Poll: Bipartisan majority supports raising minimum wage
-
Significant majorities in both parties are in favor of raising the minimum wage and are supportive of a slew of other anti-poverty programs, according to a poll from University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the non-partisan group Voice of the People.
The survey could come as bad news for President Trump, who suggested slashing many of the programs in question in his 2018 budget proposal.
“Contrary to what we see in Congress, when Americans consider federal options for addressing poverty they find quite a lot of bipartisan common ground for taking action,” said PPC Director Steven Kull, who headed the survey. “There is a clear consensus that the federal government has a role to play in fighting poverty.”
The poll presented strong arguments for and against a slew of policies, and gauged how much support they had among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Seventy-four percent of respondents (including 58 percent of Republicans) said they backed boosting the minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour to $9 over the course of two years. But an increase to $10.10 over three years lost Republican support; only a third of Republicans liked the idea, despite an overall majority of 57 percent of respondents thinking it was a good idea.
But when it came to how the minimum wage is set, members of both parties and independents (63 percent) agreed that it would be better for Congress to simply tie the minimum wage to inflation, instead of revisiting it through new legislation every few years.
http://thehill.com/homenews/335837-poll-bipartisan-majority-supports-raising-minimum-wage