Senator Rand Paul says raising the minimum wage would negatively impact job prospects for minorities and children.
The Courier-Journal reports that while speaking Monday night to a group of business owners and officials in Louisville, Sen. Paul said Congress could help the poor and unemployed by cutting corporate and personal income taxes in struggling areas.
The Bowling Green Republican has introduced a bill that would create what he calls “economic freedom zones” in zip codes where at least one-quarter of the residents live at or below the poverty line.
That move comes amid a debate at both the federal and state governmental levels over whether the minimum wage should be hiked. Congress is considering whether to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
Kentucky House Speaker Greg Stumbo sponsored legislation this year that would have increased the state’s minimum wage to that same level over the course of three years.
While Stumbo and advocates for the poor said such a move was needed to help struggling working-class families in the commonwealth, the bill died in the state Senate.
Sen. Paul said while he understands why workers want more than the minimum wage, those jobs, he said, “are better than zero jobs that pay zero dollars.”
