The Choice Is Clear: Democrats Would Raise Your Pay, GOP Wants No Minimum Wage At All

by Elisabeth Parker  

Still think both political parties are the same? When it comes to the minimum wage — how much we all get paid — the choice couldn’t be more clear. Democrats want to raise the minimum wage to $12.00 an hour, while Republicans want to get rid of the minimum wage altogether.
That’s right. Our nation’s minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is already so low that there is not a single state in the U.S. where a person making the federal minimum wage could afford a two bedroom apartment for their family. In some states, even two minimum wage earners would not be able to cover the rent even if they both worked 40 hours a week.
It’s a good thing so many states and cities have taken things into their own hands and passed their own minimum wage laws: Thanks to the GOP, the federal minimum wage is a slave wage that hasn’t gone up since 2007. And before that, the minimum wage had been stuck at a paltry $5.10 per hour for a decade.
Huffington Post reports Senate Democrats have proposed raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, and are now talking about hiking it up to $12.00 per hour.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate’s labor committee, has been reaching out to her Democratic colleagues to rally support for a more ambitious minimum wage proposal, according to a Senate source familiar with the conversations.

Meanwhile, MSNBC reports that Jeb Bush — the GOP’s current top pick for 2016 — got caught on video saying he wants no minimum wage at all.  That’s right. Bush wants to leave worker pay up to the “free market.” Which isn’t a “free market” at all. The people who run our nation’s corporations use their vast wealth and power to keep wages and salaries as low as possible. But after 40 years of union busting by conservatives as well as by neoliberals, Americans who work for a living have little to no representation in this so-called “free market” at all.
During a speech to his supporters in South Carolina, GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush came out against a federal minimum wage. He wants to leave it to states, and “to the private sector.” Because former slave states have used their poverty-pimping economic development model — exporting cheap commodities produced by docile, low-wage workers — to  enrich their elites since before the civil war. And since these policies make people poorer, red states also get to rake in welfare funding from the U.S. government they claim to hate. Not to mention all those farm subsidies and corporate tax breaks.
Here’s what Bush said in South Carolina when asked what he thinks about raising the minimum wage:

“We need to leave it to the private sector. I think state minimum wages are fine. The federal government shouldn’t be doing this. This is one of those poll-driven deals. It polls well, I’m sure – I haven’t looked at the polling, but I’m sure on the surface without any conversation, without any digging into it people say, ‘Yea, everybody’s wages should be up.’ And in the case of Wal-Mart they have raised wages because of supply and demand and that’s good.

But the federal government doing this will make it harder and harder for the first rung of the ladder to be reached, particularly for young people, particularly for people that have less education.”

Bush talks about the “first rung of the ladder,” as if the so-called ladder doesn’t lead to a musty, old empty attic. I mean, how far can a Walmart worker or restaurant server hope to rise these days? Jobs are few and far between in many places. After they become manager, they can start their own restaurant or store: But the small businesses that once helped power America’s economy will likely fail because their neighbors can’t afford to buy anything or eat out.

And lest you think Bush is just trying to appeal to the more radical fringes of his party, MSNBC points out that a $0 minimum wage has become the new normal within the GOP. Republican lawmakers like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have also expressed similar views.

GOP 2016 hopeful Jeb Bush wants a $0 minimum wage.