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For Immediate Release
Contact:

Sam Quigley

sam@patrioticmillionaires.org

317-752-9150

"No Excuse" for Senate Democrats Who Voted No on $15 Minimum Wage Amendment

"Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Tom Carper, Senator Maggie Hassan, and Senator Angus King failed both their people and their party."

WASHINGTON

This morning, the Senate voted 58-42 to reject Senator Bernie Sanders' amendment to include the $15 minimum wage in the Senate's COVID relief budget reconciliation package, with seven Democrats and one Independent voting along with every Republican to reject the measure.

In response, Morris Pearl, the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, former managing director of BlackRock, Inc., and author of the upcoming book Tax the Rich, issued the following statement:

"Today's vote on Senator Sanders' $15 minimum wage amendment is incredibly sad. $15 per hour is the bare minimum anyone in this country needs to survive, and it is baffling that any member of the US Senate, much less a number of Democrats, could look at the crisis this country is enduring and decide that tens of millions of low-income workers, including millions of frontline workers who put their lives on the line every day in the midst of a global pandemic, should not get a raise.

The Senate failed the American people today. Every single Republican Senator who voted against $15 today failed their constituents. The Democrats who voted against $15 today not only failed their constituents, the decision they made - to put some ancient senate tradition ahead of the priorities that they ran on and that they stand for - was wrong economically, morally, and politically.

There is no excuse. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Senator Tom Carper, Senator Maggie Hassan, and Senator Angus King failed both their people and their party. Neither those voting next year nor those reading the history of the next generation will appreciate those senators who could have changed the course of history - but chose not to."

The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.

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