There’s a movement at hand demanding an increased minimum wage, and in many states, this movement has been successful. Unfortunately, not all politicians see the inherent value in raising the minimum wage, but at worst, we’d only expect that they’d refuse to raise the minimum wage. Not in our wildest dreams would we think they’d lower it, but that’s exactly what Minnesota Republicans are trying to do for servers and other tipped employees.

The Republican-led House in Minnesota passed the new minimum wage law on April 22. This piece of legislation covers everything from green energy to the minimum wage, and every aspect of it is an attack on the poor, the environment and common sense.

The portion of the law related to tipped workers would allow certain servers to receive lower than the minimum wage. In fact, if they received more than $4 an hour in tips, which you could do by waiting on a single frugal customer, they’d be forced into taking a lower minimum wage. Democrat Tim Mahoney had this to say:

“The message from this bill is that you’re making too much money. It wants to keep people making $12 per hour rather than making $14 or $15 an hour. If you tried living on $30,000 per year in this state, you’d understand that a couple of thousand dollars per year makes a huge difference.”