Dems say: We're dead if we don't deliver on minimum wage

“If you’ll pardon my language, we’re done fucking around,” said a source close to the White House who has been in touch with senior administration officials about the wage discussions. “This is a dealbreaker issue. What we need to see is that the administration is going to the wall with everything it has politically, exhausted all democratic means necessary, to deliver.”…

“We can’t just go out there and promise people things and then not deliver,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who has been a staunch advocate of the $15 proposal and nothing less. “In two years if we go out and tell people why we didn’t pass the minimum wage, saying ‘the parliamentarian wouldn’t let us do it’ is really not going to cut it,” she told The Daily Beast on Thursday, shortly before the news became public.

The outcome immediately adds more heat to the tense Democratic debate over whether to eliminate the 60-vote Senate threshold for legislation, known as the filibuster, in order to pass the wage hike and other key policies Biden has championed. Jayapal laid out the calculus for those dead-set on raising the wage: “we either have to be willing to overrule the parliamentarian because it is an advisory opinion … or, we’re gonna have to be willing to reform the filibuster.”