Government-mandated minimum wage laws have regularly proven to be a disastrous economic policy. But apparently, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., didn’t get the memo.
On Tuesday, Missouri’s senior senator introduced legislation called the “Higher Wages for American Workers Act,” which reportedly seeks to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and “call for an increase in subsequent years to match inflation,” according to CBS News. The federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25 per hour, as specified by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Pro-censorship Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., co-sponsored the bill, which was provided as an exclusive to CBS. The outlet regularly runs left-wing propaganda on behalf of Democrats, and its 60 Minutes program deceptively edited Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign interview to make her appear less dumb to voters.
In a statement provided to the outlet, Hawley claimed that “[f]or decades, working Americans have seen their wages flatline,” and that “[o]ne major culprit of this is the failure of the federal minimum wage to keep up with the economic reality facing hard-working Americans every day.” “This bipartisan legislation would ensure that workers across America benefit from higher wages,” the GOP senator added.
While these types of leftist-backed policies sound nice on the surface, numerous real-world examples and data have demonstrated that minimum wage laws harm the very workers Hawley claims he’s trying to help.
Writing in 2013, famed economist Dr. Thomas Sowell noted how “[a]dvocates of minimum wage laws often give themselves credit for being more ‘compassionate’ towards ‘the poor,’” but “they seldom bother to check what are the actual consequences of such laws.”
“Countries with minimum wage laws almost invariably have higher rates of unemployment than countries without minimum wage laws,” Sowell wrote. “There is nothing mysterious about the fact that most people start off in entry level jobs that pay much less than they will earn after they get some work experience. But, when minimum wage levels are set without regard to their initial productivity, young people are disproportionately unemployed — priced out of jobs.”
A recent example of the harms resulting from these laws can be found in California, where the state government enacted a $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers last year.
As Federalist Senior Contributor Christopher Jacobs observed, reports began emerging of Golden State restaurants “furloughing workers” months ahead of the law’s enactment to help compensate for the wage hike. Not long after the law took effect, Jacobs similarly noted how a survey conducted among such restaurant owners found that “just about all of [those] … surveyed (98 percent) said they had raised prices in response” to the required wage increase.
Mandating a minimum wage hike isn’t the only economic-related issue in which Hawley comes down on the same side as Democrats.
Amid negotiations over Republicans’ reconciliation package, the Missouri senator has been rushing to legacy media outlets like The New York Times and CNN to declare his full-throated opposition to any GOP-proposed “cuts” to Medicaid. As noted by CBS News, “Earlier this year, he [also] teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10%” — a proposal some analysts say “will disproportionately hurt working families by reducing access to financial services.”
Hawley may very well be seeking to advance the best interests of his constituents when advocating for these policies. But at the end of the day, pushing for tried and failed left-wing economics under the guise of populism is not the way to do it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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