Steven Biel: So, Maine people spend months collecting 75,000 signatures to get a real minimum-wage increase on the ballot, and now big-business lobbyists are trying to cut a backroom deal to undercut the whole thing. What kind of scam are you trying to pull?
Lance Dutson: If you’re referring to the competing measure on the minimum wage supported by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, I think you’re way off base in describing it as dirty dealing.
The business community has stepped up to bring some sanity to the commerce-crushing impact a drastic minimum-wage increase would have on Maine. There’s consensus on both sides of the aisle that our minimum wage needs another look, but I think some progressives wouldn’t be happy until a legion of commissars in Augusta set wages for everyone.
Steven: This so-called “competing measure” is nothing but an attempt to confuse voters. The Chamber of Commerce knows they’re likely to lose the vote on raising the minimum wage to $12 by 2020.
Now they’re doing an end run around the regular initiative process to make voters choose between two different minimum wage initiatives in hopes that neither gets 50 percent to pass.
What I’d like to see is some of those Gucci-clad business lobbyists collecting signatures in the cold like the rest of us plebes.
Lance: The initiative process is itself an “end around.” It’s a terrible way to make law, circumventing the normal vetting of the legislative process. But that’s an argument for another day.
Basic economics shows that when wages are forced artificially higher, it results in the consolidation of labor and fewer jobs.
Steven: Unemployment is at 4.9 percent. The biggest problem in our economy is low wages.
Lance: And the only true way to raise wages in a free-market system is for businesses to thrive. Successful businesses create more jobs. When there are more jobs, businesses have to compete with each other for labor, and this is what drives wages up.
Regulations like this rapid increase in the minimum wage hurt businesses and restrict wage growth.
Steven: You’re repeating the same low-wage trickle-down economics theory that’s never worked and never will.
Ask a business owner what they need most to succeed. They’ll tell you they need customers. And when people have money in their pockets to spend, that means more customers.
It’s the old lesson Henry Ford learned — that he could sell a lot more cars if his workers could afford to buy them.
Lance: What you fail to understand is that in Maine, the big, evil corporations you like to talk about barely exist. Maine’s economy is driven by small businesses. When government makes it more expensive for them to do business, that hurts everyone.
You can’t keep squeezing golden eggs out of this goose; money doesn’t grow on trees — pick whatever cliche that helps you understand it.
Steven: I think what most Republicans fail to grasp is that for most people the definition of a strong economy is when you personally can afford to pay rent and feed your family.
People making the minimum wage can’t possibly get by without help from food stamps and Medicaid — paid for by taxpayers who are subsidizing the wages of profitable corporations.
Lance: Well, one thing we’ve learned from policy battles over the years is that consensus is the best path to solution. If Maine is going to increase the minimum wage, we would best be served by working together, not by having a populist revolt on the ballot.
Steven: C’mon, Lance, you can’t B.S. a B.S.-er. There were eight minimum-wage bills in the last session, and the Chamber of Commerce lobbyists fought them all. There’s no honest attempt at consensus here.
Lance: Progressives will never achieve anything with that type of cynical anti-business attitude. Look at what we have in front of us: an increase in the minimum wage, backed by the business community. That’s how you make positive social change — through consensus.
Steven: That’s certainly what the business lobbyists want legislators to think. I don’t buy it, and I don’t think the legislature will, either. But we’re about to find out, because the first vote on whether to allow the Chamber of Commerce’s competing measure on the ballot is next week. Stay tuned.
Steven Biel is former campaign director for MoveOn.org and president of the Portland-based political consulting firm Steven Biel Strategies. Lance Dutson, a principal of Red Hill Strategies, is a Republican communications consultant. He has served on the campaign teams of U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Kelly Ayotte, as well as the Maine Republican Party.