Which Republican said the following about the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package passed by the house in the early morning hours of February 27th: “This bill addresses urgent needs (brought on by the pandemic), and then buries them under a mountain of unnecessary or untimely spending.”
Actually, it wasn’t a Republican; it was Maine Democrat Rep. Jared Golden. He was one of the only two Democrats who voted against a spending bill that includes $2,800 in free money to working couples who don’t need it, as well as extended unemployment benefits as a disincentive to look for work.
Kevin McCarthy, the outspoken Republican House Minority Leader complained, “The amount of money that actually goes to defeating the virus is less than 9 percent…!”
One sticking point for Republicans was that the Democrats included a $15 minimum wage increase on the relief package. As the bill migrates to the Senate, the minimum wage provision will likely not survive.
Under Senate rules, they will have to remove the minimum wage provision. Under the Senate’s reconciliation rules, a budget bill can only bypass the filibuster process if it contains high-priority fiscal legislation that affects government operations. The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that the minimum wage provision does not qualify.
Raising the minimum wage to $15 has long been a pet project of progressives and liberals like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who won’t give up even if it drops out of the relief bill. Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threatened to withdraw her support for the relief bill unless the minimum wage provision continued.
So, as politicians pander and preen before the press as champions of the workers, and how no one can possibly live on today’s minimum wage, Census Bureau Data tells a different story altogether.
About 85% of employees whose wages would be increased by the minimum wage, according to the Employment Policies Institute, “either live with their parents or another relative, live alone, or have a working spouse.”
While proponents of the wage hike say they want to help poor families, according to census figures, “Just 15% are sole earners in families with children, and each of these sole earners has access to supplemental income through the Earned Income Tax Credit.”
So, just as the COVID-19 relief package targets many wage earners who don’t need the help, a minimum wage hike would actually crowd low-skilled employees out of the labor market and could shut down as many as 2.7 million jobs. Those job losses could have a cascading effect of increasing unemployment and forcing more Americans onto government assistance.
Which begs the troubling question: Will increased unemployment and future multi-trillion-dollar government spending help the progressives “progress” to their next milestone — moving the American system closer to government control and socialism?
As the U.S. government drowns in red ink, House big spenders and Senate socialists like Bernie Sanders believe it’s more about justice than prudence. Others, however, know that all that madcap spending will end badly.
It’s that old gag about ignorance and apathy: Socialists don’t know where the actual wealth originates, and they don’t care how much of our children’s future they jeopardize.
