Measure Would Help Alleviate Poverty and Drive Economic Growth

WASHINGTON - Governor Pat Quinn today met with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and senior administration officials at the White House to discuss raising the federal and Illinois minimum wage rates. Governor Quinn's ongoing fight to raise Illinois' minimum wage is in line with President Obama's push to raise the federal minimum wage. The Governor first proposed raising the minimum wage in his 2013 State of the State address and today's meeting with the President is part of his agenda to alleviate poverty, drive economic growth and ensure that all Illinois workers are treated fairly.

"Hundreds of thousands of people across Illinois are working full time but are still trapped in poverty," Governor Quinn said. "Numerous studies have shown this common-sense proposal is good for workers and the economy. Raising the minimum wage is the right and decent thing to do and I thank President Obama for his leadership and commitment to getting this job done."

"Governor Quinn is doing extraordinary work in Illinois to lift their minimum wage and give more hard-working Americans a raise," President Obama said.

Today's meeting builds on growing momentum to raise the minimum wage across the country. Just this week, The Gap Inc. acted to raise its own minimum wage to $10 for all U.S. employees. The move is expected to impact 65,000 American workers and more than 4,000 employees in Illinois.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. President Obama is pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10. The Governor is working to raise Illinois' minimum wage from its current $8.25 per hour to at least $10 per hour.

A full-time minimum wage worker in Illinois makes around $16,600 annually, which is well below the Federal Poverty Threshold of $19,790 for a family of three. Six in 10 minimum wage employees are female, including many single parents. The Governor supports raising the minimum wage over the next two years.

The $8.25 per hour Illinois minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2010, is less than half of the average U.S. hourly wage. By increasing the Illinois minimum wage to $10, a half-million Illinois consumers will make an extra $4,800 a year and much of that extra income will typically be spent at local businesses on food, clothing and furniture, providing a strong boost to the local economy.

Studies conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago show that an increase of $1 in the minimum wage generates approximately $2,800 in consumer spending per year, greatly improving purchasing power and strengthening the economy. A recent survey found that nearly two-thirds of small business owners support raising the federal minimum wage because they believe it will help the economy and, in turn, enable them to hire more workers, according to a poll conducted by the Small Business Majority. Leaders from large companies such as Costco, Starbucks and Stride Rite also have supported increasing the minimum wage as a way to reduce employee turnover and improve workers' productivity.

###

WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is asking the Obama Administration to explain a new requirement that employers certify that they did not reduce their workforce to become eligible for a delay in complying with Obamacare.

"If the Obama Administration is so certain that PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) will not lead to a reduction in employment, it begs the question: What is the point of the certification process?," Grassley wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.  "The requested information is completely unnecessary, unless the Administration believes the employer mandate is so harmful to businesses that they would rather reduce their workforce than comply.

"The regulation appears to be no more than political theatre, designed to provide the Administration with an unverifiable talking point that employers did not lay off workers in order to avoid complying with PPACA. If the Administration believes, as I do, that the employer mandate will cost jobs, the responsible thing to do would be to ask Congress to repeal this provision."

The health care law requires employers to provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty.  The Obama Administration has imposed several delays of the mandate, most recently announcing that employers with 50 to 99 full-time employees will be exempt from the employer mandate until January 2016.  To be eligible for the delay, an employer must certify that it has between 50 and 99 employees, and that it has not reduced its workforce to fall into that category.  Grassley believes the certification appears pointless and unverifiable.

The text of Grassley's letter is available here.

-30-

5 Questions to Ask Yourself;
The Answers May Help Set You Free

It happens when we see politicians repeatedly make the same self-destructive mistakes - think former legislator Anthony Weiner's repeated sexting scandals.

Or we hear friends complain repeatedly about the horrible job they're "stuck" in.

Or, in a rare glimmer of insight, we wonder why we're still hanging on to a "romance" that makes us miserable.

"When people seem mentally healthy and it looks like they could easily make a change that would make them happier, we're absolutely baffled by why they don't," says Steven Jay Fogel (www.StevenJayFogel.com), author of the new book Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living (March 2014).

When you're the "stuck" person, the why may seem more evident: You're scared, or you think, "If I just keep doing the right things, it will all work out."

Either way, it's likely they?and you?aren't making a conscious choice at all, Fogel says.

"We think we're making decisions based on the present, but we're usually not. We tend to operate on automatic pilot, responding to situations based on the coping strategies and thinking patterns we developed in childhood," he says.

"When those strategies are dysfunctional, we just keep repeating the same behaviors over and over again."

The good news is that we can learn to recognize that "default" thinking and rewire the brain to change it, says Fogel.

The cofounder of Westwood Financial Corp., one of the nation's leading private commercial real estate owners, Fogel draws from decades of neuroscience and mindfulness research to offer solutions.

What can you do to get yourself unstuck? Get started, he suggests, by answering these questions?in writing!

· What is causing your pain? Think about whether you're in a relationship or job that's become less and less satisfying and increasingly painful over a long period. Describe in writing the elements of the relationship or situation that are persistently causing you pain and how long you've been experiencing these problems. Knowing that there are three ways to end your suffering - accept the situation, change it, or remove yourself from it - write down the reasons you're staying even though you're suffering and what is preventing you from choosing Door 1, 2 or 3.

· How are you interpreting your partner's behavior? If you repeatedly fight about the same issues, describe the issues. Think about whether you're unconsciously investing the issue with a meaning based on your "autopilot" thinking. For instance, if you're arguing because your partner's messy and ignores your requests to be neat, are you interpreting that as disrespect toward you? Do you further interpret that disrespect as a lack of love for you? Is it possible that your partner is just not a neat person and that has nothing to do with his feelings for you?

· Do you have impulsive autopilot behaviors that are causing problems? We can often check the impulses that stem from our autopilot brain just by stopping to think before we act. Bursts of anger are one example; suppressed anger that turns into passive-aggressive behavior is another.

· Do you feel shamed or blamed by your partner's critical comments? Write down the comments accurately?as they were spoken. Then think mindfully about whether your partner was really shaming you or if you interpreted the comments in that way because of your own inner critic. If it was the former, have a conversation with the person about how you feel when this happens, and state that you'll be more open to the feedback if the criticism can be expressed objectively.

· Did you bring a myth with you into the relationship? If so, describe the myth. For example, you might have believed that you will cure everything that's wrong with the other person. Or that she will fix all of your problems. Describe how you came to believe that myth and what it would take for you to release it.

About Steven Jay Fogel: Steve Fogel is a principal and cofounder of Westwood Financial Corp., one of the largest owner-operators of retail properties in the United States. He is a licensed real estate broker and past chairman of the California Arts Council. Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living, publishing March 11, 2014, is his third book. He is also the author of My Mind Is Not Always My Friend: A Guide for How to Not Get in Your Own Way (Fresh River Press, 2010) and The Yes-I-Can Guide to Mastering Real Estate (Times Books-Random House)