The presumed front runners in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race have different reactions to a Congressional Budget Office report on raising the minimum age.
The non-partisan CBO report suggests that increasing the federal minimum wage would raise earnings for more than 16.5 million people, but it would also reduce employment by roughly 500,000 workers.
The analysis comes as the Senate prepares to debate a gradual increase from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour in 2016.
The Senate’s leading Republican Mitch McConnell has made his opposition to a minimum wage hike a talking point in his re-election campaign.
He released a statement saying the report “spelled out some of the dire consequences of Alison Lundergan Grimes’ blind allegiance to Barack Obama’s agenda.”
Grimes’ is the leading Democratic candidate in the race for McConnell’s seat. Her campaign manager Jonathan Hurst didn’t respond to the CBO findings, and instead, referenced a study by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy that claims a minimum wage increase would lift the pay of one in four Kentuckians and create 2,200 jobs.
