Yes, Republicans, there are hardworking Americans out there struggling to make a living, working long hours, sometimes on two shifts, doing work that's hard on muscles and joints, doing what needs to be done -- the janitors and maids and childcare workers, the cashiers and busboys, the fast food cooks, forklift operators, assemblers, gas station attendants.

These are the people who vacuum the boardrooms and file the papers and sew the clothing and answer the telephones. These are the invisible workers of America, tens of millions of them, working harder than they have ever worked before and barely making it.

But the discussion about the minimum wage, like so many other discussions we ought to be having in Washington about wages and working people, has been muddied by mistruths.

Now, here is one often repeated fiction: They say that the only Americans working for the minimum wage are teenagers. Let me give you the facts: Sixty-three percent of minimum wage workers are adults over the age of 20, according to the non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And three out of five minimum wage workers are women, who are also shouldering most of the responsibility for cooking the meals, cleaning the house, and shuttling the kids to day care. 

Fiction number two. Minimum wage workers don't support families. Let me give you the facts: The last time the federal minimum wage was increased -- that's where we have the data from, the average minimum wage worker brought home 51 percent of his or her family's weekly earnings. And it can only be a higher percentage now. 

Fiction number three: Raising the minimum wage is a job killer. Let me give you the facts.

More than a dozen independent studies, independent studies -- now, these are not studies financed by the National Federation of Independent Businesses or the National Restaurant Association or even by labor or even by the Labor Department. These are independent academic studies. Twelve of them, more than 12 of them, have shown that moderate, minimum-wage increases of the sort that the president is proposing, 45 cents the first year, 45 cents the second year, have almost no effect on employment.  

The next fiction: Raising the minimum wage hurts minorities. Here's the facts. African Americans and Hispanics are more heavily represented in the minimum wage workforce than they are in the workforce at large. Raising the minimum wage will actually benefit them.  

We are dedicated and committed to improving the lives and prospects of hard-working people in this country. They keep America going; we should keep them going.