{"id":1517939,"date":"2022-06-16T05:04:12","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T09:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1517939"},"modified":"2022-06-16T05:04:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T09:04:14","slug":"elaine-luria-said-all-her-staffers-make-a-living-wage-she-lied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/elaine-luria-said-all-her-staffers-make-a-living-wage-she-lied\/","title":{"rendered":"Elaine Luria Said All Her Staffers Make a \u2018Living Wage.\u2019 She Lied."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Felaine-luria-said-all-her-staffers-make-a-living-wage-she-lied%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1517939&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Virginia Democratic congresswoman Elaine Luria said every staffer in her office makes a &#8220;living wage.&#8221; She lied, House disbursement records show.<\/p>\n<p>Luria paid staff assistant Madeleine Gagne $8,311.10 from January through March, the Democrat&#8217;s latest expense disclosures show. That pay rate marks a yearly salary of just $33,244.40, which is thousands of dollars less than the $40,362 an adult with no children must earn to make a living wage in Virginia, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/livingwage.mit.edu\/states\/51\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">living wage calculator<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Luria <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/democrats\/elaine-luria-wants-a-living-wage-for-all-except-her-own-staff\/\">says<\/a> she believes &#8220;that everyone deserves a living wage to raise a family in the community.&#8221; But Gagne is not the first staffer in the Democrat&#8217;s office who earns less than the income required to reach a living wage in the Old Dominion.<\/p>\n<p>As a staff assistant, Jacob Olander\u2014who left Luria&#8217;s office in April\u2014earned a yearly salary of $33,588. Fellow staff assistant Nolan Brown\u2014who also left Luria&#8217;s office last year\u2014made even less, earning a yearly salary of just $31,769. When the <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em> in March approached Luria&#8217;s office with that information, Communications Director Jayce Genco did not comment on past staffers but said that every Luria aide now &#8220;makes a living wage.&#8221; Just weeks later, Luria filed her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.house.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/2022-05\/2022q1_vol2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">statement of disbursements<\/a> from January to March, which proved Genco wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Luria&#8217;s living wage hypocrisy could spark the ire of progressive Democrats, a voting bloc Luria will need to win as she navigates a difficult reelection campaign. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin (R.) won Luria&#8217;s Second Congressional District by 12 points last November, just one year after President Joe Biden won it by 2 points\u2014a colossal 14-point swing. That result has Republicans confident they can beat Luria\u2014a top Republican target since she joined Congress three years ago\u2014in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Luria, whose office did not return a request for comment, will have to overcome Biden&#8217;s dismal political standing in Virginia to overcome that challenge. As record-high gas prices and inflation sweep the nation, just 33 percent of Virginians approve of the president, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/civiqs.com\/results\/approve_president_biden?uncertainty=true&#038;annotations=true&#038;zoomIn=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Civiqs<\/a>. MIT&#8217;s living wage calculator reflects those issues\u2014in March, the database <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20220317130413\/https:\/\/livingwage.mit.edu\/states\/51\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">placed<\/a> the pre-tax salary required to earn a living wage in Virginia at $34,552. Just months later, that number rose by 17 percent.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first time Luria has flip-flopped on a wage issue. The Democrat as a candidate in 2018 came out against a $15 nationwide minimum wage, arguing that lawmakers should instead enact a wage hike &#8220;based off of different areas of the country that have different costs of living.&#8221; As a small business owner, Luria said she understood the economic risk of a one-size-fits-all minimum wage, which would &#8220;cause risk to my business and other businesses,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Years later, however, Luria <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/democrats\/a-democratic-lawmaker-sold-her-small-business-now-she-favors-a-15-minimum-wage\/\">sold her small business<\/a>\u2014and ditched her opposition to a $15 federal minimum wage. In July 2019, Luria sold her design-your-own craft shop, the Mermaid Factory. Within days, the Democrat voted for the Raise the Wage Act, a Nancy Pelosi-backed bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour regardless of local economic conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Luria does not face a primary opponent this year\u2014Navy veteran Neil Smith planned to challenge the Democrat but withdrew his candidacy. Voters will choose Luria&#8217;s Republican opponent on Tuesday. State senator Jennifer Kiggans leads that race&#8217;s fundraising battle, having raised $1.3 million as of June 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Democratic congresswoman Elaine Luria said every staffer in her office makes a &#8220;living wage.&#8221; She lied, House disbursement records show. Luria paid staff assistant Madeleine Gagne $8,311.10 from January<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1517939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1517939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1517939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1517939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1517939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}