Speaker John Boehner is so against raising the minimum wage that he once said he would rather commit suicide than vote for a “clean” increase.
The Ohio Republican and son of a barkeep has repeatedly opposed federally mandated hike increases, which have been a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook.Boehner has “always believed that it's a job killer,” former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette, a labor-friendly Republican who is close to Boehner, told The Hill. He pointed to the Congressional Budget Office’s recent report that found that increasing the minimum wage could cost the economy 500,000 jobs.
Some Democrats are optimistic Boehner will cave and allow a vote this year, but the record shows there is little if any daylight between the pro-business Speaker and his conservative conference on this issue.
Boehner made the comments about suicide in an April 1996 interview with The Weekly Standard.
“I’ll commit suicide before I vote on a clean minimum-wage bill,” Boehner, then the head of the House Republican Conference, said at the time.
Nice guy, John Boehner, right? And let's keep in mind Ohio has a higher state minimum wage at $8 an hour. How does he keep getting elected? Oh that's right, his district is the blood red Butler County suburbs north of Cincy where the only people making minimum wage are the people who don't live there.
Four months later, President Clinton over Boehner’s objections signed a minimum wage hike into law that lifted the wage by 90 cents, from $4.25 per hour to $5.15.
It wasn’t a clean wage hike because it included some Republican sweeteners such as tax breaks aimed at small businesses. The bill passed the Senate, 76-22 and cleared the House, 354-72. Boehner voted no.
Boehner voted against the wage hike again in 2007, when Democrats took over the House majority and in one of their first actions voted to lift the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour.
And he still did everything he could to block it. But he cares about Ohio's working class. Sure he does.
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