New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo allegedly plagiarized talking points from a think tank connected to the shadowy Democracy Alliance.
Cuomo published an op-ed in the Thursday New York Times calling for a substantial hike to the starting wage paid to fast food workers. Capital New York found that he relied heavily on the words of the National Employment Law Project, a pro-union activist group that is listed as a recipient of the Democracy Alliance, as well as other Democratic think tanks and liberal political apparatus.
A talking point from a [Working Families Party] memo circulated in January 2014 says, "More than 600 economists, including seven Nobel Prize laureates, recently affirmed the growing consensus that low-wage workers benefit from modest increases in the minimum wage without causing job loss."
The governor wrote in the Times, "More than 600 economists, including seven Nobel Prize laureates, have affirmed the growing consensus that raising wages for the lowest-paid workers doesn’t hurt the economy."
In another instance, Cuomo's op-ed reads, "Every dollar increase for a minimum-wage worker results in $2,800 in new consumer spending."
That data point appears in a summary from the labor-backed National Employment Law Project’s Raise the Minimum Wage campaign, which described a 2011 study by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank this way: "The authors examine 23 years of household spending data and find that for every dollar increase for a minimum wage worker results in $2,800 in new consumer spending by his or her household over the following year."
Cuomo is fighting to make New York’s minimum wage one of the highest in the country. His support for a drastic hike to the wages of fast food workers mirrors the Fight for $15 movement spearheaded by labor giant SEIU. Cuomo has received nearly $180,000 from the union and its affiliates since 2008, according to New York campaign disclosures.
In February, he participated in a union rally to lay out his vision for wage hikes, according to the New York Observer.
Mr. Cuomo took the stage with top brass from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union, 1199 SEIU, 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel and Motel Trades Council at the latter union’s headquarters… "business can’t say ‘I’m sorry, I’m broke.’ They’re doing great. And we know they’re doing great. And we want them to do what’s fair, and we want them to do what is right by labor, and that is today is all about," he said.