Cross-posted from The Nation
President Obama launched the fall campaign season with a robust call for increasing the minimum wage.
"If you work full time in America, you shouldn't be living in poverty, you shouldn't be trying to support a family in poverty," Obama told thousands of cheering union members in Milwaukee, adding, "There is no denying the simple truth: America deserves a raise."
The president wasn't trying to convince the American people. They know that increasing the minimum wage is necessary to address income inequality and the injustice of a circumstance where millions of American families are struggling because their hard work is not adequately compensated.
A poll conducted last summer for the National Employment Law Project Action Fund found that 80 percent of Americans surveyed favor a $10.10-an-hour wage floor. Ninety-two percent of Democrats favor the increase, as do 80 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans.
This enthusiasm is not just theoretical. It is immediate. Seventy-four percent of Americans say that Congress should make it a priority to significantly increase the minimum wage.
That focus on Congress is the key, as Obama acknowledged when he noted Monday that "in the year and a half since I first asked Congress to raise the minimum wage -- of course, the Republicans in Congress have blocked it."
"Eventually, Congress is going to hear [the people]," Obama continued. "We'll break those folks down. We'll just stay on them." Persistence -- you just stay at it. Because the only thing more powerful than an idea whose time has come is when millions of people are organizing around an idea whose time has come. Millions of people are voting for an idea whose time has come."
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