By Kristen A. Lee
New York Daily News
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
...House Speaker John Boehner (click here) shot down President Obama’s State of the Union proposal for a minimum wage increase on Wednesday – calling the plan a job killer.
"When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday morning. “At a time when the American people are still asking the question, 'Where are the jobs?' why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?"
On Tuesday night, Obama proposed lifting the minimum wage to $9 an hour from $7.25 an hour. He followed up the proposal on Wednesday with a trip to an auto-parts factory in Asheville, N.C., where he pushed again for the increase.
“If you work full time, you shouldn’t be in poverty,” he told his audience.
Boehner, however, told reporters that a minimum wage increase would hurt minimum wage workers, rather than helping them.
“Listen, I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder,” Boehner said. “I know about this issue as much as anybody in this town. And what happens when you take away the first couple of rungs on the economic ladder – you make it harder for people on the ladder.”...
