Murray Sabrin Calls Out Obama and Cory Booker for Destroying Jobs

The Murray Sabrin campaign has released the following:

 "With Cory Booker's help, President Obama is doing his level best to destroy what jobs we have now and kill enthusiasm for creating new ones, and he proved it again with his wrong-headed  scheme to extend  overtime pay  to managerial and white collar employees," said U.S. Senate candidate Murray Sabrin. "It's a stab in the back to small businesses all across the country."

On Saturday in his weekly radio address, the president said he was taking unilateral action - meaning he wouldn't consult Congress - to extend overtime to employees who previously had been exempted because of their "white-collar" status. 

Last week, the  government released figures showing that private industry employers spent an average of $29.63 per hour worked for wages in benefits as of December 2013. 

One official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was quoted saying, "These changes in overtime rules will fall most harshly on small- and medium-sized businesses, who are already trying to figure out the impact of Obamacare."

"How many New Jerseyans won't be working as a result of this?" asked Sabrin. "How many who might have had an opportunity to get a leg up, a promotion to management, some kind of break now will be denied it because the heavy hand of government has squashed that opportunity?"

"What do you expect from people who've never done real work in the real world? They're clueless about how to meet a payroll or maintain sufficient cash flow to keep a small business running in the face of increasing government-imposed costs and burdensome regulations when all they've ever done is hold political office, work in a fat-cat law firm or be a community organizer."

"You want people to do better - I want people to do better," said Sabrin.  "But that path isn't paved by government rules and regulations - it comes from having a healthy business climate where companies have the confidence to build, expand and hire because they have faith in the future."

The push to extend overtime comes on the heels of the president's insistence that the federal minimum wage be raised from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour, a move seen as a desperate attempt to shore up his crumbling base and reverse his tumbling poll numbers heading into the 2014 mid-term elections after a series of policy and failed leadership fiascoes like the botched Obamacare rollout that made 2013 his year from political hell.

Sabrin's opponent in the general election, incumbent Sen. Cory Booker, has long been on record favoring a $10.10 per hour federal minimum wage. His GOP primary opponents haven't made any statements that can be found one way or the other on either raising the minimum wage or expanding who must be paid overtime. Among Republicans, only Sabrin is clear on the issue.

Over 500 prominent economists, including several Nobel laureates , agree with Obama supporters Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and billionaire and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg,  that raising the minimum wage that high kills jobs.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour over three years would cost 500,000 jobs.   

A recent Duke University survey of American CFOs found that an increase in the minimum wage to $10 per hour "would lead to substantial job losses among retail, service and manufacturing firms."

"It's clear that those currently in charge of the nation's economic future are sailing the ship of state toward the rocks," said Sabrin. "Pardon me, but this isn't a cruise I care to take."

New Jersey and America need new leadership in the U.S. Senate," he said, "and this November Garden State voters can take one step toward it by electing me as their next senator.