One can usually hear some pretty silly reason politicians give for voting for or against a bill and in this case Senator Ted Cruz came out with a very laughable idea for voting down a minimum wage increase.
Republicans today argued that they were not allowing debate in the Senate on this issue for the sake of low wage workers. Perhaps the best rendition of this came from Ted Cruz, who claimed he voted No for the sake of young minorities:
“Every senator who votes ‘yes’ is voting with an absolute certainty that hundreds of thousands of workers, including a great many African-American teenagers and a great many Hispanic teenagers, will be laid off as a consequence of their vote,” Cruz said. “I would challenge any of the senators in this chamber to look in the eyes of those African-American teenagers, those Hispanic teenagers who are looking for a better opportunity.”
Yesterday’s WaPo poll found that nonwhites say Dems are closer than Republicans to their views on the minimum wage by 60-25. As for the substance of the claim that raising the minimum wage destroys low end jobs, Paul Krugman ran through some of that debate right here.
Teddy is just trying to save young people by voting down a pay increase for them. What a guy. As Krugman stated, the evidence shows that a minimum wage increase will not have a negative impact on jobs.
For about four decades, increases in the minimum wage have consistently fallen behind inflation, so that in real terms the minimum wage is substantially lower than it was in the 1960s. Meanwhile, worker productivity has doubled.
And while there are dissenters, as there always are, the great preponderance of the evidence from these natural experiments points to little if any negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment.
Clearly Cruz is making sh*t up so his big business supporters can profit from his vote.
This is how conservatives alter reality. Don't have the evidence just say you're trying to save people from themselves.
