Vice President Joe Biden visited a Lincoln Heights company Tuesday to meet with business leaders and area elected officials and push for an increase in the national minimum wage, continuing a theme of his West Coast swing.
Biden sat alongside Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has proposed boosting the Los Angeles minimum wage to $13.25 by 2017 — a proposal that was formally introduced today by four City Council members.
The vice president, who has been touting a rise in the national minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, said an increase would help businesses, not hurt them. He said additional money earned by workers will be injected back into the economy.
“It in and of itself will create new jobs,” he said during the roundtable discussion at L.A. Baking Company. “It will create new enterprises, and so the idea that somehow raising the minimum wage is in anyway counterproductive, it just belies the facts.”
Biden said boosting the national minimum wage to $10.10 would lift 28 million people out of poverty and put $19 billion into the U.S. economy.
“No one in America should be working 40 hours a week and living below the poverty line,” Biden said.
He noted that giving people more money is the first step in increasing Americans’ spending.
“Here’s the deal, when you raise the minimum wage for an American worker, they out of necessity spend it all,” he said.
He praised the work being done by Garcetti and the City Council toward raising the wage in Los Angeles.
“This is one of the great cities of the world and you’re stepping up,” he said.
“No one in America should be working 40 hrs a week and live below the poverty line.” –@VP #fairness #RaiseTheWageLA pic.twitter.com/7RPii5EEL5
— LA Mayor’s Office (@LAMayorsOffice) October 7, 2014
Following the roundtable discussion, Biden attended a midday fundraiser at downtown’s City Club of Los Angeles for Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, the Democratic candidate for California secretary of state, and congressional candidate Amanda Renteria, who is challenging Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford.
The fundraiser was the third Biden attended while in the Los Angeles area. His first stop in the Southland Monday was the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills for a fundraiser for Iowa Senate candidate Bruce Braley
Biden then headed to the Brentwood home of Jim Gianopulos, the chairman/CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment at 20th Century Fox, for a $2,500-per- person fundraiser billed by organizers as the “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds Cocktail Reception.”
The event benefiting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House, also included a performance by Carole King.
According to an invitation posted on the website PoliticalPartyTime.org, other hosts of the event included DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, former Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman Barry Meyer, film producer Peter Chernin, philanthropist Hope Warschaw and director/producer James L. Brooks.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was also scheduled to attend the fundraiser, which was closed to the news media.
There was no reference during Biden’s visit to a pair of apologies he was forced to make to U.S. allies after he accused some of supporting terrorists in Syria. During a foreign policy address at Harvard University last week, Biden suggested allies such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were hindering the fight against terrorism.
Biden called Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan on Saturday to apologize for his remarks. The next day, he made another call to apologize to Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
Biden is in the midst of a six-city, four-state, four-day Western trip that began Monday in Las Vegas with a roundtable discussion at a Mexican restaurant on raising the minimum wage. After his Los Angeles appearances, Biden flew to Bakersfield to speak at a rally at Cal State Bakersfield for Padilla and Renteria.
The Democratic fundraising effort in the Southland for the November midterm election is scheduled to resume Thursday when President Barack Obama arrives to attend a fundraiser at the home of actress and longtime supporter Gwyneth Paltrow.
— Staff and wire reports