House Democrats voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour last week. The Iowa Standard was able to ask Sen. Charles Grassley what he thought about that issue and if it had any path forward in the U.S. Senate.
“I don’t see any path forward in the Senate,” Grassley said. “But in the years I’ve been in the Senate — which is now over three decades — I have voted for increases in the minimum wage and against increases in the minimum wage. I think that if there’s going to be an increase, this is too big of an increase.”
Grassley said raising wages has positives and negatives.
“The positive is that probably one million people are going to benefit from the increase in the minimum wage,” he said. “But there’s going to be a lot of people who lose their job as a result of it.”
He also said raising the minimum wage could limit the ability of young people to find a first job.
“Getting that first job is some of the best vocational education that people can have,” Grassley said. “We ought to get more people into the work force instead of less.”
