Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn claims that she was glad to have the opportunity to work for $2.15 in her first job and that raising the minimum wage to $9 would deny today’s young employables the character building goodness that she had access to. Think Progress observes:

Making $2.15 an hour certainly does sound worse than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

More: OOPS: GOP Rep. Inadvertently Makes the Case for Nearly Doubling the Minimum Wage