WASHINGTON - Republicans muscled the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House early Saturday after pairing it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.
Combining the two issues provoked protests from Democrats and was sure to cause problems in the Senate, where the minimum wage initiative was likely to die at the hands of Democrats opposed to the costly estate tax cuts. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week.
Still, GOP leaders saw combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting permanent cuts to the estate tax, a top GOP priority fueled by intense lobbying by farmers, small business owners and super-wealthy families such as the Waltons, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune.
The House passed the bill 230-180 before leaving for a five-week recess.
The bill passed Saturday would exempt $5 million of an individual’s estate, and $10 million of a couple’s, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to rise to 20 percent. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30 percent by 2015.
“Just think of what it is to have a bill that says to minimum wage workers, ‘We’ll raise your minimum wage but only if we can give an estate tax cut to the 7,500 wealthiest families in America,”’ said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said the move by GOP leaders — who actually oppose the minimum wage increase — was a cynical exercise to give political cover to GOP moderates while ensuring the wage increase does not become law.
“They want on the one hand to appear to be doing something and on the other make sure that it doesn’t happen,” Hoyer said.
Democrats have been hammering away on the minimum wage issue and have public opinion behind them.
It was during the campaign year of 1996 that Congress last voted to increase the minimum wage. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage makes $10,700, which is below the poverty line for workers with families.
Inflation has eroded the minimum wage’s buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years. Lawmakers have won cost-of-living wage increases totaling about $35,000 for themselves over the last 10 years.
GOP lawmakers feared being pounded with 30-second campaign ads over the August recess that would tie Congress’ upcoming $3,300 pay increase with Republicans’ refusal to raise the minimum wage.
What nerve. The Republicans aren't even trying to hide thier pandering. Are they against the minimum wage increase cause it will hurt businesses, or force the poor people to be laid off, or in the end, jsut not be that beneficial? Arguments that were made here, and made intelligently may I add (don't let it go to your head, Mr. David Franceschina).
NO! Why are they against it? Well, they're not anymore, cause polls tell them otherwise. So in other words, they have no principles, they'll just bend whichever way the political winds are blowing. But even worse, they can't do anything to benefit the poor unless they ensure the wealthiest of the wealthy make out as well!!!
If nothing else has ever done so, THIS clearly shows who the constituency of the GOP is: the rich. It certainly is NOT the middle class. And yet, somehow, the middle class are the ones that keep voting these jokers in!
*SIGH* I guess Ben Kenobi was right when he asked, "Who's the bigger fool, the fool or the one who follows him?"
POLT = listening to "I Heard A Rumour" by Bananarama
We are judged not by the monuments we build, but by the monuments we destroy. - Ada Louise Huxtable
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