Mike Enzi: “too often when we debate the issue of minimum wage, we focus on abstract ideas and proposals and fail to consider the…”

“too often when we debate the issue of minimum wage, we focus on abstract ideas and proposals and fail to consider the impact of our actions on the small business community that lives and breathes in the real world. I appreciate the cooperation with Senator Reid and others, focused around Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, working in a very bipartisan way to put together a package that would help to relieve some of the impact of the minimum wage increase. I hope everyone has noticed that in the minimum wage debate we have been having, the debate has not been over whether to raise the minimum wage. The debate has been on what we can do to alleviate some of the impact on small business. I hope that is the way we can continue the discussion on this, too. I mentioned earlier today that you need to meet some of these small businessmen. They are in your neighborhood. You can meet them easily. They run the laundry, corner grocery, little retail stores. For the most part they are families who are eking out a living while they are taking on a lot of risk. They do have these moments that they wonder why they undertook that risk and how they are going to continue to fund that risk. Sometimes they are paying employees when they can't even afford to pay themselves, and their families are relying on the business to support them as a family, too, particularly considering all the risks they are taking.”