Bill Sali and the Minimum Wage
Freshman Congressman Bill Sali (R-ID), who was elected with Club member support last year, introduced an interesting bill this week. From the Spokesman Review ($):
New Idaho Congressman Bill Sali proposed a bill Wednesday to combat obesity by reducing the Earth's gravity, saying that's no more unreasonable than the Democrats' legislation to increase the federal minimum wage.
Both defy "natural laws," he said.
"The well-intentioned desire to help the poor apparently will not be restrained by the rules and principles of the free market that otherwise do restrain American businesses and workers," Sali told the House of Representatives. "Apparently, Congress can change the rules that would otherwise affect the affairs of mankind."
The Democratic-controlled House voted 315-116 to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, with more than 80 Republicans joining Democrats to pass it. But Sali stuck to his stance that the market, not government, should determine how much workers are worth to employers.
"Obviously, it was a facetious notion to suspend the laws of gravity," he told The Spokesman-Review by phone from Washington, D.C., about his "Obesity Reduction and Health Promotion Act," which proposed helping Americans shed pounds by cutting gravity by 10 percent. "The same is true of the act we took today."
