Wayne Allard: “Senator Allard has made a good case for the need for States to have flexibility to adapt the minimum wage to their…”

“Senator Allard has made a good case for the need for States to have flexibility to adapt the minimum wage to their particular State's cost of living. That is one option. The amendment I have is quite different. It recognizes that we do have very different costs of living, such as in Massachusetts, Boston is 35 percent above the national average cost of living. If you go south to Mobile, AL, it is 11 percent less than the average cost of living. So the current $5.15 minimum wage which is in Alabama actually has more buying power than the $7.50 minimum wage which is now in effect in Massachusetts. We are proposing that we be fair with this Federal minimum wage increase. The Senator from Massachusetts knows that, despite his passion for low-income workers and raising the minimum wage for workers, workers in 29 States will not get the full benefit. In fact, workers in Massachusetts will get no raise at all. Workers in Washington, Oregon, or California will get no raise, as will the minimum wage workers in Vermont or Connecticut or Rhode Island. All the States here in blue, the highest cost of living States in our country, will get either no increase or less than a 10-cent increase from this $2.10.”