Joni Ernst Quotes

The minimum wage was enacted in 1937 during the Great Depression and it has been increased 16 times. It's a well-established economic policy to help families.

The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.

During Seattle's successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, 'If $15 is so good, why not $50?' It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so.

Some states are doing better than others. Some states naturally have stronger economies. So it's not as simple as saying, 'Let's go to $15.' If you do it wrong, you can hurt the very people you're trying to help.

On things like the minimum wage, where cities as well as states are increasingly looking at income disparity, mayors will have, I think, a very strong voice.

The concept of minimum wage is crazy, if you really stop to think about it. If $8 an hour seems right, why not $20 an hour? If it's coming by order of the government, why stop at any level? Why not just say everyone should get what Gates gets?

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

The minimum wage is something that F.D.R. put in place a long time ago during the Great Depression. I don't think it worked then. It didn't solve any problems then and it hasn't solved any problems in 50 years.

Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

This is the middle-class equivalent of raising the minimum wage.

If Donald Trump wants to raise the minimum wage to $15, yes, I will work with Donald Trump.

I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage.

I will advocate moving the Illinois minimum wage back to the national minimum wage.

I'm not sure there's another way to help move more people out of poverty than to raise the minimum wage.

I am quite uncomfortable using legislation to peg the minimum wage.

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

I'm more concerned about maximum wages, not minimum wages.

I do not support raising the minimum wage, and the reason is as follows. When the minimum wage is raised, workers are priced out of the market. That is the economic reality that seems, at least so far, to be missing from this discussion.

The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.

President Obama has made a minimum wage increase a focal point of his economic agenda.