Leadership Quote by J. D. Hayworth

That sentence is a politician's tightrope act in miniature: concede the moral and economic case for a higher minimum wage, then immediately re-center the story around the anxieties of employers. "Due for an increase" is carefully passive, as if the raise is a natural inevitability rather than a contested political choice. It signals reasonableness and timeliness, not redistribution. The second clause does the real work: "important" frames the next move as pragmatic, even protective, while "offset its cost" quietly accepts the conservative premise that wage hikes are primarily a burden to be compensated for, not an investment in labor markets or consumer spending.

The subtext is coalition management. Hayworth is speaking to two audiences at once: low-wage workers who want higher pay and business owners (especially small businesses, the most sympathetic employer category in American politics) who fear margin pressure. Invoking "small businesses" is strategic moral camouflage; it deflects attention from large corporate employers who often set wage norms and have far greater capacity to absorb increases. It's the rhetorical equivalent of putting a mom-and-pop storefront in the foreground of a policy debate that might otherwise point toward Walmart.

Contextually, this is a familiar late-20th/early-21st century Republican posture: grant that wages have stagnated enough to require action, but condition that action on compensatory measures (tax credits, regulatory relief, exemptions) that blunt the policy's redistributive edge. The line tries to turn a worker-centered reform into a business-friendly bargain, making "help" contingent on not asking employers to feel it.