Politics

Iowa Democrat Who Voted For $15 Minimum Wage Increase Admits It Will Cause Harm To Small Businesses

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Michael Ginsberg Congressional Correspondent
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Democratic Iowa Rep. Cindy Axne admitted on a local radio broadcast that the $15 minimum wage pushed by her party will hurt businesses in her district.

“As a small business owner myself, and one that’s been listening to all of our small businesses, in particular in rural Iowa, this will cause harm,” Axne told KMA radio’s “Morning Line” show on Thursday. Axne, serving her second term, narrowly defeated David Young in 2018 and 2020.

Iowa’s minimum wage is currently the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, and Axne believes the benefits of increasing it outweigh the costs.

“We cannot have a state like Iowa not have $15 an hour, because then we’ll see a brain drain, and more of our younger Iowans leaving our state to go to states surrounding us that have it,” she said in her interview with KMA. “We’ll also see businesses come in that pay low. That’s not the kind of businesses we want in Iowa.” (RELATED: Highest Minimum Wage In The US Will Hit A Whopping $19 An Hour)

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour will cost the United States about 1.4 million jobs, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.

“If your goal is to shut down independently owned mom and pop shops on Main Street and grow the market share of big-box megastores then I can think of nothing better than passing a federal $15 minimum wage today,” Jeff Brabant told the Daily Caller News Foundation in February.

Brabant is the manager of government relations for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small-business lobbying group that opposes a $15 minimum wage.