I suppose it was predictable: today all thirteen Republicans in the New Hampshire Senate voted to kill a bill that would have gradually, and barely, raised the minimum wage in the Granite State. Under the terms of the House bill, the current $7.25 per hour rate would have risen to $8.25 in 2015 and then to $9.00 per hour in 2016. Since the evidence is overwhelming that workers at the present level of minimum wage cannot afford to live, and therefore require substantial government assistance, one can only conclude that the Republican Senators prefer to hike government assistance for the poor rather than require a living wage. To put it another way, the GOP apparently thinks it’s a good idea to subsidize low wage employment with government poverty programs for the seventy thousand NH employees getting $7.25 an hour.
Of course, that’s not the way Democrats would like to do things, so its good news indeed that one of the Republicans who spoke up about killing the bill, Andy Sanborn, just picked up a good, strong opponent for the November election. Lee Nyquist, who has run for the Senate before, will run against Sanborn again, and this time the candidate who actually cares about New Hampshire workers has a good chance to win. That’s good news indeed.
