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    Yellen Warns Jobs Will be Slow to Rebound Without Stimulus

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationCalifornia Anti-Vaccine ProtestsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyCovid-19 News: South Africa Halts Use of AstraZeneca VaccineYellen Warns Jobs Will be Slow to Rebound Without StimulusFeb. 7, 2021, 12:02 p.m. ETFeb. 7, 2021, 12:02 p.m. ETEmpty storefronts in Manhattan last month. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is urging lawmakers to pass a sizable coronavirus aid package for the sake of the economy.Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York TimesThe U.S. labor market is stalling and in a “deep hole” that could take years to escape if lawmakers do not quickly pass an aid package that gives workers a bridge to the end of the pandemic, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned on Sunday.By contrast, passing the $1.9 trillion package that President Biden has proposed could allow the economy to reach full employment by next year, Ms. Yellen said.She rebutted concerns that big spending would lead to inflation, and said that the economy would be stuck in the kind of long, slow recovery that followed the 2008 financial crisis if lawmakers do too little now.“The most important risk is that we leave workers and communities scarred by the pandemic and the economic toll that it’s taken,” Ms. Yellen said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” “We have to make sure this doesn’t take a permanent toll on their lives.”Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, argued in The Washington Post on Thursday that Mr. Biden’s proposal was so big that it might overheat the economy. But Ms. Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair, said on CNN that she had spent years studying inflation and that she was confident that policymakers had the tools to deal with it if it were to materialize.Democrats in Congress moved last week to fast-track Mr. Biden’s plan, but the details of the legislation are still being worked out. Ms. Yellen said it was important to ensure that not just low-income workers but also those in the middle class, like teachers and police officers, receive the additional support they need.“Of course it shouldn’t go to very well-off families that don’t need the funds,” Ms. Yellen said on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” adding that Mr. Biden was discussing with Congress where to set the income ceiling for eligibility.After a pandemic aid package passes, Ms. Yellen said, Mr. Biden wants to pass a jobs bill built around infrastructure investment, worker training and addressing climate change.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Jobs Crisis Is Broader Than It Seemed

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyUpshotSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Jobs Crisis Is Broader Than It SeemedJanuary employment numbers suggest a stalling of progress toward a full recovery.Feb. 5, 2021Updated 1:09 p.m. ETCustomers at a taco restaurant in Manhattan this week. The past year has been brutal for the hospitality industry, but the most recent job figures suggest it’s far from the only sector suffering.Credit…Carlo Allegri/ReutersTo understand what is important about the new employment numbers released Friday, imagine two different varieties of economic downturn.In one, a handful of industries experience a near-shutdown for reasons beyond anyone’s control, driving millions of people out of their jobs. But most other industries carry on unfazed.In another, a broad contraction in spending causes job losses across the economy. The story is not so much about one or two industries being devastated, but lots of them experiencing moderate pain.Both would involve a lot of human suffering, and both would justify government help to the people affected. But they would have strikingly different implications for specific government action.In the first case, you would want very carefully targeted help to enable the people affected to stay on their feet until their industry can reopen. In the second, you would just want to pump money into the economy, to stimulate overall demand for goods and services.In the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic, we saw both types of downturns. Travel-related industries were most affected and experienced the worst job losses, and the pain was sufficiently widespread that there was a generalized crisis of inadequate demand.But as the year progressed, that changed. The federal government injected trillions of dollars into the economy, and the Federal Reserve’s actions to support the financial system generated a rally in markets. Industries that were less directly affected by the pandemic figured out how to get up and running safely. And there was a veritable boom in people who bought stuff — durable goods, to be precise, like furniture and exercise equipment — spending some of the money they couldn’t spend on services like restaurant meals.By the end of 2020, you could tell a story in which workers at hotels, airlines, restaurants and performance arenas desperately needed a hand, but most of the rest of the economy seemed comfortably on a path back to full health.The January employment numbers, however, undermine that story. They suggest a stalling, and in some areas a reversal, of progress toward a full recovery even in the segments of the economy not directly affected.There’s plenty of pain to be found in the leisure and hospitality sector, of course — it lost 61,000 additional jobs on top of a revised 536,000 lost in December. This is a brutal winter for the workers in restaurants, hotels and live entertainment venues. But if that were the extent of the pain, generous unemployment checks to the people affected might be enough to solve the problem. After all, we know what it will take to get those industries back to health: widespread vaccination and an easing of public health fears.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    January 2021 Jobs Report: Outlook for Economic Recovery Dims

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAnemic Jobs Report Reaffirms Pandemic’s Grip on EconomyWith a gain of 49,000 jobs in January, and with few of those in the private sector, the labor market offers little relief to the nearly 10 million Americans who are unemployed. More

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    Toll Worker Job Losses Highlight Long-Term Fallout of Pandemic

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyToll Worker Job Losses Highlight Long-Term Fallout of PandemicThe Pennsylvania Turnpike laid off workers to switch to labor-saving technology, in what might be a broader trend.John Mahalis lost his job when the Pennsylvania Turnpike shifted to machine toll collection during the pandemic. Policymakers worry that many workers may face a similar technology-driven fate.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesFeb. 4, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETJohn Mahalis of Philadelphia was two and a half months from his pension’s vesting when he learned that he would be permanently laid off from his job as a toll collector on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The news was a gut punch; Mr. Mahalis said it would leave him less able to financially weather retirement.“It came out of the blue,” said Mr. Mahalis, 65. He had worked for the turnpike for five years after 20 years of unemployment due to an injury he sustained as a dockworker. He had loved the work, especially interacting with customers, and earned good money: By taking as much overtime as he could get, he made about $53,000 a year, along with benefits.“It was the best thing I ever did,” he said. “I felt like a man again.”The job evaporated overnight when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, decided in June to move up its plan to lay off nearly 500 toll workers and replace them with electronic tolling. Dismissals planned for early 2022 instead went into effect immediately, a move that the commission said would help the system financially accommodate weaker traffic during the economic downturn.The United States may be witnessing the bleeding edge of a labor force shuffle that often occurs during recessions: Employers who have been forced to cut workers turn to existing or new technology to carry on with less labor. But this time the shift could be magnified by a wave of forced layoffs at the start of the pandemic and by the fact that demand in some cases came back before employees safely could.That has created a big incentive for employers to figure out how to produce more with fewer workers, powered by new technologies that allow for more automation.Layoffs have shifted from temporary to permanent as the pandemic has dragged on, and many workers have moved to the sidelines of the labor market as service jobs in particular — everything from conference centers and hotels to tollbooths — are downsized or streamlined. It is unclear how quickly workers facing firings will find new jobs that are good substitutes in terms of skills and salaries.“We’re learning that technology can replace people even more than we thought, and some of that is happening,” Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said at a news conference last week. “We’re still going to need to keep people in mind whose lives have been disrupted because they’ve lost the work that they did.”Technology adoption can lead to faster productivity growth — or at least a one-time bounce — that might improve the economy’s potential. But it can be difficult for laid-off workers to move into new jobs that pay as well and fit their qualifications.“This story isn’t new,” said Nela Richardson, the chief economist at ADP, the payroll-processing company. “There was always a question about what to do about those left behind by technology and globalization that was never answered.”The Pennsylvania Turnpike offers a stark example. Its workers knew that machines would eventually make them obsolete, but they thought they would have time to prepare.Faye Townsend, 50, was on a trial period at the turnpike’s administrative building, working a job that she hoped would lead to an even more secure one before the switch to cashless tolls. When the coronavirus crisis began, she was sent back to the road system but not allowed into the tollbooth. Instead, she and her colleagues spent worried days clocking in, sanitizing the building and waiting to learn whether and when they could return to collecting.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    John J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86As head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he embraced immigrants, women, minority groups and low-wage workers in an effort to reverse organized labor’s long decline.John J. Sweeney in 2005 after being re-elected president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Chicago. He was a force in helping Democrats, including Barack Obama, win elections.Credit…Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:10 p.m. ETJohn J. Sweeney, a New York union researcher who climbed to the pinnacle of the American labor movement in the 1990s, leading the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for 14 years through an era of fading union membership but rising political influence, died on Monday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 86.Carolyn Bobb, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. spokeswoman, confirmed the death. She did not specify the cause.As president, from 1995 to 2009, of the nation’s largest labor federation — 56 unions with 10 million members near the end of his tenure — Mr. Sweeney flexed labor’s political muscle with thousands of volunteers and helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. Over the years, he also helped elect Democrats to seats in Congress, to governorships and to state legislatures across the country.His tougher task, a quest to reinvigorate and diversify the faltering labor movement itself, had the weight of history pushing against him.For decades in the 20th century, labor had not welcomed women, African-Americans, Latinos or Asian-Americans, often engaging in blatantly discriminatory tactics to preserve the dominance of white men in the workplace. Substantial but uneven gains had been achieved since the civil rights era of the 1960s, when unions began removing “whites only” clauses from their constitutions and bylaws.But Mr. Sweeney, still facing lopsided demographics, plotted a sea change. He crusaded to bring women and minorities into the fold, often in leadership posts; made alliances with civil rights groups, students, college professors and the clergy; and championed low-wage workers, shifting away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s traditional emphasis on protecting the best-paid union jobs.Mr. Sweeney, center, after speaking at a union solidarity rally in Chicago in 2005. At right was his deputy, Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Behind him, at right, was his eventual successor, Richard L. Trumka. Credit…Brian Kersey/Associated PressIn Mr. Sweeney’s campaign for the federation presidency, his running mate, for the newly created post of executive vice president, was Linda Chavez-Thompson, a Texas sharecropper’s daughter. She was the first minority group member ever elected to organized labor’s top executive ranks.The 1995 balloting itself was unique: It was the first contested election in the history of the federation, which had been created in 1955 by a merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations after a long estrangement.A signature Sweeney initiative encouraged the recruitment of thousands of immigrants to his unions. Many members had long been hostile to undocumented workers, accusing them of stealing union jobs and dragging down wage scales. Mr. Sweeney rebuked such talk as discriminatory and called for justice that included better treatment for underpaid immigrants and a path to citizenship for those in the United States illegally.Critics contended that Mr. Sweeney’s policies were locked in a liberal past, deploying mid-20th century civil rights and blue-collar union strategies to organize 21st century workers with internet skills. Mr. Sweeney rejected that claim, just as he had rebuffed corporations that moved jobs overseas and denounced the hostilities that many young white-collar workers voiced toward old-line unions.In a labor movement that had been declining since 1979, when union membership peaked at 21 million, Mr. Sweeney prodded his constituent unions to greatly increase spending on organizing. He often said that his first priority was to reverse the long slide and substantially expand labor’s rank-and-file.Mr. Sweeney in 2005 at New York University in Manhattan during a protest by graduate assistants in a contract dispute. One of his priorities  was to expand labor’s rank-and-file.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesBut by 2009, when he stepped down, his vision of a dramatic unionization surge comparable to those of the late-Depression 1930s and the postwar ’40s had failed to materialize. In fact, overall union membership in America had fallen on his watch to about 12 percent from 15 percent of the workforce, a trend that has since continued, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.“Based on the optimism that supporters of the labor movement felt in 1995 when he was elected, I think it’s hard not to be disappointed with the results,” Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University, told The New York Times in 2009. “How much of that you can trace back to John Sweeney is a whole other question.”In a departing interview with The Times in his Washington office — looking across Lafayette Park to the White House, where he had conferred with President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and with Mr. Obama more recently — Mr. Sweeney spoke optimistically in the face of the Great Recession, which had been underway for more than a year and had already forced thousands of layoffs, further winnowing union ranks.“I think the recession is going to drive people to the conclusion that they can’t resolve their problems by themselves, and they have to look to organizing,” he said. And, noting that his father had been a unionized New York City bus driver, he drew a lesson from childhood.“Because of the union, my father got things like vacation days or a raise in wages,” he said. “But my mother, who worked as a domestic, had nobody. It taught me from a young age the difference between workers who are organized and workers who were by themselves.”Mr. Sweeney, left, was the incoming president of the Service Employees International Union in June 1980 when Senator Edward M. Kennedy (waving) spoke to its convention in New York. Mr. Kennedy was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. At right in the foreground was the outgoing union president, George Hardy.Credit…Associated PressJohn Joseph Sweeney was born in the Bronx on May 5, 1934, to James and Agnes Sweeney, Irish-Catholic immigrants whose struggles in America had shaped John’s social perceptions from an early age. The boy had accompanied his father to many union meetings, where he learned of class and workplace inequalities and of union efforts to improve wages and working conditions.He attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1952. Coming of age, he resolved to find a future in organized labor. He worked as a gravedigger and building porter (and joined his first union) to pay his way through Iona College, a Catholic school in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1956.He worked briefly as a clerk for IBM but took a sharp pay cut to become a researcher for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Manhattan. He met Thomas R. Donahue, a union rep for the Building Service Employees International Union, Local 32B, who persuaded him in 1960 to join his union as a contract director. Mr. Sweeney would face Mr. Donahue in a run for labor’s top job 35 years later.In 1962, Mr. Sweeney married Maureen Power, a schoolteacher. She survives him, along with their children, John Jr. and Patricia Sweeney; two sisters, Cathy Hammill and Peggy King; and a granddaughter.The building employees union was one of the most progressive of its day, representing 40,000 porters, doormen and maintenance workers in 5,000 commercial and residential buildings in New York City. Its contracts guaranteed pay raises, medical coverage, college scholarships for members’ children and requirements that employers hire and promote workers without regard to race, creed or color.Mr. Sweeney rose through the ranks, and in 1976 was elected president of Local 32B of the renamed Service Employees International Union. Soon his 45,000 members struck thousands of buildings for 17 days and won major wage and benefit increases. He later merged Local 32B with Local 32J, representing janitors, and in 1979 struck again for contract improvements.In 1980, he was elected president of the 625,000-member national S.E.I.U. and, moving his base to Washington, began merging with unions of public employees and workers in office jobs, health care and food services. He pushed for stronger federal laws for health and safety, and spent heavily to organize new members. By 1995, he represented 1.1 million union members and was a national power in the labor movement.Labor was at a crossroads. Years of rank-and-file frustration with Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 1979, boiled over in a revolt of union presidents in 1995. Mr. Kirkland, whose internationalist vision of labor had made him a hero to Poland’s Solidarity movement but had left him unmoved, even hostile, to proposed reforms for unions at home, was forced to resign.The 1995 election pitted Mr. Sweeney against Mr. Donahue, his old friend from Local 32B, who had risen to secretary-treasurer of the federation and was Mr. Kirkland’s heir apparent. But Mr. Donahue’s ties to Mr. Kirkland forced him to defend the status quo, and Mr. Sweeney’s progressive calls for growth and change won the presidency with 57 percent of the delegates, representing 7.2 million members.President Barack Obama presenting Mr. Sweeney with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010. Mr. Sweeney’s successor said, “John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Credit…Charles Dharapak/Associated PressHe was re-elected to four more terms of two to four years each, the last time in 2005, when he broke a pledge not to remain in office beyond age 70. He retired in 2009, at 75, and was succeeded by Richard L. Trumka, his longtime secretary-treasurer and a former president of the United Mine Workers.In a statement posted on the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s website on Monday, Mr. Trumka said of Mr. Sweeney: “He was guided into unionism by his Catholic faith, and not a single day passed by when he didn’t put the needs of working people first. John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Mr. Sweeney wrote a memoir, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: My Life in the American Labor Movement” (2017), and was the co-author of two books: “America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice” (1996, with David Kusnet) and “Solutions for the New Workforce: Policies for a New Social Contract” (1989, with Karen Nussbaum).In 2010, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. “He revitalized the American labor movement,” Mr. Obama said at a White House ceremony, “emphasizing union organizing and social justice, and was a powerful advocate for America’s workers.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Why Are There So Few Black Economists at the Fed?

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Jobs CrisisCurrent Unemployment RateWhen the Checks Run OutThe Economy in 9 ChartsThe First 6 MonthsJ. Monroe Gamble IV pushed for changes to the hiring process at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.Credit…Christopher Smith for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexWhy Are There So Few Black Economists at the Fed?Monroe Gamble became the San Francisco Fed’s first Black research assistant in 2018. His path shows why fixing a striking diversity shortfall will take commitment.J. Monroe Gamble IV pushed for changes to the hiring process at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.Credit…Christopher Smith for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — J. Monroe Gamble IV was the first Black research assistant to work at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He started in 2018.That one data point speaks to a broader reality: Even as America’s central bank dedicates research and attention to racial economic outcomes and publicly champions inclusion, it has had a poor record of building a work force that looks like the population it is meant to serve.Many parts of the Fed system, which includes the Federal Reserve Board in Washington and 12 regional banks, began to concentrate more intently on diversifying their heavily white economics staffs only within the last decade, prompted in part by the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which pushed the board to hire more broadly. When it comes to employing Black economists in particular, the central bank still falls short.Officials have often blamed the pipeline — Ph.D. economists are heavily white and Asian — but a New York Times analysis suggests the issue goes even beyond that. Black people are less represented within the Fed than in the field as a whole. Only two of the 417 economists, or 0.5 percent, on staff at the Fed’s board in Washington were Black, as of data the Fed provided last month. Black people make up 13 percent of America’s population and 3 to 4 percent of the U.S. citizens and permanent residents who graduate as Ph.D. economists each year.Practices that favor job candidates with similar life experiences and those from elite economics programs, which are often heavily white, have sometimes prevented diverse hiring, current and former employees said. A brash culture can make some parts of the central bank unwelcoming, which can lower retention. More

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    C.B.O. Report Says U.S. Economy Is Healing But Workers Have A Ways to Go

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyU.S. Economy Is Healing, but Budget Office Says Workers Have a Long Way to GoNew projections from the independent Congressional Budget Office fuel Republicans’ calls for “targeted” economic aid — and Democrats’ push to go big.Workers constructed an outdoor seating area for a restaurant in San Diego last week. While the new budget office report shows that the economy is recovering at a faster pace than expected, officials do not see unemployment falling to its pre-pandemic level by the end of the decade.Credit…Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 6:33 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The United States economy will return to its pre-pandemic size by the middle of this year, even if Congress does not approve any more federal money to aid the recovery, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday. But it will be years before everyone thrown off the job by the coronavirus is able to return to work.Those projections could further complicate President Biden’s ability to quickly pass a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, as moderate Republicans and even some left-leaning economists express concerns that too much new federal borrowing could overheat the economy.Still, Democrats worried about families putting food on the table and avoiding eviction or foreclosure as the pandemic continues to suppress economic activity are forging ahead with Mr. Biden’s more aggressive plans, introducing budget resolutions in the House and Senate on Monday that would allow legislation based on the president’s proposals to pass without Republican votes.Mr. Biden met late Monday with a group of 10 Republican senators who have drafted a $600 billion economic aid proposal of their own. It would scale back many of the president’s spending ambitions, like additional unemployment benefits and $1,400 direct payments to individuals, while scrapping other elements entirely, like his proposed aid to state and local governments to patch budget shortfalls.Mr. Biden, who spent three decades in the Senate, has welcomed discussions with Republicans but shown little willingness to significantly cut the cost of his plan. The budget office report on Monday offered some evidence to support his position, with figures suggesting that the economy could absorb substantial new federal assistance without stoking higher inflation or forcing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.Congressional Democrats and many liberal economists on Monday repeated their calls for lawmakers to act swiftly and aggressively to help the large swaths of Americans still struggling to recover, a message echoed by Mr. Biden’s aides.Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the budget office report was “not a measure of how each American family is doing and whether the American people are getting the assistance they need.” Mr. Biden, she said, “believes that the risk is not going too small, but not big enough.”The new projections from the office, which is nonpartisan and issues regular budgetary and economic forecasts, show the economy healing faster than the office’s forecasts over the summer suggested it would.Officials told reporters on Monday that the brightening outlook stemmed from large sectors of the economy adapting better and more rapidly to the pandemic than originally expected. It also reflected increased growth driven by a $900 billion economic aid package that Congress passed in December, which included $600 direct checks to individuals and more generous and longer-lasting benefits for the millions of people who are still unemployed.The budget office now expects the unemployment rate to fall to 5.3 percent at the end of the year, down from an 8.4 percent projection in July. The unemployment rate stood at 6.7 percent in December. The economy is expected to grow 3.7 percent for the year, after recording a much smaller contraction in 2020 than the budget office had expected.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Effort to Include $15 Minimum Wage in Relief Bill Poses Test for Democrats

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The New WashingtonLatest UpdatesExpanding Health CoverageBiden’s CabinetPandemic ResponseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEffort to Include $15 Minimum Wage in Relief Bill Poses Test for DemocratsThe measure will test their willingness and ability to use procedural maneuvers to shepherd big policy goals past entrenched Republican opposition in an evenly divided Senate.Senator Bernie Sanders is mounting an aggressive push for the minimum wage as he prepares to take control of the Senate Budget Committee.Credit…Pool photo by Graeme JenningsJan. 31, 2021, 7:04 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — As Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, prepares to take control of the Senate Budget Committee, he is mounting an aggressive campaign ahead of what will be one of his first tests as chairman: securing the support needed to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 in a pandemic relief package.Whether he succeeds will not only affect the jobs and wages of millions of American workers, but also help define the limits of Democrats’ willingness and ability to use procedural maneuvers to shepherd major policy proposals past entrenched Republican opposition in an evenly divided Senate.President Biden and top Democratic leaders have repeatedly said their first choice is to pass Mr. Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal with bipartisan support. But Republicans are already balking at the scope of the proposal, and raising the minimum wage to $15 is a particularly contentious part of the bill, a progressive priority that draws intense opposition from many Republicans.So Democrats are barreling toward using a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation to avoid the 60-vote threshold typically needed to overcome a filibuster and approve legislation. That would allow them to pass the measure with no Republican support and Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. Both chambers are expected to vote on a budget resolution — a measure that will formally direct committees in the House and the Senate to begin drafting the relief package, kicking off the reconciliation process — in the coming days.Mr. Sanders argued in an interview that Democrats clinched control of the White House and the Senate in part by promising sweeping policy changes and additional pandemic relief, and that not supporting the full legislation would betray their voters and undermine faith in the party’s governing.“If that is the case, if that is what we do, we will surely be a minority in two years,” Mr. Sanders said. “We have to keep the promises that we made.”But Republicans have said that failing to compromise would jeopardize future bipartisan negotiations for a president who has repeatedly called for unity, with a group of 10 Republican senators moving to unveil their own $600 billion proposal as early as Monday in an effort to negotiate with the administration.And the minimum wage poses a particularly polarizing test: Including it in the package would be an aggressive use of reconciliation, one some lawmakers fear will not be allowed by the Senate parliamentarian. That could force Democrats into even more contentious tactics if they want the minimum wage to pass, setting up a battle between a priority championed by liberals like Mr. Sanders and the further fraying of Senate norms.“Minimum wage is probably the most controversial of those proposals,” Mr. Sanders acknowledged. “I’m sure every Democratic senator will have some problem with some aspect of reconciliation, I do, others do — I am absolutely confident that people will support our new president and do everything we can to help the working families of this country.”Other lawmakers, including some Republicans, have argued that the pandemic relief package should be scaled down, with items like the minimum wage provision left for another legislative battle later in the year. Most House Republicans voted against a stand-alone minimum wage bill in 2019, pointing to a Congressional Budget Office report that estimated the provision would put an estimated 1.3 million Americans out of work. Senate Republicans, in control of the chamber, did not take it up.“That’s an agenda item for the administration, so be it,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, told reporters. “Should it be included as part of a Covid relief package? I think it takes the focus off the priority, which is what is the immediate need today.”“Hey,” she added, “you get the keys to the car now. And so let’s get some legislation done, but you don’t need to think that you need to get it all in one package.”Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, bluntly told reporters in January that “we’re not going to do a $15 minimum wage in it” and that Mr. Biden was better off reaching out to Capitol Hill and negotiating a compromise.Mr. Sanders and Democrats have argued that with jobless benefits set to begin expiring in mid-March, there is little time to win over their Republican counterparts, who embarked on similar reconciliation efforts in 2017 to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act and pass a sweeping tax overhaul.But to secure the first increase in the federal minimum wage since 2009, even under reconciliation Mr. Sanders and liberal Democrats can afford to lose little, if any, support from the rest of the caucus.Several lawmakers, including Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, have voiced skepticism that the minimum wage provision can prevail through the rules of the reconciliation process, which imposes strict parameters to prevent the process from being abused. Under the so-called Byrd Rule, Democrats cannot include any measure that affects the Social Security program, increases the deficit after a certain period of time set in the budget resolution or does not change revenues or spending.The decision on whether the provision can be included in the reconciliation package lies with the Senate parliamentarian. Ms. Harris could ultimately overrule the parliamentarian — something that has not been done since 1975 — and Mr. Sanders declined to say whether a rejection of the minimum wage provision would prompt Democrats to do so.“Our first task is to get the ruling of the parliamentarian,” he said. “That’s what I would like to see and that’s what we are focused on right now.”Some Democrats, including Mr. Yarmuth, have signed on instead to stand-alone legislation for the minimum wage increase as another avenue for approval, but one that would require Republican support. Cedric Richmond, a top White House adviser, argued that “the minimum wage has been expanded or increased during times of crisis before” but declined to say whether it should be part of the coronavirus package or a stand-alone bill.Mr. Sanders pointed to two new studies, shown to The New York Times ahead of their publication, that argue that the minimum wage would have a direct impact on the federal budget, opening a door to using reconciliation. In a new paper, Michael Reich, a professor of economics and labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that approval of the minimum wage would have a positive effect of $65.4 billion per year largely because of increases to payroll and income tax revenue.“It seems to me that it has pretty substantial budgetary impacts,” Mr. Reich, who has long studied the effects of minimum wage, said of the provision in an interview, adding that he had been conservative in his estimate.Another report, produced by three economists at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and a longtime advocate for increasing the minimum wage, found that there would be “significant and direct effects” on the federal budget by increasing payroll tax revenue by $7 billion to $13.9 billion and reducing expenditures on public assistance programs by $13.4 billion to $31 billion.“This is a sizable chunk of money, no matter how you look at it,” said David Cooper, who wrote the report with Ben Zipperer and Josh Bivens. They determined that increased revenue would prevent many workers and their families from qualifying for assistance programs, reducing expenses.But it remains uncertain whether that evidence will be enough to clear the parameters of the Byrd Rule, given that those effects could be ruled “merely incidental.” The Congressional Budget Office, one of the arbiters of the budget effects, found during the last Congress that there would be minimal impact based on the wages of some federal employees.But Mr. Sanders, pressed on whether Democrats had the votes in an evenly divided Senate to move forward with the minimum wage provision, declared that there were “50 votes to pass reconciliation, including minimum wage, yes.”“In totality, what Democrats are saying,” he said, is “we’ve got to support the president, we’ve got to address the crises facing working families and we’re going to pass reconciliation.”Jim Tankersley More