How Democrats Use the Minimum Wage Issue To Exploit The Poor

The Democrat Party of the U.S. has gained and kept political power by portraying themselves to the masses of people as the only political party that cares about the working middle class and the vulnerable poor. You need us, Democrats love to say at every election cycle, to help you achieve a better life. And as the November election nears, they are once again bringing up the minimum wage issue. Their position is that the Republicans are too insensitive to the needs of the poor to raise the minimum wage. Voters must elect Democrats in order to see a minimum pay raise. But at some point American voters, particularly the working middle class and poor, may begin to wonder whether or not Democrats are incompetent or something else is at play. The plain truth is: we have a president who now boasts that he can do anything he wants by using his “pen and phone.” He does not need to pass laws through Congress. Indeed, he has been the least cooperative with the House of Representatives of any president in recent American history.

He has usurped Congressional powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. There are two things he could do with his powerful pen and phone about the minimum wage right now. First, he could issue one of his legendary Executive Orders and remove all Federal income taxes and payroll taxes, including Social Security and Medicare, from anyone earning less than fifteen dollars per hour. Secondly, he could raise the Federal minimum wage, at the stroke of his pen, to fifteen dollars an hour, the wage the SEIU have pursued. Either one of these moves would instantly put more money into the pockets of those who earn just enough to keep themselves in poverty. But he chooses to not do so. In fact, in typical Democratic leadership style, he blames others. As I have stated here before, he learned his leadership style from the mayors of Chicago, his political alma mater, and the tactics of the Democrat Party of Illinois. And the best way to see what he learned, and understand what Democrats do to exploit the poor with the minimum wage issue, is to see what’s going on in the state of Illinois right now. The governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, is now being seriously challenged by a Republican adversary, Bruce Rauner. He needs to portray Rauner as wealthy and out of touch with the working class and poor. Never mind that Democrats in Illinois become politicians so that they can use their power to become wealthy, such as the Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, or the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Chicago’s City Council, Ed Burke. Pat Quinn has been governor over five years. During that time, Democrats have had supermajorities in both the Illinois House and Senate. They could pass, at any time, any bill they wanted, any hour they wanted. They already do not allow Republicans to even see bills until ten minutes before a floor vote. The inescapable conclusion is this: if Democrats and their governor wanted to raise the minimum wage to ten dollars an hour there is nothing the Republicans, the superminority, could do to stop them. In fact, one could argue that Democrats would block any attempt Republicans would make to introduce a bill in committee to raise the minimum wage to ten dollars. Similarly, the White House has announced that the president will use “executive action” to unilaterally change Immigration Law, an act that is unconstitutional. Too bad he hasn’t felt inspired to use executive action to raise the Federal minimum wage. Too bad for the poor, that is. So the thoughtful voter should ask: if Democrats in Illinois, and the White House, have complete authority to raise the minimum wage, why haven’t they done so? After all, they pride themselves in being the party that cares for the less advantaged, for those living in poverty. Democrats cannot blame Republicans in Illinois for the minimum wage. What they seek to do is use the issue to win elections. But in an astonishingly successful scam, Democrats and their media friends continue to brainwash low-wage earners into believing that Republicans, and only Republicans, are holding them back. While in Illinois Republicans have absolutely no legislative power to hold back anything. And in Washington, Republicans can no more prevent Obama from using executive action to raise the minimum wage than change ObamaCare. And to add insult to injury, this past year Illinois Democrats raised the state income tax on all workers, including those who receive the minimum wage, a state record of sixty-seven percent. This, while Illinois State law, passed by Democrats, immunizes retired state government workers from paying state income tax on their pension incomes. In effect they are taxing the minimum wage earners to subsidize their luxury retirement lifestyles. And in Illinois, where Democrats reign supreme, 10,000 state retirees receive annual pensions of $100,000 or more per year. And of course they are exempt from ObamaCare, which isn’t good enough for them, it’s only good enough for the proletariats who have no choice but pay for their pensions. While Democrats claim they are all about making sure the poor have access to benefits, the poor don’t have access to the health care received by the Democrats they put into power. In the past, Democrats did have a valid reason for fighting for the poor. During the Great Depression millions did have a genuine need for government aid. But what voters must realize is that now Democrats need to hang onto those same issues to hang onto their voter base. They need to constantly convince voters that without Democrats in government, they would be far worse off. The last thing Democrats want is to remove the minimum wage issue from their election cycle platform. The behavior of Democrats in Illinois and Washington proves that beyond any doubt. They would rather see the poor earning eight dollars an hour than ten, as long as that fact allows them to hang on to their power, get their free lobbyist-paid vacations, and exercise control over others. Democrats are not the Party of morality and concern for the less advantaged, they are the ruthlessly immoral party, who use the poor and working class to get reelected. They prevent, at every turn, any opportunity the poor have to improve themselves. They created the ghettoes and barrios, they are the ones who institutionalized housing segregation. So while the media allow themselves to argue the economic effects of a minimum wage hike, and cite studies that show it hurts the poor, and so on, the real nature of the discussion is not an economic or social one, but one of political strategy. Democrats have been very successful, since the media refuse to expose them, at hiding this strategy. This is such an obvious analysis that one can only conclude that those in the national media who discuss the issue, without describing how Democrats keep down the poor, are both enabling this strategy and giving their consent to it.