Bernie Sanders decimates the Republican argument against the minimum wage

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, from Vermont, recently made an appearance on The Ed Show where he quickly and concisely laid out why Republicans are wrong to oppose raising the federal minimum wage:

I say they’re just factually wrong. In my state of Vermont, our minimum wage is $8.60 compared to the national minimum wage of $7.25.  We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in America.  You have states where there is virtually no minimum wage at all, and their unemployment rate is much higher.  The facts just don’t bear it out.  The reality is that if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour about 30 million Americans would get a pay raise, and 88% of them are adults.  These are not kids.  These are working families struggling to keep their heads above water.  They need a pay raise.  We’ve gotta pass it.

Senator Sanders went on to say:

Ed, here is the real outrage.  Not only can they afford to pay a decent minimum wage, but here is the point.  Right now the taxpayers of this country are subsidizing the McDonalds people, Burger King and Walmart.  In Walmart in particular, you have the wealthiest family in the world.  They’re worth $100 billion, but the wages and the benefits they provide to their workers are so low that many of these workers go on Medicaid.  They go on food stamps.  They have to get government help for their housing, so the taxpayers of America end up subsidizing Walmarts, McDonalds, and Burger King.  If we raise the minimum wage the workers would actually have enough living, enough income to get off of some of these programs.

Lou Colagiovanni is the editor of ruthless-politics.com, National Crime Reporter for Examiner.com, and editor of the political discussion community,”We survived Bush.  You will survive Obama.”  You may contact Lou at [email protected].