Pro-Hillary Clinton group Correct the Record is touting the former secretary of State’s efforts throughout her career to raise the minimum wage, as the Senate prepares to vote on a measure to do just that.
{mosads}In a new research document, the group outlines Clinton’s support for increases in the federal minimum wage during her tenure as a senator for New York and first lady.
“Hillary Clinton has spent decades fighting to give hardworking Americans a wage that allows them to put food on the table, a roof over their heads, and the opportunity to achieve greater success,” said Adrienne Watson, deputy communications director for Correct the Record in a statement.
Watson added that the analysis “demonstrates Hillary Clinton’s lifelong dedication to fair compensation for all Americans.”
The document outlines Clinton’s repeated votes in favor of raising the federal minimum wage, including her introduction of two bills that would tie congressional pay raises to mandatory increases in the federal minimum wage.
It also notes that while she ultimately voted against it after it was folded into an Iraq War funding bill, she initially backed the 2007 bill that became the last successful effort to raise the minimum wage.
The group also highlights Clinton’s vocal support while serving as first lady for the successful 1996 effort to raise the minimum wage and another ultimately unsuccessful push in 1999, when she declared that increasing the minimum wage is “certainly an American issue and a human issue, but it is particularly a woman’s issue.” Clinton echoed those comments 15 years later, telling the United Methodist Women Assembly this past weekend that raising the minimum wage is one way to help “empower” women and girls.
The document is the latest effort from the group, an arm of the Democratic research group American Bridge, to publicize Clinton’s accomplishments throughout her career. Previous research files have focused on her work on income inequality and her record at State.
And it comes as President Obama plans a final push for his proposal raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, even as the Democratic-led Senate looks likely to vote the measure down on Wednesday.
Still, Democrats see the issue as part of a broader populist economic push that they believe will be a political winner for the party heading into the midterms, and an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Tuesday showed nearly half of Americans support Democrats on the minimum wage.
And Clinton’s efforts to raise the rate could be a political winner for her too in a potential 2016 presidential run.
The former secretary of State has faced some skepticism from progressives over whether she’ll be sufficiently committed to protecting popular entitlement programs and combating income inequality, but her record on the minimum wage could help silence some of those critics.