Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is 'a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life' in increasingly personal feud with Ivanka Trump
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Ivanka Trump after the First Daughter said Americans would not support a jobs guarantee because they "want to work for what they get."
- Trump told Fox News people would reject Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal policies because "I don't think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something."
- Ocasio-Cortez attacked Ivanka's credibility on the issue, highlighting her own past as "a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life."
- "I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live," the Congresswoman said. "Imagine attacking a Jobs Guarantee by saying 'people prefer to earn money.'"
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rebuked Ivanka Trump for saying that people prefer to "work" for money, highlighting her personal experience "as a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life."
In an interview with Fox News released on Monday night, Trump said that most Americans don't want the jobs guarantee outlined in Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal resolution.
The document sets the goal of every American having a guaranteed job "with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security."
Trump, the first daughter and a Senior White House Advisor, said: "I don't think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. ... People want to work for what they get."
"So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want."
Ocasio-Cortez responded to an article on Trump's comments by tweeting: "As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live."
"A living wage isn't a gift, it's a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create."
Ocasio-Cortez has spoken of her previous jobs in the service industry, including working as a in New York before her history-making election to Congress.
Trump's past positions before working in Donald Trump's White House include modelling, working on her father's hit show "The Apprentice," negotiating her father's property deals, and running her own fashion and lifestyle brand.
Ocasio-Cortez followed up the dispute by arguing that worker compensation has got worse in recent decades, providing an extra incentive for action.
She said: "In fact, wages are so low today compared to actual worker productivity that they are no longer the reflections of worker value as they used to be."
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Ocasio-Cortez cited statistics from nonprofit think-tank Economic Policy Institute, which say productivity grew 6.2 times faster than pay between 1973 and 2017.
"Imagine attacking a Jobs Guarantee by saying 'people prefer to earn money.' ???" Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a later tweet.
Ivanka Trump tweeted on Tuesday that she supported a minimum wage, but not "a minimum guarantee for people 'unwilling to work', which was the question asked of me."
But Trump was not explicitly asked about a wage for those who are not working in the Fox News video.
In the video, Steve Hilton asks her: "You've got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'Here's the Green New Deal, here's the guarantee of a job' and think: 'Yeah, that's what I want, it's that simple.' What do you say to those people?"
While unpopular with Republican leaders, the Green New Deal - an ambitious plan to revolutionize the US economy that includes provisions designed to make the US carbon-neutral in 10 year - appears to have a high level of bipartisan support.
A December survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication in found that 92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans back the plan.