Ivanka Trump said most Americans don’t want a guaranteed minimum wage, taking a shot at the Green New Deal’s provisions for a “family-sustaining wage.”
“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Steve Hilton in an interview scheduled to air Sunday, The Washington Post reports. “People want to work for what they get.”
Trump, a White House adviser and daughter to the president, was commenting on the Green New Deal, a costly and ambitious resolution championed by Democrats Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey.
While the resolution’s main goal is to address the country’s carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to mitigate climate change, the Green New Deal also aims to address social inequality by guaranteeing jobs with “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security,” says the Post.
Ocasio-Cortez has put the issue of a “living wage” at the top of her platform, promising that no one on her staff will earn less than $52,000 per year. Trump, however, claimed Americans don’t want this.
“I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want,” she said, according to the Post. “They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where there’s the potential for upward mobility.”
According to a Pew Research Center survey from 2016, 58% of Americans said they favored increasing the federal minimum to $15 an hour. Some states are mandating higher wages, but federal minimum wage has rested at $7.25 per hour since 2009.
Ocasio-Cortez shot back at Trump Tuesday afternoon, tweeting, “As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live.”
“A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right,” she added. “Workers are often paid far less than the value they create.”
