Alexander Statement on CBO Report that Minimum Wage Bill Could Cost as Many as 1 Million Jobs

Washington, D.C., Feb. 18 – U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the senior Republican on the Senate labor committee, today released the following statement on the Congressional Budget Office report finding that the Democrats’ bill to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour with annual increases for inflation could cost as many as 1 million jobs:

“This CBO report reiterates a fundamental principle of our free-market economy: increasing the minimum wage eliminates jobs, cuts off the bottom rung of the economic ladder, and reduces opportunity. Instead of minimum wages, the goal should be higher family incomes. To do that, we should liberate the free enterprise system from Obama regulations and make it easier to create jobs, provide more job training, and offer more choices of good schools to children of low-income parents.”

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