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Posted: Jun 02, 2026 9:15 AMUpdated: Jun 02, 2026 9:15 AM
OPINION: State Question 832 Promises Relief But is an Empty Promise
Sen. Julie Daniels
Oklahomans are tired of paying more despite the fact that we are a low cost of living state. More for groceries. More for gasoline. More for electricity, insurance, and the small things that now feel big. When a working family watches its paycheck buy less than it did three years ago, they want relief.
This is what makes State Question 832 so tempting on the surface. It promises a simple solution: raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and tie every future increase to a national inflation index.
This sounds compassionate but will make life more expensive. I want a more prosperous Oklahoma for everyone, so I am voting NO “no” on SQ832. Here’s why.
The first principle is simple, and we must never forget it. Government does not create wealth. Government can move wealth from one pocket to another, but it cannot conjure it from thin air. If we mandate a higher wage those dollars won’t appear out of nowhere. They will come from the higher prices we all will pay, from the jobs that will no longer be offered, from the hours that will no longer be scheduled, and from the small businesses that will quietly close their doors when the math no longer works. Economics 101 teaches this and two centuries of practice confirm it.
That brings me to the second principle: a minimum wage mandate it will feed inflation. State Question 832 will more than double the entry wage in just three years. Every employer will face two choices: absorb the cost or pass it along to customers. Most small employers cannot absorb it. They will raise prices, making things more expensive for the very people a mandatory minimum wage claims to help.
The third principle is the most troubling, and I ask you, my fellow Oklahomans, to consider it carefully. State Question 832 does not merely raise the “minimum” entry wage. It hands long-term control of Oklahoma's wage law over to an unelected federal bureaucracy – permanently. Beginning in 2030, our Oklahoma minimum wage would will increase automatically – year after year - based on the national “Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers”. This national index is based on large urban economies very different from our Oklahoma economies. Your elected state senators and representatives will not be able to slow, cap or stop the increases – no matter what damage they do to Oklahoma jobs and businesses. Neither would will you. We will cede a piece of our self-governance to a number computed in Washington, D.C. by people accountable to no one in Senate District 29.
The fourth principle is older than any of us. The market price of labor It tells employers what to invest in, tells workers what skills to acquire, a s a piece of information. It tells employers what to invest in, tells workers what skills to acquire, and tells entrepreneurs where opportunity lies. When that price is forced up, it scrambles the signal and stalls prosperity. Entry level positions disappear first because those are the jobs whose value to the employer is closest to the price floor. The teenager looking for her first summer job. The recently unemployed worker trying to climb back in. The young mother who needs flexible part-time hours. These are the Oklahomans whom artificially high wage floors price out of the labor market. It’s happened every single time a mandatory minimum wage has been tried.
There is a better answer to rising prices, and Oklahoma is proving what works. Lower the tax burden on families and small businesses. Cut the regulations that strangle new hiring before it begins. Invest in the workforce. In career and technology education, in the trades, in the skills that command real, market-driven wages. And demand the fiscal discipline from Washington that is the only durable real and lasting cure for the inflation Oklahomans are feeling.
Rising prices are real, and Oklahomans deserve real relief. On June 16, join me in voting no on State Question 832 for the sake of the workers it is most likely to harm, for the small businesses that will quietly close, for the principle that Oklahomans should govern Oklahoma, and for the simple proposition that wage increases worth having are wages earned, not wages mandated.
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