Obama to sign executive order raising minimum wage for federal contractors

Jan. 23, 2014: President Obama in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C.AP

President Obama, in the first of potentially many executive actions tied to his State of the Union address, will unilaterally increase the minimum wage for workers under new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25, in an effort to build momentum for a minimum wage hike for all Americans.
The executive order, which had been pushed by progressive Democratic lawmakers, applies to all contractors performing services for the federal government and would affect more than 2 million employees, according to an administration official.
The president will then use Tuesday night's address to press Congress to pass a Democratic plan to increase the overall federal wage to $10.10 over three years, then indexing it to inflation, while also raising the minimum wage for tipped workers, the official said.
Critics of the minimum wage push claim that raising the rate could have an adverse effect, discouraging businesses from hiring more workers at a time when the government is trying to spur job growth.
"The minimum wage is mostly an entry level wage for young people," Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told "Fox News Sunday." "We have a crisis in employment among young people right now, and generation 18 to 30, people that got out of college, are finding there are no jobs for them. The last thing we want to do is have even fewer jobs for younger people."
But the president is reviving the issue as he tries to focus again on the economy. Obama, who does not have the power to unilaterally raise the minimum wage for private sector workers, also used last year's State of the Union speech to call for a federal minimum wage hike.
“Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour,” the president said to applause in his 2013 address.
The new executive order affects only future contracts, not existing ones, and would only apply to contract renewals if other terms of the agreement changed. As a result, the order would benefit far fewer workers than the number foreseen by advocates of federal contract employees.
House Speaker John Boehner downplayed the impact the latest executive order would have. "Let's understand something: this affects not one current contract, it only affects future contracts with the federal government. And so I think the question is, how many people, Mr. President will this executive action actually help? I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero," he said Tuesday.
In December, Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., co-chairmen of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote the president urging him to take the "bold step" of signing an executive order to increase wages for federal contractors, GovExec.com reported.
At the time, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney issued a lukewarm response when asked about the lawmakers' request, according to the report.
“This has always been done legislatively. And it has been done with support from Republicans and not just Democrats in the past,” Carney said.
Obama, in an effort to avoid the appearance of being a lame duck president, is expected to use Tuesday's State of the Union address to make clear his intentions to use his executive powers to achieve his goals when Congress fails to pass legislation.
Minimum wage is a perennial issue that has taken on a higher profile amid the slowly recovering economy and growing public debate about income inequality. A Quinnipiac University poll this month found 71 percent of Americans in favor of raising the minimum wage — including more than half of Republicans polled.
Five states passed minimum wage measures last year, and advocates hope that number will grow as states from New Hampshire to Washington consider proposals. Many would push families above the federal poverty line, which is $15,730 for a family of two. In Iowa, a bill would hike the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10.
Democrats across the political spectrum have lobbied for a higher minimum wage this year, after Obama got the ball rolling on the issue by calling for an increase in his February budget speech. Since then, union-organized demonstrations in front of profitable mega-chains such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's have kept it in the public eye.

Original Story found here http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/28/obama-to-raise-federal-minimum-wage-in-executive-action-tied-to-state-union/

Once-in-a-generation Winter Storm Descends on Deep South

In Chicago and much of the rest of the Midwest, several days of sub-zero temperatures have taken their toll. And on Tuesday, a number of Southern cities will be feeling the chill, as well. NBC's John Yang reports.

By M. Alex Johnson, Alexander Smith and Erin McClam, NBC News

A brutal winter freeze began to descend on the Deep South early Tuesday with a huge swath of the region in the crosshairs of a storm that forecasters called "potentially paralyzing."  The storm was still in its infancy at 3:30 a.m. ET but meteorologists at The Weather Channel said they already had reports of sleet and freezing rain in parts of Texas and Louisiana.  Schools from the Lone Star State to Florida earlier announced that they would close Tuesday, and the storm is playing havoc with air travel. As of 6:45 a.m. ET, airlines had cancelled 2,665 flights across the country, with Atlanta's Hartsfield–Jackson and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental airports bearing the brunt,


Winter storm alerts have been issued by the National Weather Service all the way from central Texas eastward through the Gulf Coast into Georgia, the Carolinas and far southeast Virginia.

Nearly 60 million people are affected by a cold weather warning or watch Monday night. By Friday, however, temperatures will rise above normal for much of the country. NBC News' Al Roker reports.

Weather Channel meteorologist Nick Wiltgen described it as a "potentially paralyzing winter storm." And the forecaster’s winter weather expert, Tom Niziol, said the South was in for weather "that many parts have not seen in years" — perhaps the biggest winter weather event in a generation.

The nasty weather will reach so far south that Johnson Space Center, in Houston, said it would be closed.
The the biggest snow threat lay in eastern and central Texas, including Houston, and stretched to southeast Virginia. Eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia would have the greatest chance of getting more than six inches of snow, according to The Weather Channel.

The winter storm is traveling south-eastwards and the wintry mix will dip as low as the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday. By Wednesday, it will have started to bend up the East Coast, where it will travel as far north as Providence, Rhode Island, before moving offshore by lunchtime. Several factors will decide whether ice and snow will stick to the roads across the region, said Kevin Roth, lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel. Temperatures may not be as low as in the North, where this type of weather is more common, but Southern states are far less prepared to deal with the conditions.  Two other elements are at play: The South has been experiencing below-average temperatures for much of January, but with it being more than a month after the Winter Solstice the sun angle is higher and therefore between at melting ice and snow.
For merchants in Louisiana, business was booming Monday as residents flocked to hardware and grocery stores.

"I'm almost out of all the electric heaters, the propane heaters, and a lot of propane," Lance Butler, owner of Sullivan's Hardware in the town of Central, told NBC station WVLA of Baton Rouge. "It's just about like it would [be] if it was before a hurricane coming," Butler said.

Jennifer Shephard / The Elkhart Truth via AP

A man waves to thank the driver of a passing car for giving he and a friend room on the road as they walk in Elkhart, Ind., during heavy snow Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Great Lakes shivered again under wind chills that approached 50 degrees below zero. School officials in major cities across the region — Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; Milwaukee and Madison, Wis.; Detroit; Minneapolis and Duluth, Minn.; and Indianapolis — said classes would be canceled Tuesday.
The University of Michigan said it would be closed Tuesday — the first time that's happened because of weather in 35 years.
"We're going to be talking about some seriously cold mornings," with temperatures as much as 35 degrees below normal for what is already historically the coldest time of the year, Weather Channel meteorologist Alex Winter said.
Lows overnight into Tuesday were forecast to plummet to 5 degrees below zero in Detroit and 20 below in Chicago, where school was already called off for Tuesday and whose airports scrapped more than 530 flights Monday.
The frigid weather was arriving just as a nationwide shortage of propane — which about 14 million Americans use to heat their homes — was reaching critical proportions.
With prices more than doubling from $2 a gallon to more than $4 last week, the governors of Minnesota and Illinois declared states of emergency Monday, urging residents to cut back and regulators to lift restrictions on shipping to their states.
The demand from Midwestern states threatened to strain supplies in otherwise well-stocked Southern states, said Greg Rodes of Southern Flame Propane in Lexington, S.C.

Origional story located at http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/27/22466322-once-in-a-generation-winter-storm-descends-on-deep-south?lite