Another day, another Vice President Joe Biden gaffe.
Biden overstated the positive impact of raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by more than 3,000 percent Tuesday, Roll Call reports.
The vice president visited Los Angeles Tuesday as part of his six-city tour to discuss the administration’s push for a higher minimum wage. But Biden seemingly confused his talking points.
“If we raise the minimum wage nationally to $10.10, that takes 28 million people out of poverty. 28 million people out of poverty,” Biden declared.
The White House has only officially claimed that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would give 28 million people a raise, not lift them above the poverty line.
In fact, Biden’s statement is a whopping 3,100 percent more than the estimates by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office statement on the effects of a minimum wage increase.
“Real income would increase, on net, by $5 billion for families whose income will be below the poverty threshold under current law, boosting their average family income by about 3 percent and moving about 900,000 people, on net, above the poverty threshold (out of the roughly 45 million people who are projected to be below that threshold under current law),” the CBO report stated.
The White House and Biden himself have had a more generous outlook, Roll Call reported. The Obama administration has been touting a “more than 2 million” figure for the amount of people lifting themselves out of poverty.
This is only the second stop on Biden’s minimum wage tour, but he has faced trouble at both locations.
In Las Vegas on Monday, Biden had to deal with small business owners that questioned the practical application of a $10.10 federal minimum wage.
He has also left a trail of gaffes in his wake over the past couple of weeks, leading to apologies to three foreign nations and one “being vice president is a b–ch” comment.
