Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while. I don't agree with former Sen. Rick Santorum about much, but he's right about the need to raise the minimum wage. After his cohort, Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed his concern about Americans who are "one broken down car away from not being able to go on vacation" (How about feeding their children or staying in their homes, Lindsey?) Santorum defended his stance on increasing the minimum wage -- and was met by dead silence by the crowd in the Reagan Library.
Santorum defends raising minimum wage:
Former Sen. Rick Santorum on Wednesday defended his position as one of the only GOP presidential candidates to support a minimum wage hike, bashing his party as favoring businesses over employees.
Pushing back against Sen. Lindsey Graham's (S.C.) criticism, he noted that fewer than 1 percent of American workers are earning the minimum wage.
"What every Republican is up there saying is that we are against the minimum wage, because if you are not for increasing it and [few] are making the minimum wage right now, the answer is: Republicans don't believe in a floor wage in America," he said during Wednesday's Republican presidential debate in California.
"Fine, you go and make that case to the American public. I’m not going to. Not from a party that supported bailouts ... not from a party that supports special interest tax provisions for a whole bunch of other businesses. But when it comes to hardworking Americans who are at the bottom of the income scale, we can't provide some level of income support."
Santorum has proposed a small increase of the federal minimum wage, currently at $7.25, of 50 cents over three years. The only other GOP presidential candidate to show some support for a minimum wage hike is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Santorum pointed to the optics of the GOP's 2012 convention, which bashed President Obama for saying that business owners didn't build their businesses without help from others or from the government.
"We trotted out one small business person after another for almost an hour that night. ... You know what we didn't do? we didn't bring one worker on that stage," he said.
I hate to break it to you Rick, but the reason that people don't believe your party cares about the working class is because you don't. It's not a perception problem.
