This was not just a random call from an Occupier, but has been an effort on the part of Progressive members of Congress pushing Obama to simply decree the raise by executive order. The idea is to try to apply it to any private companies with federal government contracts.

According to Salon:

The White House has offered “no response” to a months-old call from congressional Democrats to bypass Congress and use executive action to raise workers’ wages, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told Salon Tuesday afternoon.

“It wasn’t responded to,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. “I mean, the response would have been, ‘We’re working on it, we’re looking into it,’ ‘We feel it’s a good idea,’ or, ‘No, we’re not going to do it.’ Any of those is a response. We received none of that.” Grijalva pledged that, starting with a Thursday rally at the National Air and Space Museum, congressional progressives would become “much more public and much more insistent” in pressing the president to act. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Grijalva and 49 House Democrats wrote to Obama in September to urge he use executive authority to require better labor standards for workers employed through federal government contracts with private companies. That letter followed a prior July letter by Grijalva and others, and a handful of one-day strikes since May by cleaning and concessions workers in D.C. federal buildings. A report by the progressive think tank Demos estimated that about 2 million workers with taxpayer-funded jobs make $12 an hour or less.

They’ve apparently forgotten that Congress does the funding in this republic according to that pesky little item called the Constitution…

HT: SooperMexican

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