President Obama told a union organizer who had his hours cut thanks to Obamacare that his proposed minimum wage hike would make up for his lost wages.
However, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) crunched the numbers and found that the steep minimum wage hike would not help out those faced with losing full-time job status. Cantor’s office found that a current minimum wage employee working 40 hours per week would make only $2.50 less than a worker earning $10.10 per hour and working 29 hours per week. That, according to the Virginia Republican’s blog post, is the best-case scenario.
- Because of Obamacare’s regulations, an hourly worker’s hours can be reduced by as much as 25 percent to get below the 30 hour threshold.
- In 2013, President Obama proposed a $9/hour minimum wage ($261/week @ 29 hours).Coincidentally this year, he upped his proposal to an amount that just replaces the money robbed from hourly worker’s paychecks by Obamacare.
- Yet, 21 states already have a minimum wage higher than $7.25. An hourly worker in Washington may be celebrating the Seahawks win, but he isn’t celebrating Obamacare gutting his pay by $102.52/week.
The exchange came during a Google Hangout the president held in January when a fry cook asked Obama what he was supposed to do with reduced hours. Several weeks after Obama reassured the man that his wages would increase, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expects the 40 percent minimum wage increase to eliminate 500,000 jobs, and it could cut as many as 1 million. Cantor said the president is disguising the costs of Obamacare with ineffective measures such as the minimum wage.
"Obamacare is reducing the hours and gutting the take-home pay of working middle class employees, and the president is trying to hide that fact by spinning a minimum wage debate," Cantor’s blog post said. "If the President truly cares for hourly employees in this country, he’ll put the brakes on this law that is costing them hours and hard-earned pay."