 (iStock) By Caitlin Dewey As the Maine House voted on a bill to reduce the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers, Jason Buckwalter and a dozen fellow servers huddled in a back room listening to the vote call at the Bangor steakhouse where they work. They all hoped to hear one thing: that state legislators had voted to lower their wages. Some cried with relief, Buckwalter said, when the final vote ended at 110-37 — overwhelmingly in their favor. The vote, which took place on June 13, marked the conclusion of a months-long political saga that has upended conventional wisdom about the minimum wage. Workers have traditionally supported such increases, which advocates say are critical to lifting millions out of poverty. But in Maine, servers actively campaigned to overturn the results of a November referendum raising servers' salaries from $3.75 in 2016 to $12 by 2024, saying it would cause customers to tip less and actually reduce their take-home income. The bill was quietly signed into law on June 22 by Republican Gov. Paul LePage, a strident critic of raising the tipped minimum wage. Read more on Wonkblog.
People making $11,400 in 2026 will face deductibles that are more than half their income By Carolyn Y. Johnson Most people are focused on how many people would lose insurance under the Senate health-care bill compared with current law: an estimated 22 million, according to the new Congressional Budget Office analysis. But the report digs deeper into the kind of insurance that people, especially poor people, would be able to access -- and finds that it would be so financially burdensome with high deductibles that many people would choose not to sign up. | 
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