Its release last week was intended to coincide with a Senate hearing on the proposed increase, which business groups, including the National Restaurant Association, oppose, saying it would force them to raise prices or cut employment because a portion of their work force is paid the minimum wage. #minimumwage #wages #progressivewage WASHINGTON — The National Restaurant Association did not disclose upfront its role in helping draft and circulate a statement signed by more than 500 prominent economists, including four winners of the Nobel Prize, urging the federal government to reject the proposal by the Obama administration to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, interviews with signers of the letter showed. The statement was distributed to prominent economists nationwide under the name of Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of economics and law at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., concluding that the minimum wage “is a poorly targeted antipoverty measure.” Its release last week was intended to coincide with a Senate hearing on the proposed increase, which business groups, including the National Restaurant Association, oppose, saying it would force them to raise prices or cut employment because a portion of their work force is paid the minimum wage. The $10.10 proposal, endorsed by the White House and leading Democrats in Congress but opposed by many Republicans, would increase the federal minimum wage, in phases over two and a half years, from the current $7.25. But the statement itself and the news release heralding the effort made no mention of the fact that the statement had been initiated by staff at the restaurant association, who through an intermediary asked Mr. Smith if it could be distributed under his name, the association and Mr. Smith acknowledged in interviews Friday. “If that was not made clear, I will apologize for that,” said Sue Hensley, the senior vice president for public affairs at the National Restaurant Association. She said the restaurant association had distributed the statement the way it had because it was technologically the easiest method, not because of any intentional effort to hide the organization’s role. Mr. Smith and several of the other economists who signed the statement said in interviews Friday that they had agreed to support it based on the merits of the argument, and that who had initiated it was unimportant. “I am only interested in the ideas and the content,” Mr. Smith said, adding that “I really don’t know” who originated the statement. But several others whose signatures are included, while saying they still agree with the message, acknowledged that they regretted that they had not been told who was behind the effort, with one calling such a move typical of “phony Washington.” “I think they misjudged the economists they were aiming this at,” said Eugene F. Fama, a University of Chicago professor of finance who won the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. “If the people who had the interest in this just said, ‘We are doing this,’ they would have been better off.” The National Restaurant Association took several steps that in effect distanced it from the role it played in creating the statement. They included asking a former Treasury Department official, James E. Carter, to approach Mr. Smith at Chapman University, and then paying him to use a database of conservative economists that Mr. Carter maintains to ask them to sign the statement distributed in Mr. Smith’s name, participants involved in the effort said. Mr. Smith said he had been asked for input but had not written the statement, which was sent out with an opening that said, “Message from Vernon L. Smith.” The statement was then distributed through an Internet site, economistletter, which is controlled by the Washington lobbying firm Urban Swirski. The firm’s clients include Darden Restaurants, the owner of chains including Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse. Asked about the statement, Sandra Swirski, a former Senate aide who is a lobbyist at the firm, confirmed her role in helping gather signatures. “I did circulate the letter for signatures, and I did it for the restaurant association,” she said in an email. “No one else.” The restaurant industry statement is a reply, of sorts, to a similar statement signed by more than 600 economists endorsing the increase of the minimum wage. That statement was distributed by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research organization that receives about 30 percent of its funding from labor unions. But the institute was clear about its role in collecting signatures and promoting the statement once it was released in January. The statement became a target of lobbying against a wage increase; an advertisement in The New York Times by a nonprofit group run by a firm supported by the restaurant industry, Berman & Co., noted that some of the signers were, at least at some point, self-avowed Marxists. The statements demonstrate the growing power of surrogate voices that interest groups pursue, in the hope that these endorsements will help them win votes in Congress. “It’s not unusual in this town to reach out to others who have broader reach than you have on your own,” said Ms. Hensley of the restaurant association. She added that at least some of the signers of the statement had known of her group’s role in originating it, saying, “I don’t think that is a big shock.” Robert E. Lucas Jr., another University of Chicago Nobel Prize-winning economist who signed the statement, said he, too, had been unaware that the National Restaurant Association had initiated it. But that does not bother him, he said, as he still opposes raising the minimum wage. “I was convinced that the minimum wage was not a good idea in Milton Friedman’s class in 1960,” he said, referring to the University of Chicago economist, whose classes he took as a graduate student. “I don’t feel hoodwinked.” Read more at nyti.ms/1ieFzbg
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 15:00:01 +0000
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