Tuesday night saw something rare on PBS, a conservative voice. Senator Ted Cruz appeared on liberal Tavis Smiley's program and hit back at the host's pro-Democrat questions. Smiley demanded, "Well, why can't we raise the minimum wage to a living wage? Why won't you fight for that?"
Cruz quickly retorted, "The people who will hurt the most... How does it impact the most vulnerable? Every time you raise the minimum wage, the people who will hurt the most is the most vulnerable." The exchange continued:
TED CRUZ: So, for example, the last time we had this debate on the minimum wage when President Obama wanted to raise it, the Congressional Budget Office, nonpartisan CBO, said that doing so will cost up to one million jobs, predominantly young teenage African American and Hispanic kids who are working.
SMILEY: But, Senator, these numbers don't lie, but people do. And the sad reality is that these people aren't working in the first place. We always want to go to the young and the underserved who are going to be the most hurt by this. It ain't like they're working right now anyway. It's a red herring.
CRUZ: But you know what? There are some of them. A lot fewer, you're right. Black teenage unemployment has gone up, but I will say–you know, the lens I try to look at this is I look at it through the lens of my father. My father is from Cuba. He was in prison. He was tortured in Cuba as a teenager. He fought in the Cuban Revolution and, in 1957, my dad fled Cuba and he came to America. He was 18 years old. He couldn't speak English. He was broke. He had $100 that was sewn into his underwear. And his first job was washing dishes making 50 cents an hour.
And I try to think of every decision, how would it impact my dad if he were washing dishes? He worked full-time, he paid his way through school. He ended up going on to start a small business. Today my dad is a pastor based out of Dallas. But when my father was washing dishes, when he was making 50 cents an hour, imagine they jacked up the minimum wage to $2 an hour. You know what would have happened? They'd have fired my dad and bought a dishwasher.
Smiley shifted topics, hitting Cruz on another financial issue: "But did you support Senator Warren when she put legislation to ease the burden on those who are laboring under student loan debt? You didn't support that."
