New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not backing down from his earlier comments on the minimum wage. Instead, he is turning the conversation to the reason he believes President Obama and the Democrats want to make raising the wage a campaign issue.
Christie took heat this week for saying that he was “tired of hearing about the minimum wage.”
The governor further explained his comments Thursday at the Mastoris Diner while campaigning for Tom MacArthur, the Republican candidate for New Jersey’s third congressional district, the New York Daily News reported.
“My comments are never almost universally interpreted the way I mean them,” he said. “But that’s OK. I’ll be very clear. I’ll say it again.”
He then reiterated his statement that nobody’s parents were hoping for their kids to earn minimum wage.
“The President wants to focus (on minimum wage) because he’s a class warrior. What he wants to focus on is the minimum wage. I don’t believe that that’s what our focus should be,” Christie said.
“Our focus should be on creating better paying jobs for everyone in our country.”
The Obama administration and Democrats have been pushing hard to get Congress to raise the federal minimum wage up to $10.10 an hour from $7.25 an hour.
U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez said Thursday that Christie has “got his head in the sand” on minimum wage and that “we suck” as a country on it.
