Are you living in poverty and just looking for a way out? Well, if you're like most American's living in poverty, you're probably living on the minimum wage. I'm sure you would think that raising the minimum wage would help bring you out of poverty, or at least improve your situation at the very least. Well unfortunately, you're wrong. At least according to Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA). His solution for families in poverty? Get married and work longer hours.
Think Progress
KINGSTON: If the Democrat Party truly wanted to take on poverty, they would have to say what is the relationship between marriage and the poverty level and between hours worked and the poverty level, because the truth of the matter is, if people end poverty, many of them would marry and work 40 hours a week, they would be out of poverty. ... It’s not something I have the knowledge of or the information of, but it’s an economic fact that I hope we could have committee hearings on and discuss this. If we want to attack poverty, that’s where we need to go. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
So what you're telling me, Mr King, is that if I work 40 hours a week at minimum wage, and I get married and my wife works 40 hours a week at minimum wage, we won't live in poverty anymore? Sure you maybe right, If I don't have any children. And I would still be barely scraping by on our combined $21,424 a year annual gross salary. Put some children into the equation and i'm sure you understand where this is going.
Kingston is just plain wrong. And besides, who can advocate people to work longer hours after saying this:
"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says."
That's after the Democrats proposed a 5 day work week, the same work week that Kingston is recommending for families looking to get out of poverty. Apparently Kingston couldn't care less about families.