This study leaves little doubt that a minimum of 200,000 (plus) jobs will be quickly lost, with plants closing in dozens of states. This number could easily exceed 1 million jobs-and even 2 million jobs--at the more extreme assumptions about residual risk.
When we pass minimum wage legislation it says one thing, Mr. Speaker: It says to the young black in the inner city, it says to the handicapped individual, it says to the young person looking for a first time job, unless you can meet a minimum standard, we will pass a law that says it is a violation of the Federal statute to hire such a person. Mr. Speaker, we can calculate to a certainty the number of people that we will unemploy by raising the minimum wage to various levels. At $4.50, at $5, at $6, hundreds of thousands of people are denied access to the job market. Minimum wage laws create unemployment. That is a mean, vicious thing to do.
We say we're trying to help the working poor while we actually will be helping young part-time workers. There is one thing, however, upon which there is agreement. Economists from all persuasions agree that increasing the minimum wage will mean lost jobs and it will mean inflation.
The whole CAFE scheme is, in terms of public policy, ridiculous, and has the practical effects of driving U.S. jobs abroad.
I want to make very sure that we’re not putting U.S. jobs at risk over the next two years.
The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.
Please, dear legislator, do not eliminate my job because you have put the business places in Pennsylvania in a noncompetitive situation where we cannot compete with Ohio, New York, New Mexico, and so forth. Pennsylvania should have our laws consistent with other States so that our manufacturers can continue to employ our neighbors, our sons and grandsons and granddaughters, so that we can work in Pennsylvania, so that we are not driving our people out of the Commonwealth.
We think this bill is definitely going to cost jobs in New Jersey. Why come into New Jersey and why expand when you have that much additional cost?
Unemployment always lags behind the business cycle and is highest when recovery has begun. In such periods, when pessimism is pervasive, costly proposals are often advanced, such as public programs to create jobs, mortgage subsidies, and health insurance for the unemployed. These proposals always prove to be unnecessary since they never get fully started until recovery is going strong. Furthermore, such programs would increase the federal deficit at a time when it needs to be reduced. This would mean applying the wrong solutions, which would increase the deficit, abort the recovery, reinflate the economy and continue unacceptable high levels of employment.
We also oppose those proposals that would increase employers’ labor costs. Mandating through tax penalties that employers carry laid-off workers for some specified period or open health plan enrollment to spouses, or contribute to an assigned-risk pool, would place them in double financial jeopardy. Employers’ response could be to drop their health care plans altogether and/or lay off more workers.
