The Iowa Freedom Summit & Ag Summit (preparation for Iowa Caucus): on Jobs

Bernie Sanders: $15 minimum wage might lose some jobs, but it helps many

SANDERS: No public policy doesn't have negative consequences. But what you have right now are millions of Americans working two or three jobs because their wages that they are earning are just too low. It is not a radical idea to say that if somebody works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. It is not a radical idea to say that a single mom should be earning enough money to take care of her kids.

Q: Are job losses an acceptable consequence?

SANDERS: Real unemployment in this country is 10% because the average worker in America doesn't have any disposable income. You have no disposable income when you are make $10 or $12 an hour. When we put money into the hands of working people, they're going to go out and buy goods, they're going to buy services and they're going to create jobs in doing that. That is the kind of economy I believe in: put money in the hands of working people.

Hillary Clinton: $12 minimum wage, indexed for the future

O'MALLEY: $10.10 was all I could get the state to do. But two of our counties actually went to $12.80 and their county executives would also tell you that it works.

CLINTON: I do take what Alan Krueger said seriously. He is the foremost expert in our country on the minimum wage, and what its effects are. That is why I support a $12 national federal minimum wage. But I do believe that is a minimum. And places like Seattle, like Los Angeles, like New York City, they can go higher. It's what happened in Governor O'Malley's state.

O'MALLEY: Didn't just happen. Yeah, but look. It should always be going up.

CLINTON: You would index it to the median wage, of course. Do the $12 and you would index it.

Martin O`Malley: Maryland was first state to pass a living wage of $10.10

O'MALLEY: This was not merely theory in Maryland. We actually did it. Not only were we the first state in the nation to pass a living wage. We were the first to pass a minimum wage.

Q: You're calling for a $15 an hour wage now but why did you stop at $10.10 in your state?

O'MALLEY: $10.10 was all I could get the state to do by the time I left in my last year. But two of our counties actually went to $12.80 and their county executives would also tell you that it works. The more our people earn, the more money they spend, and the more our whole economy grows. That's American capitalism.

Scott Walker: Anti-state unions but pro-private unions

During the 2012 recall election pushed by public employee unions, Democrats repeatedly said that Walker would eventually take on private-sector unions as well. The governor dismissed that talk about right-to-work legislation as political spin. "It's not going to get to my desk," Walker said in May 2012. "I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it isn't there because my focal point [is] private-sector unions have overwhelmingly come to the table to be my partner in economic development."

When Senate Republicans committed to moving forward with the measure on Feb. 20, however, Walker quickly said he would sign it.

Rick Perry: The official unemployment rate is massaged and doctored

Back in 2012, such conspiracy theories became known as unemployment or "BLS trutherism," in reference to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the division of the Labor Department that's responsible for producing the unemployment rate. After some surprisingly upbeat jobs reports that bolstered the campaign of President Barack Obama, skeptical conservatives either implied or said outright that the numbers couldn't be trusted.

As explained at the time, the BLS is devised in such a way that the White House cannot meddle in its math, be it a Democratic or Republican administration. [But BLS truthers compare the official jobless rate of] 5.6% to alternate BLS measures that include discouraged and involuntary part-time workers.