Word from Albany is that the time is ripe for “compromise” on a minimum-wage hike. When attached to the GOP, that’s a word that should set off alarm bells — because all too often it translates to “utter abandonment of all principles.”
In his State of the State Address, Gov. Cuomo called for New York to raise its minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $8.75. Now President Obama has done Cuomo one better, making a pitch in Tuesday night’s State of the Union for a federal minimum wage of $9 an hour.
The GOP response? Dean Skelos, the Republican leader of the state Senate, has already said the GOP is open to an increase. He just hasn’t said how much.
As we’ve written before, allowing our political debate to degenerate into arguments over the precise level of the minimum wage is debilitating for New York.
If politicians sitting in Albany could simply make a better life for workers by legislative decree, why stop at Cuomo’s $8.75 an hour? Why not $10 an hour — as Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, another Democrat, has proposed? Come to think of it, why not just make it $50 an hour, which would give someone who works 40 hours per week an annual income of $104,000?
We all know the reason: Whatever the rate might say on paper, in practice no one would be making that $50/hour. People would not be hired, because they would be literally more expensive than they are worth.
That same dynamic operates at lower levels, even if the impact is less dramatic. Politicians like to pretend otherwise, because it lets them prattle on about how they are helping the less well off. In reality, they are hurting the most vulnerable members of the labor force: teenagers, new immigrants, and others with low skills.
In short, instead of trying to accommodate a Democratic governor whose proposals are all put forth with an eye to a bid for the White House three years from now, New York Republicans should be trying to stop him on these harmful moves.
What is the point of GOP control of the Senate if its only answer is going to be “the same, but less”?
What’s missing from New York today is a party dedicated to changing the debate by telling the truth about the cost of government and the need for a growing economy. In other words, we need a genuine opposition.
Because New York’s GOP ain’t cutting it.