Democrats plan to make raising the minimum wage to $12/hour a campaign issue next year.
The Hill reports Congressional Democrats plan to introduce legislation raising the federal minimum wage to $12/hour by 2020.
The bill has little chance of passing Congress, but the issue could boost Hillary Clinton's chances in 2016 as well as other Democrats further down the ballot.
Democrats are trying to appeal to working-class people in a broader fight against income inequality. They see the minimum wage as one of the best ways to reach this target demographic.
A recent survey from the left-leaning National Employment Law Project found that 75 percent of people — including a slight majority of Republican voters — support raising the minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020.
At the height of last year’s minimum wage fight, in September, 70 percent of people favored raising the minimum wage to $10.10 according to a poll from CBS News and The New York Times.
But the effort comes with risk. During the fight over the $10.10 bill, proponents were dealt a major blow when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 500,000 jobs would have been lost following such a wage increase.
