I would have supported this in its current form and even adding in a minimum wage for them as well. The problem is that when we jack it up to the mainline rate we are essentially ending internships. Whilst there are problems, there are also cases of valuable skills being learned and therefore attaining their destruction is a mistake in my view where it is intented or not.
ITT apologism for slavery
If an internship at a reduced wage gets somebody skills to compete for good jobs they would not otherwise have, I would take that trade-off. Of course, you would not but then again you were never one for being practical on economic policies. 
That said, you have made it fun this past year and eight months and of all the Senate rivals I have had from the other side of the aisle, you were the most persistent and I respect persistence.
Should we really be encouraging that? I mean, even if we accept that unpaid internships are wholly altruistic vehicles for skill enhancement (which, let's be honest, isn't remotely close to the case), there's still the very real problem that you're only providing that enhancement to people who can afford the opportunity cost of not earning in that time period. In that reality, unpaid internships essentially function to deny the poor education, for all intents and purposes.
It depends on the reduced wage and employers are under no obligation to offer internships. Instead, it could very possibly be the case that many cease to exist because the company is bringing in someone untrained when they could just go for those with the perfect, freeze dried, foiled sealed and prepacked employees with ten years of experience instead. And then these people would be shut out entirely from the workforce with no experience to work from, which means they probably end up at retail or fast food.
This just flat out doesn't make any sense. Yes, if unpaid internships go away, companies are highly unlikely to just "start paying" for those jobs. I definitely recognize that. Most companies have already spent their last marginal dollar on employment. Perhaps the cost of 4 unpaid interns might be equivalent to hiring one full time worker (in terms of training, oversight, etc). Maybe not.
But it's ridiculous to suggest that getting rid of unpaid internships is somehow hurting the job prospects of the people who are so lucky as to be able to afford one in the first place. Internships which would actually help your long-term employment have rigorous screening processes and lead to full time positions, so there's nothing stopping those firms from hiring those interns wholesale when they become available. And the absence of less prestigious internships largely won't negatively impact anyone; just like a rising tide lifts all boats, a sinking tide drops them.
Like a lot of policy areas, this is one where counter-producitvity is lost on people of course.
You can't just say something is counterproductive without justifying it. Yes, the same employment criteria would be applied to those full time candidates in the absence of internships, but
poor people can't afford to APPLY to unpaid internships. Poor people CAN afford to apply to full time positions. They still may not have the connections, but at least the job itself doesn't have the opportunity cost of literally losing out on a salary. That's the major issue.
