Democrats are plugging new energy into an old idea: a federal “Jobs Guarantee” program.

Worried that their spending spree in the recent omnibus bill will suppress conservative turnout at the polls this November, Republicans are now considering a “rescission” package.

I am a fan of Kimberley Strassel’s columns about federal politics in the Wall Street Journal. But her recent column about the omnibus spending bill—which increased spending 13 percent in one year—was off the mark.

California and New York have approved bills to increase their state minimum wages over time to $15 an hour. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders favor raising the federal minimum wage. But such mandated increases do more harm than good, and they hurt the exact groups of people that policymakers say that they want to help.

Today is Tax Day. Federal tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service with a postmark before midnight. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal government will collect $3.2 trillion in revenue this year.

In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 an hour would raise the incomes of low-wage workers who remain employed while lowering the incomes of low-wage workers who lose their jobs. CBO’s “middle” estimate is that a $10.10 minimum wage would reduce total employment by about 500,000.

In the State of the Union address, President Obama endorsed a bill to raise the $7.25 federal minimum wage by nearly 40% over three years to $10.10 an hour in 2016. That would be an exact copy of what President Bush did on May 25, 2007, by signing into law a 40% minimum wage hike in three stages — from $5.15 to $5.85 on July 24, 2007, then $6.55 a year later and $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Have we not learned anything from what happened last time?

When President Obama advocates a higher minimum wage in his State of the Union Address, he will no doubt argue that by increasing the minimum to $10.10, workers will have fatter pay checks and spend more, thus stimulating the economy and creating more jobs. In fact, economic logic tells a different story.

Seventy-five economists, including seven Nobel winners, have signed a letter advocating an increase in the minimum wage. The letter was preceded by a New York Times editorial on January 2 making the same argument. I assume that there will be an opposing letter shortly, probably also including some Nobel signers.

I was surprised to read this assertion about the minimum wage by labor analyst Harry Holzer in the Washington Post today: