{"id":9593,"date":"2007-01-11T16:45:33","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T21:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9593.html"},"modified":"2007-01-11T16:45:33","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T21:45:33","slug":"kingston-should-make-up-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/kingston-should-make-up-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingston should make up his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9257.html\">bemoaned<\/a> the notion of lawmakers working more hours on the Hill. Families, he said, are more important. Kingston told the WaPo, in response to a Dem proposal to extend the congressional work week to five days, &#8220;Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families &#8212; that&#8217;s what this says.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With this in mind, Kingston has some <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2007\/01\/11\/kingston-work-longer\/\">interesting ideas<\/a> about how low-income families can get out of poverty.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last night, Kingston shared some advice with Americans living in poverty: work longer hours. During House debate over the minimum wage, Kingston said raising the minimum wage would do nothing for poor Americans. Instead, if people marry and work longer hours, &#8220;they would be out of poverty,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s an economic fact.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>First, if people work longer hours, won&#8217;t that &#8220;eat away at families&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Second, as Nico helpfully <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2007\/01\/11\/kingston-work-longer\/\">points out<\/a>, &#8220;The annual salary for workers earning the national minimum wage still leaves a family of three about $6,000 short of the poverty threshold.&#8221; In most instances, overtime pay isn&#8217;t much of an option. In other words, working longer hours won&#8217;t solve the problem.<\/p>\n<p>If Kingston and his like-minded allies believe the minimum wage should stay at $5.15, let them explain why. Coming up with silly excuses to reject an increase only leaves Kingston looking foolish. Again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) bemoaned the notion of lawmakers working more hours on the Hill. Families, he said, are more important. Kingston told the WaPo, in response to a Dem proposal to extend the congressional work week to five days, &#8220;Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}