“For all the Republicans who come on and talk about, ‘we’re for the blue-collar worker, we’re for the working person,’ there are some basic things that we should be for. One of them is reasonable increases from time to time in the minimum wage.”
That was no liberal making that statement. That was Republican and former Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, a man that some Republicans once wanted to see in the race for President. Pawlenty made the statement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.
Pawlenty added, “If you’re going to talk the talk about being for the middle class and the working person, if we have the minimum wage, it should be reasonably adjusted from time to time.”
According to the Washington Post, when Pawlenty was governor of Minnesota, he signed one minimum wage law into effect, but vetoed another. Minnesota’s minimum wage had long been one of the lowest in the country.
In the recent dust-up between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate over minimum wage increases, a lot has been about midterm electioneering. Republicans just handed the Dems a party-line vote that prevented a bill raising the federal Minimum Wage to $10.10 from coming to the floor.
It is not likely that Democrats expected or even really wanted that bill to make it to the floor. Rather, they wanted that issue to be in the minds of Americans as they consider who to vote for in the upcoming midterms.
Pawlenty himself is now head of the Financial Services Roundtable. He clarified that he would not support the bill that was recently in consideration in the Senate.
“(W)hile I support reasonable increases in the minimum wage, the proposal being presented by the Senate majority goes too far and too fast,” the former governor said. “I wish [Democrats] would work with Republicans to find a reasonable compromise on this issue.”
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