recession and subprime mortgage crisis, which began in 2007. These included a major stimulus package, banking regulation, and comprehensive healthcare reform. As the economy improved and job creation continued during his second term (2013–2017), the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire for the highest income taxpayers and a spending sequester (cap) was implemented, to further reduce the deficit back to typical historical levels. The number of persons without health insurance was reduced by 20 million, reaching a record low level as a percent of the population. By the end of his second term, the number of persons with jobs, real median household income, stock market, and real household net worth were all at record levels, while the unemployment rate was well below historical average.
The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, also known as the 2010 Tax Relief Act, was passed by the United States Congress on December 16, 2010, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010.
The Fight for $15 is an American political movement advocating for the minimum wage to be raised to USD$15 per hour. The federal minimum wage was last set at $7.25 per hour in 2009. The movement has involved strikes by child care, home healthcare, airport, gas station, convenience store, and fast food workers for increased wages and the right to form a labor union. The "Fight for $15" movement started in 2012, in response to workers' inability to cover their costs on such a low salary, as well as the stressful work conditions of many of the service jobs which pay the minimum wage.
Shenna Lee Bellows is an American politician and a non-profit executive director, best known for her work with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She is the 50th Maine secretary of state. On December 2, 2020, the Maine Legislature elected her to be Maine secretary of state. She is executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine.
The Minimum Wage Fairness Act is a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) to increase the federal minimum wage for employees to $10.10 per hour over the course of a two-year period. The bill was strongly supported by President Barack Obama and many of the Democratic Senators, but strongly opposed by Republicans in the Senate and House.
Maine Question 4, formally An Act to Raise the Minimum Wage, is a citizen-initiated referendum question that appeared on the Maine November 8, 2016 statewide ballot. It sought to increase Maine's minimum wage from $7.50 per hour to $12 an hour by 2020, as well as increasing the minimum wage for tipped employees gradually to the same level by 2024. It would also index increases after 2024 to inflation. As the Maine Legislature and Governor Paul LePage declined to enact the proposal as written, it appeared on the ballot along with elections for President of the United States, Maine's two U.S. House seats, the Legislature, other statewide ballot questions, and various local elections. Efforts to place a competing, more moderate proposal alongside the citizen-initiated bill were unsuccessful.
The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or Heroes Act, was proposed legislation acting as a $3 trillion stimulus package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, intended to supplement the earlier CARES Act stimulus package. The bill for this Act of Congress was proposed by Representative Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, on May 12, 2020, and was passed by the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 208–199 on May 15, 2020.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, also called the COVID-19 Stimulus Package or American Rescue Plan, is a US$1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by the 117th United States Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021, to speed up the country's recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession. First proposed on January 14, 2021, the package builds upon many of the measures in the CARES Act from March 2020 and in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, from December.
