Posted on 02/26/2014 7:31:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
So much for changing the narrative in 2014 from the ObamaCare debacle. Democrats, led by Barack Obama, planned to go on offense over the minimum-wage rate to cast the GOP as heartless. But in his rush to the barricades, Harry Reid belatedly discovered that his caucus didn’t like the fight nearly as much as he and Obama did (via Instapundit):
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday delayed action on legislation raising the minimum wage, the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 agenda.
The Nevada Democrat made the surprising move amid escalating Democratic resistance in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report released last week estimating that hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could cost the equivalent of 500,000 jobs by late 2016.
Reid has not yet unified his caucus on the issue, which is a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook. Of the 55 senators who caucus with the Democrats, only 32 have signed on as official co-sponsors of Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) bill.
Let’s get this straight. This is Obama’s highest domestic agenda priority item, and the chamber which his party controls can barely get half of their caucus to sign onto it? That’s some genius work at the White House. Who’s their legislative liaison these days?
The issue, of course, is that the CBO actually scored the proposal before Reid could advance the bill. Their estimate of 500,000 jobs lost in just two years would be a boat anchor on any legislation, but especially in an economy where workforce participation looks like this:
The response from the White House didn’t help, either. When challenged on the numbers, their Council of Economic Advisers suggested that business owners should just learn to live with lower profits. As I wrote at the Fiscal Times shortly afterward:
Therefore, Furman advises businesses that they have other options. “The other margins on which firms can adjust — for example, reduced profits — mean that there is substantial literature that has found little or no employment impact on the minimum wage,” Furman told reporters.
This is one of the most revealing statements made by this administration about its economic policy and its worldview. Their vision of an American economy is not one in which wealth gets created in a dynamic environment and creates jobs and opportunities that in turn create more wealth, jobs, and opportunities. This White House sees the economy as a static, zero-sum game in which investors and business owners simply should be told to accept “reduced profits” while government shapes the markets to their own purposes. …
Wages have stalled in the economy, but it’s not from the stasis in the minimum wage, which was last increased in 2009. It comes from economic, regulatory, and tax policies that tell investors that they should expect less return on their capital and penalize them for expansion. If minimum-wage increases solved the wage-stagnation problem, the 2007-9 increases should have worked. Instead, it constricted the labor markets for the people with the most need and contributed to entry-level job lockout.
In order to drive real wages and buying power up, we need policies that incentivize both investors and workers, rather than celebrating disincentives. We need to stop penalizing investment and increasing the costs of labor, rather than attempt to tell people how wonderful higher labor costs and expanded regulatory burdens will be for their businesses. We will end stagnation when we stop embracing it as the ideal.
Not surprisingly, Senate Democrats aren’t all that keen on political seppuku. The Hill notes that some red-state Democrats facing voters are conspicuously absent from the bill’s supporters, like Kay Hagan (NC), Mary Landrieu (LA), and Mark Pryor (AR). Pryor wants his state to raise its minimum wage to $8.50 rather than do anything at the federal level. Even Tom Carper (DE), who has a safe seat and won’t be up for election this year, wants a revised proposal with a lower increase. Tom Harkin, the retiring Iowa Democrat, refused to produce a smaller bill.
Instead, Reid and Obama now have egg on their faces, and a narrative in ruins. If half of their own caucus balked at the minimum-wage hike, it’s hard to point the finger at Republicans.
Yeah, I'm sure that's the narrative the communist media/entertainment/academia propaganda complex is going to run with. /s/
I’ve gotta say, I’m shocked.
Bad economics, sure. But it has yet to poll lower than 65% approval with our low-info electorate. I thought this was a shoo-in.
hairy screed stopped it so it’s the republicrats fault.
Come on harry your puppet master, mac daddy, wants you to bow down with you butt in the air and do what he says.
China is probably disappointed. All those new jobs...gone??
Such a deduction would do a lot more to help people up to the middle class level than all the mandates in ObaMaoCare combined.
But I guess they don't call the GOP the Stupid Party for nothing.
Harry better get moving, this nation can’t survive without a twenty dollar Big Mac!
It’s hell putting lipstick on a pig if you’re the one that has to kiss it!!!
Not in the slightest.
MSM talking points scheduled for later this year:
1. Obamacare was working great until the GOP screwed it up.
2. GOP ended all unemployment payments
3. GOP refused to hike minimum wage.
4. GOP tried to ban blacks from voting.
5. GOP wants to ban abortions and homo sex.
6. Death toll from GWB's hurricane Katrina reaches 47 million.
7. General Motors showed a profit of $271 billion in 2013, most of which they donated to Planned Parenthood.
8. Fracking found to have contributed 70% to 2013's global-warming related deaths. All scientists agree.
9. Annual international likeability survey shows Obama still tops world's most favorite leader list around the world.
The MSM will repeat these talking point around the clock... Bill Maher will repeat them daily on his hard-news program, and most liberals will believe every word of it.
The GOP will counter with their strongest punch yet: Introduce a bill to shift funding from the Trident Nuclear Sub Fire Safety program to the Environmentally Friendly Condoms for Death Row Inmates program.
Boehner will cry, Rove will blame Palin for the Dems' sweep of both houses in November.
“But I guess they don’t call the GOP the Stupid Party for nothing. “
The GOP has literally dozens of issues to beat the Democrats over the head with this cycle.
Instead they choose to rollover, attack conservatives, pander to hispanics and spend like drunken sailors.
At some point you have to realize it is not stupidity, but rather calculation. They are happy to be the permanent minority as long as the benefits of being a member of the club continue to increase. If they win, they might be forced to deliver on promises of taking power away from the government. That is something your average GOPer doesn’t want.
WOW - Reid NOT being able to demand obedience to the RAT King and his policies?
Hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could cost the equivalent of 500,000 jobs by late 2016.
The more you depend on the gov the more power they have the dems have been using that plan for over fifty years.
they’ll go the other way....increase the earned income credit. I don’t believe you even have to work to scam that one.
They stopped a bill that will kill jobs? What utter hypocrites they are.
I had a conversation about this with my brother a while back. His comment was that all through the 1970s and 1980s, he thought "If only the Republicans had a majority in Congress, things would be different." For much of our lives, we never thought it possible. It seemed the democrats morphed into communists and their grip on the House of Representatives was perpetual. But then, the Republicans took the House in 1994...
and for a while it appeared there would be change. But by 2002, it was clear that nothing had.
So I have sadly come to the same conclusion that you have. The concept of limited government, individual liberty, and private enterprise are all empty slogans used to collect votes when expedient. There is no real desire to change DC, and being in the minority gives the GOP cover for why they don't.
Now some of the Democrats are making more noise than the GOPe
Merely a speedbump on the road to Directive 10-289.
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