Sali Satirical, Stallings, Silly

Richard Stallings took to the Idaho Statesman to attack Congressman Bill Sali (R-Id.):

If passed by the Senate and signed by the president, this pro-family bill will help at least 36,000 Idahoans who have been stuck earning the equivalent of just over $10,000 per year. It will be the first increase in the minimum wage in more than a decade.

While, a minimum wage should be increased (not as much as Congress is proposing to do) as a matter of cost of living, the minimum wage has little or nothing to do with “families” as evidence has shown time and time again:

53% of those earning the minimum wage are between 15-24, more than 80% of all minimum wage earners live in families that have incomes at or above the poverty level. Those above 25 have a median household income of $33,600 (close to what we took home last year.) But beyond that, Stallings attacks Sali in an unfair way:

During the debate, Sali mockingly held up a bill that purported to “change gravity,” and suspend “natural laws” of the free market and thus reduce all of our weight. His point, apparently, was that Congress could not change free-market forces.

Obviously, Sali was trying to be absurd. And like so many times when he embarrassed both himself and his own party in the Idaho Statehouse, he was abundantly successful.

Actually amending gravity has little to do with the free market, but Sali’s point was actually in regards to natural laws. (Where are all those grammar experts who jumped on a Sali staffer for writing “sedimentary ” rather than “Sedentary” activities in the gravity bill. Time to attack Stalling for saying that gravity was part of the natural law of the free market.)

Far from being embarassed, the Liberal New Republic reported:

As the burly Sali gripped the podium and pronounced the speech exerpted below, the few Republicans present in the House chamber for the debate hooted in appreciation, and Buck McKeon, the presiding Republican, beamed and guffawed like a proud daddy:

Sounds like he’s doing just fine for himself, Mr. Stallings.

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