Republican Sen. Rob Portman said Tuesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that he supports raising the minimum wage, but the federal government should "index it to inflation."

He said he believes that the federal government should take note of what has been enacted in his home state, Ohio.

"I support Ohio's minimum wage which happens to be about 10 percent higher than the federal and it's indexed to inflation," Portman said. "I actually think it should be indexed to inflation."

Portman said he believes the minimum wage has become a "political exercise" over the past five or 10 years, and the legislation proposed always seeks to greatly increase the wage.

"And frankly, because of that the economics of it are much more difficult for employers," he said, "because the Democrats come and say, 'Let's raise it dramatically over a relatively short period of time' rather than saying, as we do in Ohio... 'Let's index it to inflation.'"

He said in his opinion, raising the minimum wage slowly would be a more common sense approach.