still waiting for a raise:
in 1996, when President Bill Clinton shamed House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Congress into raising the minimum wage, Republican lawmakers sided with restaurant industry lobbyists and excluded tipped workers by permanently freezing their minimum wage at $2.13. This resulted in a tipped-worker minimum wage that is worth less and less every year, forcing them to rely almost entirely on tips to make ends meet. Ultimately, it's meant lower and less certain pay for millions of Americans.
(...) Restaurant industry lobbyists defend their position by focusing on waiters and waitresses at high-end restaurants who earn a lot of money in tips. But such workers are the exception, not the rule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average waiter or waitress in the U.S. makes just over $17,000 per year including tips--hardly enough to support a family, as many of these women and men struggle to do. And other tipped workers--like car wash attendants and delivery workers--make even less.