Democratic legislators want the minimum wage raised to $15.

A long-standing goal of the Democratic members of the US Congress is a substantial increase to the federal minimum wage. Currently, minimum wage is set at $7.25, and has been such for over a decade. With President Joe Biden now at the helm and Democrats holding the majority in both the House and the Senate, this could be the best opportunity to enact this increase in a long time.

“In the richest country in the history of the world, if you work 40 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty,” Vermont Senator and incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee Bernie Sanders told reporters Tuesday. “Minimum wage must be a living wage, enabling people to live with dignity. It is unacceptable that Congress has not passed an increase in the minimum wage since 2007 — 14 years ago.”

Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan includes a provision requiring the federal minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour if it is passed. Additionally, as part of the slew of executive orders Biden has signed in the past week, he has ordered the Department of Labor to begin drawing up plans for raising federal worker wages to at least $15.

However, house GOP representatives have pushed back on this raise, in a similar manner to a wage increased proposed in 2019, saying that doing so would put too much of a financial burden on smaller businesses. In order to pass the bill this time around, Democratic house members may need to use an alternative route, such as budget reconciliation, in which the measure could be passed as a matter of taxing and spending policies.

“The bottom line, I think common sense makes this point: If millions of workers receive a pay increase, there will be less dependency on public assistance, which will have a significant impact on the deficit, which means that it should be considered as part of reconciliation,” Sanders said on the matter.