Letters to My Congressman (6)

It’s December and that means it’s time to celebrate the holidays. I have a feeling that the 1% and the rich corporations will be celebrating wildly this year, thanks in part to the generous tax breaks you gave them when you voted for the 1.5 trillion dollar tax giveaway. Let’s take a quick look at a big slice of the American financial pie, the banks, to see how well the bankers will celebrate. JPMorgan, the biggest US bank by assets, reported third-quarter profit of $8.4 billion, 24.5 percent jump from the year-ago period. Citigroup reported an 11.8 percent rise in profits to $4.6 billion. Wells Fargo reported third-quarter profit of $6.0 billion, a gain of 32.2 percent from the year-ago period. I can hear the champagne corks popping as lookalikes from Monopoly’s rich Uncle Pennybags celebrate in bank board rooms all over the country. I hope they remembered to send you hefty campaign contributions to reward you for your generosity.

But let’s turn to another portion of the American economy, the working poor who toil at the minimum wage of a mere $7. 25 an hour. What have you done for them lately? Let me remind you that the last time the federal minimum wage was raised was on July 24, 2009. That’s almost 10 years ago. Isn’t it high time to give them a raise, especially since income inequality has worsened so much during the last 30 years? I know they won’t be able to give you hefty campaign contributions, but aren’t you supposed to be representing them as well? A recent study revealed that 90,392 Bucks County residents would benefit from a raise of the minimum wage to $15 an hour, thereby pumping $359 million dollars into our local economy. What should be embarrassing to you is that all our neighboring states (Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware , New Jersey, and New York) have raised the minimum wage. But the many Pennsylvanians you represent languish behind the rest of their neighbors and have to work for these ten year old truly slave wages.

Have you even taken the time to contact your Pennsylvania State Legislators to encourage them to do the right thing for those in need? I think your fellow Republican leaders in Harrisburg need a heavy dose of holiday empathy. Maybe you can find it in your heart this month to provide it to them? Ask them at least to raise the wage in Pennsylvania if you lack the ability to convince your fellow Congressional Republicans to do the right thing and raise the federal wage for all Americans.

But your refusal to bring up the issue of raising the minimum wage really doesn’t surprise me since you do belong to the Koch brother funded Republican Party which has consistently and systematically attacked the organized labor movement for years. If unions are weakened and representatives like you are bought by corporate donors to do nothing for the working poor, what chance do the working poor ever have of earning a living wage? Slim to none. So the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Ebenezer Scrooge would be so proud.

Yes, billionaires got tax breaks from the Republican Congress this year, while the working poor got nothing except maybe the gift of looking for that second or third job to make ends meet. For the truth is that if the minimum wage in 1968 had kept up with labor's productivity growth, it would have reached $19.33 in 2017. But I guess since the working poor don’t give big campaign contributions, it’s okay for their representatives to let them each year sink deeper and deeper into poverty.

I hope during this holiday season you are enjoying your six figure salary which the taxpayers so generously give you each year to represent all constituents no matter what the size of their bank account is. The freedom of economic worry that this salary provides to you should then give you plenty of time to contemplate what you have done this year to improve the lot of thousands of working poor. They sadly won’t be having such a happy holiday this year as they struggle with the social injustice of low wages under your Republican Party’s plutocratic leadership.

Happy holidays for all? Not yet, that’s just a dream some of us still have.