Fox News found a new way to demonize “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) by attacking her idea for a $20-an-hour minimum wage as harmful to Americans.
No, nobody suggested Tlaib should leave the country. But the three conservatives came very close to suggesting that if she really loved the U.S., she would never have proposed such a thing. Last week, a Fox guest advising the Trump campaign explicitly called any minimum wage “anti-American.”
Host Neil Cavuto stressed the negative in his introduction: "The Congressional Budget Office saying that a minimum wage of $15 an hour would cost about 1.3 million Americans their jobs." He was referring to the minimum wage bill recently passed by House Democrats.
Republican guest Justin Sayfie got to the anti-American suggestion: "I don't understand why the Democrats want to put so many Americans out of work," he said. "This proposal would certainly cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs in the U.S., and that doesn't make any sense."
Fox News Democrat Capri Cafaro predictably did not challenge the fear mongering and she immediately distanced herself from Democrats supporting a minimum wage increase. "I take a little more of a measured approach," she said. She acknowledged that "there are thousands, if not millions, of Americans that are trying to support their family on one, two, or three minimum wage jobs.” But she also called for the recognition of “regional differences” and for a minimum wage to be “decided regionally.”
However, while Cafaro said "small businesses need to be exempt under 50 employees," she also said, “the big boys like Walmart” can afford and should pay more.
Fox Business host Elizabeth MacDonald ratcheted the fear mongering back up: "The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, said you raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, up to 3.7 million jobs would be lost." She added, "We have anecdotal evidence of seeing companies are laying off workers when that one size fits all, cookie-cutter approach does go into effect. Certainly in Rashida Tlaib’s home district, in Michigan, you would possibly see job losses. … A lot of workers there could see their jobs cut." She said Amazon "started to cut bonuses, started to cut stock-based pay, and it moved more to robots."
“It’s a one size fits all approach that’s not working,” MacDonald insisted. "The federal approach, top down approach might be the wrong way to go."
Not one of the conservatives had any suggestions to help the 40% of Americans who are still struggling to pay their bills in Donald Trump’s economy. Nobody mentioned that the authors of two recent economic papers found that raising the minimum wage helps low-paid workers without damaging the broader economy.
But Sayfie returned to his suggestion of anti-Americanism. "Republicans can rightfully say they're protecting jobs," he said. A $20 an hour minimum wage would "kill jobs" and "send jobs offshore, overseas."
Whether or not Americans could have a decent life didn’t seem to matter to him, MacDonald or Cavuto.
Watch it below, from the July 23, 2019 Your World.