gergroy said:
Wow Ok, starting out the interview Larry Kudlow, "A lot of conservatives, led by the wall street journal editorial page, were horrified when you said you want to index the minimum wage for inflation, and they said look, thats just going to raise the minimum wage, thats going to raise the unemployment rate, especially for young people, especially for minorities, it sort of a little bit of unfinished business. Why do you want to raise the minimum wage, why do you want to index it for inflation?" Mitt Romney, "Well actually when I was governor, the legislature passed a law raising the minimum wage, I vetoed it. I said look, the way to deal with minimum wage is this. On a regular basis, in the proposal I said every two years we should look at the minimum wage. We should look at whats happened to inflation, We should also look at the jobs level throughout the country, the unemployment rate, competetive rates in other states or in this instance nations. So, certainly the level of inflation is something you should look at and whats the right way to keep america competitive. Larry Kudlow, "There hasn't been any inflation or at least very minimal so far." Mitt Romney, "Yes, so that would tell you that right now there probably isn't a need to raise the minimum wage. What I can tell you is had one indexed the wage back to say 1990, the minimum wage would be lower now than it actually is. Democrats make big hay of this every few years, oh, we are going to raise the minimum wage and get a lot of hooplah for it. Uh, frankly the right way to process this is to look at the minimum wage, look at how unemployment rates are, make adjustments as time goes on based upon our need to compete, the need of the job market, and of course what has happened to inflation.
You see, you seem to be ignoring huge parts of this conversation. The question initially asked is why does romney support indexing minimum wage for inflation. That is Romneys state position in this interview. He then talks about how as governor he vetoed a bill that just wanted to raise the minimum wage without looking at outside factors like inflation and unemployment. He doesn't support just increasing the minimum wage, he wants to set up a long term goal of gradual increases over the years to match inflation. When he says there probably isn't a need to raise minimum wage, to you see what he is responding to? Do you see why that statement is being taken out of context? Romney has had this position of raising the minimum wage to match inflation since he ran for senate in the 1990's, it hasn't changed. He doesn't have any statements on minimum wage after this because this is actually the last time minimum wage has been brought up this election cycle. |
I am not ignoring any of the conversation. I've listened to it twice, and now I've read your transcript of it. I see that Romney explains why he *doesn't* support raising the minimum wage right now. But your original claim was that Romney has *consistently supported* raising the minimum wage: that he has supported raising the minimum wage in the past, and that he continues to support raising the minimum wage now.
Here's the key statement that I pointed out from the interview: "Right now there probably isn't a need to raise the minimum wage." So, again, please point out the key sentence from that interview where Romney says "I support raising the minimum wage right now."
