Minimum wage
Several U.S. states are going to increase the minimum wage.

Some quotes from the article linked above:

Backers say a higher minimum wage helps combat poverty, but opponents worry about the potential impact on employment and company profits.

Not so: opponents say that a higher minimum wage will decrease employment and also will force some (thin-margin) businesses to close. And it's actually not just the opponents of minimum wage who say this, but also the Congress itself:

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated 2014 federal proposal would have raised the wages of 16.5 million Americans and lifted 900,000 of them out of poverty but would have cost as many as 1 million jobs.

In other words, 1 million Americans will have lost their jobs (presumably, being plunged to poverty since the jobs will be gone) while 0.9 million Americans will have been removed from poverty. Net effect: poverty is projected to increase by 100,000 people, at whose expense some 15.5 million non-poor people will have their wages raised by a relatively small amount.