Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ)
Asked by reporters to follow up on his "I'm tired of hearing about the minimum wage" comments, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was careful not to provide another "I'm tired of hearing about the minimum wage"-type headline. But he remained as wrong and dishonest as ever on the issue, continuing to ignore the fact that the average age of minimum wage workers is 35 and that 27 percent of them have children of their own, instead framing his opposition to a minimum wage increase around parents sitting at the kitchen table having greater aspirations for their children than for those children to earn a higher minimum wage.
The problem, according to Christie (video below the fold), is that "all the Democrats and the president want to talk about is the minimum wage." If only the Democrats and the president would just shut up, millions of low-wage workers would stop noticing that they couldn't pay their bills, I guess. Like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Christie is trying to keep the conversation about the minimum wage firmly rooted in the hypothetical. Don't Americans want better? Isn't it a defeat to just want to raise the wage for the lowest-paid workers when we could want to triple everyone's wages?
Except that's not talking about reality. Christie is asking us to sacrifice reality for his little fantasy. In reality, millions of people earn the minimum wage and tens of millions would benefit from raising it to $10.10 an hour. Christie and Walker want us to forget that these tens of millions of people exist, and that there's a single time-honored policy that would give them not just a chance at a better-paying job, but actual better pay at the jobs they have now. And that's something Christie opposes. All his talk about aspirations and better jobs is just an attempt to distract from the fact that he does not want employers to have to pay their workers enough to live on.
And speaking of distractions. Christie threw out a giant one with this little nugget:
What we should be talking about is not an income inequality problem but an opportunity inequality problem. People want greater opportunity in this country and better-paying jobs and the president wants to focus, because he's a class warrior, what he wants to focus on is the minimum wage.
Riiight. We shouldn't raise the minimum wage or talk about income inequality, and it's the president who's the class warrior. Bear in mind that polling consistently shows that raising the minimum wage is incredibly popular with voters. Accusing Democrats of waging class war by pushing a policy supported by a solid majority of voters isn't a serious statement about the minimum wage, it's an attempt to shift the conversation away from an unpopular issue for Republicans to some red meat for the Obama-hating base.
Chris Christie isn't up for re-election this year, but a lot of terrible Republican governors are. Please chip in $3 to defeat them.
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