Bill Clinton: “No, I'm for raising it. You know I am. Speaker Gingrich. Let me say that I think that I'd like to see every American…”

“No, I'm for raising it. You know I am. Speaker Gingrich. Let me say that I think that I'd like to see every American make as much as they can possibly make. But I also am concerned--no, I don't think it's too much. I'm very concerned, however--there's a disagreement among economists about this. I'm very concerned that if you raise the cost of the first job for the poorest person, for example, in the inner city, that what you tend to do is increase black, male, teenage unemployment, which is exactly the thing you don't want to do. And so my goal is to have a rapidly growing economy where, frankly, wages keep going up because people are better educated, more productive, and can compete in the world market. And we've been telling the Russians and the Ukraines and the Poles and the Hungarians that the free market works and you've got to get out in a free market and you've got to compete in a world market. And my concern is just that as you go through this transition that if we raise the minimum wage--and, again, you get economists on both sides of this argument. But the group we--we don't hurt anybody who's an industrial plant that's doing well. We don't hurt anybody who's already working for the Government. But if you are the marginal employee and you're out there, you are the first laid off. And that makes it harder for Hispanic and black teenagers to get decent jobs, and we already have too much unemployment and too much long-term lack of job skills among minority teenagers. But I think that's a legitimate disagreement probably between the two of us.”