Paul Ryan Tells GOP ‘Wages Never Seem to Go Up’ Day After Blaming Those Who Are Poor for Poverty

House Speaker Has More Power Over Minimum Wage Than Any Person in America

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan delivered what sounded like a “compassionate conservative” speech Tuesday night to delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention, lamenting just how horrible he thinks America’s economy is. 

“There is a reason people in our country are disappointed and restless,” Ryan told his fellow Republicans. “If opportunity seems like it’s been slipping away, that’s because it has. And liberal progressive ideas have done exactly nothing to help. Wages never seem to go up. The whole economy feels stuck. And for millions of Americans, middle-class security is now just a memory.”

Stunning.

Let’s remember that Paul Ryan opposes raising the minimum wage, and is speaking in favor of electing a man, Donald Trump, who has said he thinks wages are too high. Speaker Ryan is the single most powerful person in America when it comes to raising the minimum wage, or passing any bill that will help ordinary Americans. For him to claim, “Wages never seem to go up. The whole economy feels stuck,” is the height of hypocrisy.

Not only the height of hypocrisy because he has control over it, but because just 24 hours earlier, in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Speaker Ryan blamed those who are poor for poverty.

“After acknowledging that poverty is systemic, he turns around and blames the poor themselves as being personally — even morally — responsible for being poor,” Dave Johnson, a Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, writes at The Huffington Post.

“He implies the poor are just lazy,” Johnson continues. “He cited addiction, lack of skills, and, of course, government handouts as the real causes of poverty. He said raising the minimum wage would not help. His soothing-sounding words are actually quite radical and extreme.”

When asked, “Why not do something that raises wages?,” Ryan responded: “Well, skills. I think when you raise the minimum wage, you’ll lose over a million jobs … So you don’t want to take away those entry-level jobs that give people hard and soft skills they need just to learn how to do work. Every person has a different problem, sometimes a person has an even deeper problem like addiction or something like that.”

So, people are on minimum wage because they have challenges like addiction and need to “learn how to do work”?

Johnson notes Ryan’s “words point the finger at people for personal, moral failings, and contribute to a story that the poor are really just bad people who do not deserve our assistance.”

Maybe “wages never seem to go up” not because people in poverty don’t want to work, or have challenges like addictions, but  because Paul Ryan refuses to allow a bill to increase the minimum wage to a livable wage to pass through Congress.