Elaine’s senior economist at the Labor Department, Jay Berman, yesterday advised lawmakers on Capitol Hill to amend last year’s increase in the minimum wage to exclude American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, two territories of the United States.

Though one of America Samoa’s largest employers only pays workers an average of $3.60 an hour, Elaine Chao’s Department thinks that’s adequate – and even goes as far as arguing that increasing the minimum wage “would have damaging effects on the economies of American Samoa and the Northern Marianas.”

Except Berman later testified that a lack of available information “significantly impaired the department’s efforts to measure or to project the impacts of scheduled increases.” But then he went ahead and made conclusions about “damaging effects” anyway.

Sketchy, eh? Let’s take a look at Berman’s boss, who is yet another example of Elaine and hubby Sen. Mitch McConnell’s revolving door of employees. Berman is the senior economist to Elaine’s Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Labor. And who is the Assistant Secretary? Leon R. Sequeira, who used to be Mitch McConnell’s personal legal counsel. Mitch McConnell recently voted to abolish the federal minimum wage.

It’s always a family affair at the Department of Labor these days, isn’t it?

This entry was posted by Jon Steed on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm to Cronyism, Department of Labor, Mitch McConnell.
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