President Biden was hit with a false fact-check claim after he said “all the economics” show the economy rises when the the minimum wage is increased.
“In his Super Bowl interview, Joe Biden claims ‘all the economics’ show the economy rises with a minimum wage boost,” Dispatch editor and CEO Stephen Hayes said on Twitter. “That’s false.”
In his Super Bowl interview, Joe Biden claims "all the economics" show the economy rises with a minimum wage boost.
That's false.https://t.co/6dVGPErhpg
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) February 7, 2021
“But I do think that we should have a minimum wage, stand by itself, $15 an hour and work your way up to the — it doesn’t have to be boom. And all the economics show, if you do that, the whole economy rises,” Biden told CBS Evening News, which aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Dispatch reported in an article fact-checking the claim that there are plenty of economists who oppose raising the minimum wage above the current $7.25 an hour.
“In 2019, for example, the conservative think tank the Economic Policies Institute published a survey of economists on their support for a $15 minimum wage,” reported Alec Dent, the fact-check’s author. “EPI performed similar surveys in the past and found similar results—including in 2015, when the survey was performed by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.”
Dent reported that critics have cited several reasoning for their opposition to a higher minimum wage, including “the effect on youth employment levels, the likelihood that it will increase the costs of products and services, and the chance that it will decrease the number of jobs available.”
The fact-check also went on to cite the Congressional Budget Office, which in 2019 projected that “the $15 option would reduce total real (inflation-adjusted) family income in 2025 by $9 billion, or 0.1 percent.”
More well-known fact-checkers, such as the Washington Post, CNN, and Politifact, have so far not jumped on the claim. None of those outlets immediately responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Biden’s plan to raise the federal minimum wage was originally included in his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill package despite widespread opposition from Republicans.
Democrats moved to pass the bill through the budget reconciliation process in an attempt to bypass the need for Republican support, but Republicans forced a vote on the minimum wage portions of the bill, and it was rejected from inclusion in the final package.
The defeat means Biden will now have to work with Congress to find a different way to raise the minimum wage, a tough prospect with a potential GOP filibuster looming in the Senate.
Story cited here.
