As Jazz Shaw at Hot Air pointed out, the AP Fact Check team has flagged another Democrat convention speech, this time Senator Cory Booker's minimum wage remarks on Thursday night. This is the entire check by AP's Christopher Rugaber and Amanda Seitz:
SEN. CORY BOOKER: “Together, with Joe and Kamala in the White House, we’ll raise the minimum wage so no one who works a full-time job lives in poverty.”
THE FACTS: That’s an improbable outcome for the $15 minimum wage supported by Biden.
A 2019 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would lift 1.3 million Americans out of poverty, a small fraction of the roughly 38 million people living in poverty in 2018.
Moreover, the report estimated a $15 minimum wage would cost 1.3 million people their jobs because they would be priced out of the market.
Altogether, some 17 million people might see higher pay, the office said, but not enough to raise most who are below the poverty line above it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the working poor in 2018, 3.7 million people who usually worked full-time were below the poverty level. That finding suggests that a $15 federal minimum would not take all full-time workers out of poverty. And, of course, it would still leave millions of part-time workers and the unemployed in poverty.
Shaw noted that most speeches were breezy and avoided much in the way of policy specifics, which can make it a lighter task for the "fact checkers."
Where was all the talk of Joe Biden’s promise that the “first thing he would do” would be to raise taxes? Or how about when he promised he would “end fossil fuel” and the millions of jobs the oil and gas industry supports across the country? They could have mentioned his pledge to support the Green New Deal, despite the significant number of Americans who oppose such an extreme plan. And yes, they neglected to promote Uncle Joe’s pledge to end all deportations of illegal aliens and create a pathway to amnesty. And let’s not forget when he said he might even get behind defunding the police in some circumstances.
On the other hand, we could argue that all of the gauzy biography unloaded on Thursday night -- especially on the "character" of the Bidens, even as Hunter Biden appeared on camera -- could be fact-checked as well.
