In an interview with ABC News, Republican senate candidate John Raese said he “absolutely” would favor abolishing the federal minimum wage.
“If you have a minimum wage job, you don’t stay there 20 or 30 years. You don’t put your children through college working on minimum wage,” said Raese. “One of the best things I can say, when you get the government out of micromanaging the economy — you don’t want government to set price controls, you don’t want government to set wage controls. It’s an archaic system that frankly has not worked.”
According to the Bureau of Labor’s 2009 statistics, about 8 percent of West Virginia workers are paid at or below minimum wage. The only state with a higher percentage is Texas, where 9 percent of workers are paid minimum wage.