*By Christian Smith*
Congressman Ro Khanna wants to inspire companies to do better by their workers.
"It's absurd that you have multi-billion dollar companies, trillion-dollar companies that aren't able to pay their workers $15," Rep. Khanna said Friday in an interview on Cheddar.
That's why the prominent House progressive, who represents California's Silicon Valley, is teaming up with ex-presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce legislation that would place a tax on large corporations ー money that is equivalent to the amount of federal benefits their low-income employees receive to make a livable wage.
Rep. Khanna's House bill is called the "Corporate Responsibility and Taxpayer Protection Act" and targets large companies across industries, including tech, retail, and fast food, he said.
Sanders was a little more pointed with his version, dubbed the "Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act." That's Stop BEZOS, if you didn't notice.
Rep. Khanna said that Amazon has responded to the Sanders bill, saying the company creates safe working spaces for employees and offers competitive benefits. But the Congressman said the point of benefits is a separate matter.
"They're still not addressing the fundamental point," Khanna said.
"Why can't they just come out and say they're going to pay every employee in our company at least a $15 wage so they can have a livable wage?"
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/congressman-ro-khanna-wants-major-corporations-to-improve-worker-pay-or-pay-more-in-taxes).
Congress has created a new requirement for automakers: Find a high-tech way to keep drunken people from driving cars.
President Joe Biden is using his first Veterans Day in office to announce an effort to better understand, identify and treat medical conditions suffered by troops deployed to toxic environments.
A judge in Michigan has approved a $626 million settlement for Flint residents and others who were exposed to lead-contaminated water.
Until recently, abortion was criminalized in Mexico. Now, Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized abortion at the same time the strictest abortion law in the United States went into effect in Texas, changing the dynamics of seeking abortions in the region.
Biden is holding up Baltimore’s port as a blueprint on how to reduce shipping bottlenecks that have held back the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic
The Democrat and former police officer has since doubled down on his plans to make New York a crypto hub along the lines of Miami,
The fight over anti-abortion ordinances has moved to southwest Ohio where alleged "Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn" are spreading from Texas.
Britain’s Prince Harry has sharply attacked the failure of social media companies to challenge hate online, revealing that he warned the chief executive of Twitter ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that the site was being used to stage political unrest.
Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.2% in October compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, gas and housing left Americans grappling with the highest inflation rate since 1990.
Mississippi's 2018 law banning almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, could be the one to show whether a strong conservative majority on the Supreme Court will uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade
