THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And those introducing it include the "usual suspects", Bernie, Keith and Raul, among others. This has become a popular item across the United States and its time should be here.

Liberal members of Congress in both the House and the Senate will introduce legislation Wednesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, an in an effort to boost labor movement organizing around this issue and push the Democratic Party to the left on wage inequality.

Both versions of the bill will be co-sponsored by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the legislative branch’s liberal vanguard. The Senate bill will be sponsored by presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and the caucus’s only member in the chamber, while Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., are among the sponsors of the House bill.

The $15 wage bill is the most ambitious Congressional proposal yet for a wage increase, and it would more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. President Barack Obama called for an increase to $9 in his 2013 State of the Union Address, a figure he later bumped up to $10.10.

A bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour has languished in the House for years. The odds are not in favor of legislation calling for an even bigger increase, but the $15 wage proposal gives progressive organizations and their allies in Congress a totem around which to rally. The bill is a direct challenge to other Democratic officials who have yet to support a significant wage increase — particularly Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner in the party’s 2016 presidential primary.

Grijalva announced the new legislation during an appearance at Netroots Nation, an annual liberal conference held last weekend in Phoenix. Ellison was also there; when asked about the Progressive Caucus' role in the coming election cycle, he said he felt it was his job to clarify what economic populism looks like, so that public figures would be forced to accept or reject it on its own terms.

Ideally a vote would put on the record exactly where members stand on the issue. For that reason it is probably impossible for this bill to ever get a vote in the Republican controlled Congress. The only possibility would be a bill loaded with poisonous amendment to make Dems vote against it, a real possibility with Mitch and Weepy.