Chamber of Commerce Pushes Republicans to Accept Job-Killing ‘Compromise’ with Democrats

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Jul 18, 2019

The Chamber of Commerce is yet again attempting to impede President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ economic boom. They are using their lobbying weight to push Congressional Republicans toward accepting a hike in the minimum wage as a “compromise” with Democrats.

“If the interest is in getting something done then we are willing partners for a sincere effort that reflects economic realities and combines these type of trade-offs,” said Glenn Spencer, who works as vice president for employment policy for the Chamber.

“The choice members have as they vote moving forward on this is: Is this an effort to come to compromise as they did previously or is this an effort to have a political vote on $15?” Spencer added.

The Chamber is urging Republican lawmakers to capitulate because House Democrats are relentlessly promoting the Raise the Wage Act, which would mandate a hike in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The legislation passed in the House today by a 231-199 vote, and Democrats are already gloating as a result.

Democrats are pushing their scheme as a raise for all workers, ignoring how the measure will negatively impact job growth and retention. The Chamber is seemingly on the same page as the far-left liberals, believing the minimum wage should be more than $10.

“To the extent that policy makers want to move higher — and there are obviously limits on that — then the more relief you are going to have to provide to small businesses,” Spencer said.

American for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist is calling out the cronies at the Chamber of Commerce for embracing job-killing socialist policies out of political expediency.

“This is a missed opportunity by the Chamber of Commerce, which could get up and say this is wrong on principle and it would hurt the economy,” Norquist said to the Washington Examiner.

“Whose lives are they cavalierly agreeing to screw? Why are they doing that? It is a huge mistake on the part of the Chamber,” he added.

Conservative economists have talked about the negative impacts of the minimum wage for generations, as the policy freezes individuals who want to work out of the job market.

“Many well-meaning people favor legal minimum-wage rates in the mistaken belief that they help the poor. These people confuse wage rates with wage income,” the late free market icon Milton Friedman wrote in a Newsweek op/ed back in 1966.

“The rise in the legal minimum-wage rate is a monument to the power of superficial thinking,” Friedman added.

Economist Thomas Sowell notes how minimum wage laws are especially harmful for African-Americans and other minority groups, depriving them of opportunities in the marketplace.

“Historically, lower skill levels did not prevent black males from having labor force participation rates higher than that of white males for every US Census from 1890 through 1930,” Sowell wrote in his 1980 book, Knowledge and Decisions.

“Since then, the general growth of wage-fixing arrangements: minimum wage laws, labor unions, civil service pay scales, etc. has reversed that and made more and more blacks unemployable despite their rising levels of education and skills: absolutely and relative to whites,” he added.

The Chamber, as usual, is urging Republicans to be Democrat-lite. They are happy with embracing socialism as long as they can protect their corporate profit margins with free trade and cheap labor.

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