The White House’s top economic adviser said Thursday that he opposes the federal minimum wage, arguing that the decades-old law is a “terrible idea” that drives up costs for small businesses across the country…..Kudlow also said the White House will again try to cut Obamacare and substantially reduce federal spending.
Second things first: Kudlow says the White House wants to “substantially” cut federal spending without touching Social Security, Medicare, or (presumably) defense spending. Interest on the national debt is off limits too, of course. So what’s left? This isn’t worth a lot of work, so I just grabbed someone else’s pie chart of federal spending off the web. This happens to be for 2015, but nothing much has changed since then:
The dotted line covers everything that’s off limits, so if Kudlow wants to “substantially” cut federal spending he’s going to need huge, swinging reductions in the small piece of the pie that’s left over.
This is nothing new. We’ve seen it a hundred times from Republicans. The bottom line is that Kudlow wants to cut programs for the poor, since that’s just about the only thing left. What a surprise.
And now to take first things second: it’s also not a surprise that Kudlow wants to do away with the minimum wage. But smart Republicans keep telling me that this is because there are smarter ways to help the working poor, like EITC or wage subsidies. So I guess Kudlow must be in favor of those instead.
It’s funny, though. He didn’t mention any of them. Just an oversight on his part, I’m sure.
