Biden said he wants Congress to pass a federal minimum wage increase, but there's no deal in sight. Experts say people such as Romero often must make difficult decisions to sustain themselves. "It's not a question of being smart or being thoughtful or planning for the future. You are forced to make a series of bad decisions when life doesn't work, and it can't work with wages that low," says Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington that researches economic policies for working people.