White House adviser and presidential daughter Ivanka Trump is taking aim at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s idea of guaranteed jobs with “family-sustaining” wages, saying that such a notion is at odds with what most Americans want.
“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Steve Hilton. “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get. So I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. 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.”
The Green New Deal, which Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) detailed at a news conference this month, seeks to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution in the United States over the next decade and mitigate inequality by guaranteeing jobs with “a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security.”
The plan has been embraced by several Democratic White House hopefuls but criticized even by some in the party as too costly and impractical.
In a tweet Tuesday evening, Trump took issue with a Yahoo News story that stated she had challenged Ocasio-Cortez’s “minimum-wage platform.”
“No I did not,” Trump said in the tweet. “I support a minimum wage. I do not however believe in a minimum guarantee for people ‘unwilling to work’ which was the question asked of me.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded to Trump’s criticism of her plan in a tweet of her own less than 20 minutes later.
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.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 26, 2019
A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create. https://t.co/P5FsQuhCTW
“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,” she said. “A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create.”
Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
