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"Rebuilding the labor movement is, I believe, the only way to rebuild the middle class," said Joseph Geevarghese, deputy director of Change to Win. "Instead of setting a good example, the federal government is part of the problem."

Raising the federal minimum wage was President Obama's central economic proposal in his State of the Union address in February. Increasing the wage to $9 an hour from its current $7.25 and indexing it to inflation would lift hundreds of thousands of families above the poverty line, the Obama administration argued.

But the proposal has stalled in Congress, where House Republicans voted down a Democratic attempt to raise the minimum wage to more than $10 an hour.

Republicans argue that raising the cost of labor will increase unemployment. But studies by David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, among others, demonstrated in real-life experiments that raising the minimum wage did not result in labor loss, partly because it helped to reduce turnover.

That view is supported by such impressive spokespersons as discount giant Costco's CEO Craig Jelinek, who said in a statement that his company pays a starting wage of $11.50 across the country and is "still able to keep our overhead costs low." In March he not only endorsed Obama's proposal but called for an even higher minimum wage increase -- to $10.10 an hour, plus indexing it to inflation.

In fact, if the current federal minimum wage only kept up with inflation since its 1968 peak, it would now be $10.58, according to a March study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. But the minimum wage will stay where it is, losing value over time because of inflation, unless congressional Republicans agree to bump it up.

In the meantime, President Obama could bring some relief and set a good example. He has the power with his presidential pen to require a minimum wage increase for employees of businesses including fast food vendors that have contracts with the federal government. It wouldn't relieve all low-wage workers, but it would be a powerful place to start..

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