{"id":113515,"date":"2015-04-02T14:55:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T20:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/house-approves-wage-bills\/"},"modified":"2015-04-02T14:55:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T20:55:36","slug":"house-approves-wage-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/house-approves-wage-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"House approves wage bills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rep.
Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 State Rep. J. Paul Brown on Monday said raising the minimum wage in Colorado would violate the principles of America.<\/p>\n

The Ignacio Republican made his comments from the floor of the House, where the Democratic-controlled chamber gave initial approval to asking voters to gradually raise the minimum wage from $8.23 to $12.50 per hour by 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis goes against the principles that this country was founded on \u2013 freedom,\u201d Brown addressed his colleagues.<\/p>\n

The comment drew the outrage of liberal observers, who said Brown was out-of-touch with the desires of Coloradans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always room to debate policy. But suggesting that people wanting a fair shot at the American Dream as somehow being un-American is the kind of out-of-touch grandstanding we\u2019ve come to associate with J. Paul Brown,\u201d said Amy Runyon-Harms, executive director of the left-leaning organization ProgressNow Colorado.<\/p>\n

Brown was speaking to similar points made by other Republicans, who said the free market should dictate wages.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need to do is let the market of competition for jobs dictate those wages,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt has been shown that wages are higher in certain areas; entry-level wages are higher \u2013 and that is because the market works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House gave initial approval to two minimum-wage measures Monday. In addition to asking voters to raise the wage, Democrats also would like to repeal a 1999 law that gave the state control over minimum-wage issues. The legislation would allow local governments to establish minimum wages commensurate with the local cost of living.<\/p>\n

Both measures are likely to die in the Republican-controlled Senate. It would take a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to send the ballot question to voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re giving you two bites of the apple to support low-wage workers,\u201d said Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, a co-sponsor of the bills. \u201cThis is about making sure that everyone in Colorado makes a living wage.\u201d<\/p>\n

A full-time, minimum-wage worker in Colorado earns only $17,118 a year. There is an estimated 600,000 Coloradans making less than $12 per hour in the state.<\/p>\n

Republicans and business leaders worry that a patchwork of wages would lead to an uncertain business climate. They say many of those low-wage jobs are held by very young workers in entry-level positions. Mandating a higher wage would squeeze people out of those jobs and have a trickle effect, where employers would have to raise wages across the board, leading to layoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat makes Colorado not look quite as attractive anymore because we never know, from time-to-time, what the minimum wage is going to be,\u201d said House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso of Loveland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brown: An attack on \u2018freedom\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,13,722,1634],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-state-rep-j-paul-brown","tag-wage-and-pension"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113515"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}