Friday, September 27, 2013

Jerry Brown/Barack Obama: a thought experiment

I've started doing a thought-game. When I see some news about Jerry Brown, I try to imagine substituting "Barack Obama" for Jerry's name. Like here (Jerry Brown signs bill to raise California minimum wage Sacramento Bee 09/25/2013):

Gov. Jerry Brown this morning signed legislation to raise California's minimum wage by 25 percent, from $8 an hour to $10 an hour by 2016.

The bill, celebrated by Brown and his labor union allies at an event in Los Angeles, promises the first increase in California's hourly minimum since 2008, when the minimum wage was raised 50 cents to $8.

After appearing in the state's biggest media market this morning, the Democratic governor is scheduled to fly to Oakland to promote the bill at a second event this afternoon.
The Obama version would read something like this:

President Barack Obama today signed a 2 percent increase in the national minimum wage by 2016, which he presented as a bipartisan compromise after agreeing to Republican changes that exempted fast-food workers from the law. The new law goes into effect at the start of 2015.

Obama celebrated the legislation during a speech to the Business Roundtable that was primarily devoted to deficit reduction.

"Some in my own party have criticized me for not insisting on broader coverage," the President told the business gathering. "Some folks are always going to insist we could have gotten more. But in this time when households are struggling to tighten their belts, we all are going to have to make sacrifices to keep bringing bring down the deficit. And we're all going to have to work together. Everybody has to have some skin in the game."
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