Kevin Brady: “I think we are missing a historic opportunity to change the paradigm to really help workers get into a living wage for…”

“I think we are missing a historic opportunity to change the paradigm to really help workers get into a living wage for the long term. The fact is, an increase to $7.25 an hour will still leave a single mom with a child at or near poverty. And there is no doubt that a video store owner in Texas or anywhere else with five workers, when faced with a $25,000 increase in payroll and no chance they are going to rent that many more videos, are going to look at whether they can afford all those workers. Remembering well the minimum wage jobs I held when younger and also having worked hard to make a small business payroll, I think we need new thinking. America's goals should not be to raise the minimum wage; our goals should be to get workers off it and into good-paying jobs that you can raise a family on. So rather than recycle the same 60-year-old arguments, why don't we help workers break out of the minimum wage trap? Rather than raise the minimum wage, let employers create education debit cards where workers can take those debit cards to the local community college or the trade schools so they can get a real job. Let business and professions, whole industries contribute to those debit cards so we can train workers for the jobs of today which are crying for many American workers.”