Minimum wage excuses

Andy Barr, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell say that minimum-wage jobs were not meant to raise a family on, that they were meant for high school and college students. Every time raising the minimum wage came up, Democrats would pass it, Republicans would kill it. The three Kentucky Republicans claim small businesses can’t afford to pay people more than $7.25 an hour.

Who is working these low-wage jobs? Women, single mothers. And more than 50 percent of minimum-wage earners are over 25. We know how some Republicans feel about working women. Do low-wage employers think they can pay people $7.25 indefinitely? If they can’t raise the wage now, then when? Are these employers going to volunteer to pay people more? Heck, no, they won’t.

They will continue to pay poverty-line wages for as long as the government says they can, and Republicans are helping them do it. They know people can’t live on $7.25 an hour. They’re not on the people’s side. They are on the employers’ side.

If the majority of people working for minimum wage were men instead of women, the minimum wage would be at least $11.50 by now.

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Minimum wage excuses."