Todd Carmichael, CEO and co-founder of the Philadelphia-based coffee company, La Colombe Coffee Roasters, went after Tea Party U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R. PA) on raising the minimum wage back in September:
“I don’t want to be in the business of eliminating jobs,” U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey told a town hall meeting on Aug. 31.
I agree. We need more jobs that pay a decent, livable wage.
But that is where our agreements end. Because rather than focus on policies that create those well-paying jobs, Toomey denies his support for the one initiative that creates and sustains jobs above the poverty line: establishing a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
Toomey knows a person can’t support a family on $7.25 an hour — the current federal minimum wage. We all do. He said so at the town hall, where he even said “that is why the government has programs to help them.” What he ignores is that companies and consumers need a higher minimum wage, too.
I am living, breathing, profitable proof that raising the minimum wage is good for business and workers.
Our workforce, profitable companies, and consumers as a whole need a minimum-wage raise. If even profitable, growing concerns like a coffee-roasting company can do it, so can others. I’ll go even further and say that unless you pay your employees a nonpredatory living wage that keeps people and their families above the poverty line, you don’t deserve to be in business. And you certainly don’t deserve a tax break for creating predatory-pay “jobs.”
And now, Carmichael is back and he’s helping U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D. PA) expose all the lies about Trump and the GOP’s tax scam:
Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) is right about the tax bill currently working its way through Congress when he says, “Congressional Republicans have taken great pains to spin their tax scheme as great for the middle class, but a few marginal changes don’t change the fact that their plan is fundamentally a massive giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.” And every CEO knows he’s right.
How do I know what CEOs are thinking? I’m one of them.
I’ve grown a Philadelphia-based small business into a business with cafes and industrial facilities in six states and the District of Columbia. I’ve placed canned draft lattes on market shelves in every corner of the country. And I employ hundreds of people in almost every income tax bracket. Along the way, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to grow a profitable business that values the people at its core and the communities where we do business.
And I can tell you what no other CEO wants to tell you: Casey is right when he says that a half-trillion dollars of corporate tax giveaways proposed by the GOP aren’t going to do a thing for the middle class, or create a single job.
Because what every CEO knows but won’t tell you is this: A tax break for their company simply means a fatter bottom line.
Not jobs. Not investment. Just more money in the pockets of the folks like me.
That’s bad policy, and it’s time to set the record straight.
Damn straight, Casey has been relentless in helping kill this disastrous tax bill and we will need him in the U.S. Senate to keep fighting for working and middle-class families. Unlike this Trumpanzee who Casey will be facing next year:
Let’s make sure Casey is ready to take down Barletta next year. Click here to donate and get involved with Casey’s re-election campaign.