- Thursday, February 18th, 2021
Tim Scott blasts Dems’ proposed $15 minimum wage, says killing millions more jobs is ‘not common sense’
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said Wednesday on “America’s Newsroom” the proposed $15 minimum wage increase will continue to kill millions of jobs during the pandemic and argued there is no “common sense” behind the move.
Scott made the comments after Republicans pushed back on the Democrats’ plans to bump the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Republican Senators Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., proposed a plan to gradually raise the federal minimum wage while ensuring businesses cannot hire illegal immigrants. Romney said “we must protect American workers.”
SEN. TIM SCOTT: “…I do like Cotton and Romney’s approach. First, it starts after the pandemic. Second, the increase is slower than the Biden plan and then finally, they make sure that American workers are not discriminated against. Those are three powerful pillars that we should focus on. Most importantly, we should recognize that in the middle of this pandemic, killing another two to four million jobs on top of millions of jobs lost during the pandemic is not common sense anywhere in America. So we need to avoid eliminating jobs in the middle of the pandemic and build something else that’s really important for us to recognize.
One percent of adults twenty-five and older make the minimum wage. Five percent of adults have more than one job. So focusing and targeting the type of relief that we want to bring to the American worker is really important to understand the plight of the American worker and that one percent that makes the minimum wage.
About two-thirds of those folks are in the food and beverage business, meaning they have tips that take them beyond the minimum wage. Really important information that has not been analyzed. I thank Senators Cotton and Romney for working on this very important issue.
…when you look at the left-wing of the left party, AOC and others and Bernie Sanders demanding not only fifteen dollar minimum wage, but they want to then index it to higher wages every single day. If they would remember the fact that more than two trillion dollars of America’s payroll could be that they are supporting the permanent destruction of jobs, especially entry-level jobs, where women and minorities consistently find themselves having a chance to get started in the American dream.”