Another Hollow Gesture from Perez. It’s all Pandering, No Payoff

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Marie Glusenkamp Perez is back at it again, signing her name onto legislation that sounds good in a press release but does absolutely nothing for the people of Southwest Washington.

Her latest stunt? Co-sponsoring a national minimum wage bill.

Let’s be clear: Washington State already has one of the highest minimum wages in the country at $16.66/hour statewide, and even higher in many municipalities. That’s more than double the federal minimum of $7.25/hour. So why is our congressional representative spending her time pushing a bill that wouldn’t change a single thing for the people she was elected to represent?

Because it plays well with the national progressive crowd. Because it checks a box. Because it gives her something to tweet about.

But it doesn’t help us.

In fact, the real impact of Washington’s high minimum wage has been deeply harmful to the very small businesses Perez claims to support. Ask any independent grocer, mechanic, or café owner in Lewis, Pacific, or Wahkiakum County what’s happened to their payroll costs. Ask them how easy it is to find entry-level workers willing to learn on the job when you’re required to pay a wage so high that only the most experienced workers apply. The result? Fewer first-time job opportunities. More automation. More small business closures.

And now Perez wants to export that same model, already damaging in rural Washington, to the rest of the country?

This isn’t about workers. It’s about political posturing.

If Perez actually wanted to help workers in our district, she’d focus on expanding job access. She’d fight to cut red tape and taxes on small business owners. She’d support career and technical education that builds real skills, not empty promises. And she’d work to get inflation under control so every dollar our families earn goes further.

But that’s hard work. It doesn’t come with applause from Twitter activists or national party elites.

So instead, we get more of what we’ve come to expect from our absentee representative: vapid pandering dressed up as progress. A headline with no help. A vote with no value.

WA-03 deserves leadership rooted in reality, not empty symbolism.