President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour from the current $7.25 would harm the economy, some Republicans said Tuesday after the State of the Union address.
“If you raise the minimum wage, the inevitable effect will be, number one, young people will lose their jobs or not be able to get their first jobs,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told CNSNews.com.
“Unemployment among young people will go up if the minimum wage goes up as President Obama says. Unemployment among Hispanics, among African Americans, among those struggling to get their first job to climb the economic ladder, will go up.”
Cruz said his father, a Cuban immigrant who didn’t speak English, got his first job as a dishwasher, making 50 cents an hour. “If President Obama had had his way, the minimum wage would have been raised from 50 cents to $2 and they wouldn’t be able to hire my dad,” Cruz said. “It would have cost him the first job that let him pay his way through college that led him to eventually building a small business.
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