Latest news with #PeterWelch
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Democrats boycott Biden cognitive decline hearing
Democrats boycotted a congressional hearing into Joe Biden's mental decline. Just two Democrat senators attended a Senate judiciary hearing probing Mr Biden's mental acuity during his time in the White House, one of whom left after delivering their opening statement. Republicans, criticising the boycott, accused colleagues of continuing to 'stonewall' the investigation into the former US president's decline and claimed administration officials took advantage of his incapacity to take power for themselves. Seven of the nine Democrats on the committee opted not to attend, including Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and New Jersey senator Cory Booker, both of them former contenders for the party's presidential nomination. The Senate judiciary Democrats group labelled the event a 'sham hearing', adding: 'We're focused on the critical challenges facing our nation. Back to business.' Both Democrats present on Wednesday, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Peter Welch of Vermont, criticised the investigation into Mr Biden's mental acuity. Mr Durbin claimed the committee had avoided grappling with serious issues, such as the killing of a Minnesota lawmaker on Saturday and the deployment of the National Guard to California, in favour of attacking a former president. 'Apparently, armchair diagnosing former President Biden is more important than the issues of grave concern which I have mentioned,' he said. Mr Welch, who was one of the first Democrats in Congress to call for Mr Biden to drop out of the presidential race last year, declared the hearing had no benefit for his constituents and left after his statement. 'Biden shielded from public scrutiny' Allegations about Mr Biden's mental decline have been given fresh impetus by the recent publication of Original Sin, by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson. According to the book, the former president forgot the names of close aides he had known for decades, paving the way for others in the administration – including Jill Biden, the first lady – to seize influence. 'Biden aides would say that she was one of the most powerful first ladies in history,' the authors wrote. Several Republicans criticised their counterparts for failing to turn up to the hearing, claiming it showed Democrats were still shielding Mr Biden from public scrutiny. The party eventually turned on Mr Biden following his dire debate performance against Donald Trump in June last year, piling pressure on the US president before he ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris, his vice president. Josh Hawley, the Republican senator for Missouri, said: 'The stonewall continues. They can't bear to show their faces in public.' Alabama senator Katie Britt said: 'The fact that we have none of my Democratic colleagues over here, that… [shows] they are not interested in correcting it for the future.'
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Sen. Welch on U.S. potentially striking Iran: ‘We should be taking care of America first'
Democratic Sen. Peter Welch tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer he's concerned about the U.S. being involved in another long Middle East war and says Congress is abdicating its Constitutional war authority.
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
GOP says Dems admit ‘guilt' in Biden health cover-up by boycotting Senate hearing on ‘constitutional scandal'
Republican lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee admonished Democratic colleagues for boycotting and walking out of a Wednesday morning hearing examining former President Joe Biden's health decline while he was in the Oval Office. "I will note that few of my Democratic colleagues are here today," Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday. "Thank you to Sen. Welch from Vermont for being here, leaving us with no other option than to take the boycott of this hearing as an admission of guilt for their role in this crisis. "We must not turn away from the search for answers, and it is not an overstatement to say that the future of our country could one day hinge on how we choose to act or not act on this very issue," Cornyn continued. The Senate committee held a hearing Wednesday morning dubbed, "Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution." Vermont Democrat Sen. Peter Welch and Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin did attend the start of the hearing, with Durbin abruptly walking out after describing the hearing as a distraction and accusing Republican colleagues of being "asleep at the wheel" with other legal issues within the Trump administration due to their focus on Biden. "In the last week alone, several events have demanded this committee's immediate attention," Durbin said Wednesday. "The horrific assassination in Minnesota, the treatment of our colleague Sen. Padilla by federal agents in Los Angeles, and President Trump's unprecedented deployment of the U.S. military in Los Angeles. "We should hear without delay from Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel about what they are doing to address the unacceptable political violence in our country, including threats to Article III judges and justices, as well as members of Congress," Durbin said. "And we need to hear from the Homeland Security Secretary Noem about the treatment of our colleague, Sen. Padilla, and this administration's mass deportation campaign against immigrants." Welch also left the hearing after declaring it would not benefit his constituents. There are 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including lawmakers such as Sens. Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Adam Schiff of California. The press secretary for Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats directed Fox Digital to Durbin's initial participation in the hearing and his remarks when asked about GOP lawmakers arguing Democrats' boycott of the hearing was an admission of guilt. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz seethed that Democrats and the media "lied" and covered up Biden's health decline, while slamming Democrats for their lack of participation. "Not a single Democrat is here today because not a single one of them gives a d--- about the fact that they lied to the American people for four years," Cruz said at the hearing. "They knew. Every one of them knew that Joe Biden was mentally not competent to do the job. The White House press secretary, she knew, when she stood in front of the American people and lied over and over and over again. And they're not here because they can't defend themselves. It wasn't a surprise, for four years, the White House hid President Biden from Republican senators. Would not let him meet with us." Other Republicans railed against Democratic counterparts for skipping the hearing, such as Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmidt. "Today, as we seek to answer this question, it is deeply disappointing, but not surprising, that most Democrats on this committee have chosen all but boycott the hearing and failed to call a single witness," Schmidt said at the hearing. "They have chosen to ignore this issue like they ignored President Biden's decline. Their absence speaks volumes, an implicit admission that the truth is too inconvenient to face. By refusing to engage in this critical examination, they abdicate their responsibility to the American people. This de facto boycott is not just a refusal to participate. It's a refusal to serve the American people who deserve answers about who was truly leading their government. "The title of the hearing, 'Unfit to Serve,' captures a sobering and undeniable truth," Schmidt added. "President Biden was mentally unfit to carry out the responsibilities of the most powerful office in the world. Given his mental incapacity, the American people deserve to know who was running the country the last four years." The hearing included testimony from three experts, including University of Virginia law professor John Harrison, conservative think tank Heritage Foundation fellow Theodore Wold, and a former White House press secretary from the first Trump administration, Sean Spicer. Concern over Biden's mental acuity hit a fever pitch in 2024 as the election cycle heated up, when the then-president delivered a dismal debate performance against now-President Donald Trump in June. The debate opened the floodgates of criticism, including traditional Democrat allies calling for Biden to drop out of the presidential race after conservatives had already long argued that Biden's mental acuity was slipping and he was unfit to serve as commander in chief. Concerns over his health have continued after his presidential tenure ended, including with the revelation that the Biden admin frequently used an autopen to sign official presidential documents, the release of Biden's interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur, and Biden's shock announcement in May that he had advanced prostate cancer. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden's signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature. Heritage fellow Wold testified before the committee and described the alleged cover-up of Biden's declining health a "constitutional crisis." "I will say the 25th Amendment. It's a modern contrivance, but it still is consistent with the American Constitution, which assumes that officers of the United States will act virtuously and morally," Wold said. "And the idea that members of the Cabinet would go to the length of avoiding the Oval Office so as to abdicate their responsibility to verify the appropriateness of the president's acuity or the ability to authenticate actions taken by the president. If that's not a constitutional scandal, I honestly, I don't know what would what would constitute such. "There could be the potential for crimes," he said. "But moreover, the 25th Amendment can only function in its sole mechanisms if people are actually willing to call a spade a spade." The U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment states that "whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President." Biden's Cabinet, other administration officials and Democrat lawmakers fiercely defended his health amid outcry from Republicans and others that Biden's health had cratered and that he was likely unfit to serve as president.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Josh Hawley proposes raising federal minimum wage to $15. What is Florida's minimum wage
Ultraconservative Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley joined Democratic Vermont Sen. Peter Welch to introduce a bill on June 10 to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bill, dubbed the 'Higher Wages for American Workers Act,' would raise the minimum wage starting in January 2026 and allow it to increase on the basis of inflation in subsequent years. It's unclear if the bill will be taken up for a vote. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour and has not changed since 2009, while the cost of living has risen dramatically. Previous Congressional efforts to raise the minimum wage have failed. President Donald Trump said in December before he took office that he would "consider" raising the federal minimum wage, and rumors flew in April that he had bumped it to $25 an hour. Not only was that not true, he revoked a 2024 executive order that set the minimum wage for federal contractors at $17.75. 'For decades, working Americans have seen their wages flatline," Hawley said in a statement. "One major culprit of this is the failure of the federal minimum wage to keep up with the economic reality facing hardworking Americans every day." Welch, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, echoed a similar sentiment. 'Every hardworking American deserves a living wage that helps put a roof over their head and food on the table – $7.25 an hour doesn't even come close,' he said. Critics, such as the Employment Policies Institute, say the change would result in a loss of jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found in an analysis that raising the minimum wage would 'raise the earnings and family income of most low-wage workers' but would cause other low-income workers to lose their jobs and their family income to fall. How does this compare with Florida? States may choose their own minimum wage levels and many of them are far ahead of the federal minimum wage. Florida's minimum wage is currently $13 an hour for non-tipped employees and $9.98 for tipped employees. On Sept. 30, 2025, both those rates will go up another dollar. They'll go up another buck again in 2026 until the state minimum wage is $15 an hour, a move mandated by a constitutional amendment Florida voters approved in 2020. The state minimum wage was first established in 2004 by another voter-approved amendment "to provide a decent and healthy life for them and their families, that protects their employers from unfair low-wage competition, and that does not force them to rely on taxpayer-funded public services in order to avoid economic hardship." There have been efforts to work around it. Two bills in the 2025 Florida legislative session would have allowed people working in apprenticeships, internships or work-study programs to choose to work for less. Supporters said young students and teenagers were missing out on training opportunities due to high state-mandated wages. Critics warned that companies could label all entry-level jobs as 'apprenticeships' or 'internships' to force employees to work cheaply. However, both bills, SB 676 and HB 541, died on May 3, along with about 1,300 other bills in this year's session that were "indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration" so Florida lawmakers could focus instead on the battle over the still-unfinished final 2025-26 state budget. One of the bills that did make it through the legislature this year severely limits the chances of Florida voters ever managing to do something raise the minimum wage again. On the same day it passed, Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly signed into law a bill that makes it more difficult for citizens to get constitutional amendments on the ballot, effective immediately. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since 2009. Most states, including Florida, have established higher minimum wages and 21 states raised theirs at the beginning of the year. Michigan passed a gradual wage hike similar to Florida's. Fourteen states pay the federal minimum rate of $7.25, Georgia, Wyoming and Montana pay less, and Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee have no state minimum wage law. There are also certain occupations and situations where the Department of Labor allows exemptions to the federal minimum wage law and employees may be paid less, including farm workers, executive, administrative and professional employees. commissioned sales employees, seasonal or recreational establishment workers, minors under certain circumstances, employees with disabilities under certain situations, employees of enterprises with an annual gross income of less than $50,000, and more. Where is minimum wage going up? These states and cities are due for hikes in 2025 Even if it passes, gets signed by Trump and gets past any legal challenges, it's unclear if Florida would respond by immediately adopting the new federal minimum wage or simply waiting unto the state reaches that level in the time frame it's already on. When he was still president-elect in December, Trump said he would consider raising the federal minimum wage. But he has made no moves to do so, and his Treasury secretary flatly said no. During Scott Bessent's Senate confirmation hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders asked him point-blank if he would work to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. "I believe that the minimum wage is more of a statewide and regional issue," Bessent replied. When asked again, he said simply, "No, sir." According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the highest minimum wage in the U.S. is $17.50 an hour in Washington, D.C. The highest state minimum wage is Washington state, with $16.66. California and parts of New York pay $16.50. Georgia and Wyoming businesses pay $5.15 an hour, although in Georgia, it only applies to employers of six or more employees. In Montana, businesses with gross annual sales of less than $110,000 pay $4 an hour. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee have no state minimum wage law. Employers of tipped employees must pay their employees minimum wage, but they can count the tips the employees receive toward it up to the maximum of $3.02, the allowable Fair Labor Standards Act tip credit of 2003. So the direct wage they must pay is the minimum wage minus $3.02. The current minimum wage in Florida is $13 an hour, so the tipped minimum wage is $9.98. Both will go up a dollar each until they reach $15 an hour for non-tipped employees and $11.98 for tipped employees. The minimum wage is different from a living wage, however, which tries to calculate how much a person needs to earn per hour to afford the necessities — housing, childcare, health care, food, etc. — where they live. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) living wage calculator, the living wage in Florida is $23.41 an hour for one adult with no children, $38.72 for an adult with one child, $47.53 for an adult with two children and $59.64 for an adult with three children, as of February 2025. Florida's minimum wage was initially tied to the federal minimum wage created in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 which set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, banned oppressive child labor and capped the maximum workweek at 44 hours. In 2005, Florida voters approved Amendment 5 to establish a state minimum wage over the federal standard. Florida has paid its minimum wage workers more than the federal minimum ever since. Amendment 5 brought the hourly wage for non-tipped employees to $6.15, a dollar more than the federal minimum at the time, and required the Department of Economic Opportunity to calculate an adjusted state minimum wage rate based on the rate of inflation for the 12 months prior to Sept. 1, based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. There have been several increases since: 2005: Raised to $6.15 an hour 2006: Raised to $6.40 an hour 2009: Raised to $7.21 an hour 2010: Raised to $7.25 an hour 2016: After 6 years, raised to $8.05 an hour 2017: Raised to $8.10 an hour 2018: Raised to $8.25 an hour 2019: Raised to $8.45 an hour 2021: Raised to $10 an hour to meet requirements from the 2020 amendment 2022: Raised to $11 an hour 2023: Raised to $12 an hour 2024: Raised to $13 an hour This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Hawley introduces $15 minimum wage bill. How would this affect Florida?
New York Post
11-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
GOP Sen. Josh Hawley teams up with Dem to hike federal minimum wage to $15 per hour
Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., are pushing legislation that would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and provide for annual increases to account for inflation. The proposal would implement a dramatic increase from the current $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage, which has been in place for more than 15 years. 'For decades, working Americans have seen their wages flatline. One major culprit of this is the failure of the federal minimum wage to keep up with the economic reality facing hardworking Americans every day. This bipartisan legislation would ensure that workers across America benefit from higher wages,' Hawley said, according to press releases from both lawmakers. The purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has eroded significantly over the years due to inflation. Under the proposed legislation, the yearly increases to the initial $15 per hour federal minimum wage would be based on 'the percentage increase, if any, in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (or a successor index), as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' and would be 'rounded to the nearest multiple of $0.05, if the amount … is not a multiple of $0.05.' 3 'This bipartisan legislation would ensure that workers across America benefit from higher wages,' Senator Josh Hawley said about legislation that would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Jack Gruber-USA TODAY via Imagn Images 3 The legislation, which would also provide for annual increases to account for inflation, is supported by Senator Peter Welch. AP 3 The purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has decreased over the years due to inflation. Amy Covington/Stocksy – 'We're in the midst of a severe affordability crisis, with families in red and blue states alike struggling to afford necessities like housing and groceries. A stagnant federal minimum wage only adds fuel to the fire. Every hardworking American deserves a living wage that helps put a roof over their head and food on the table–$7.25 an hour doesn't even come close,' Welch said, according to the releases. 'Times have changed, and working families deserve a wage that reflects today's financial reality. I'm proud to lead this bipartisan effort to raise the minimum wage nationwide to help more folks make ends meet,' the senator added. In post on X, conservative commentator Dana Loesch decried the idea of raising the federal minimum wage, pushing back against Hawley's advocacy for the policy. 'This is a horrible, progressive idea,' Loesch asserted in the tweet.
