The Liberty Papers

House GOP pressing vote on minimum wage

House Republican leaders, giving in to political reality, plan a vote to raise the $5.15 minimum wage before leaving Washington this weekend for a five-week recess.

“Whether people like it or not, we need to go ahead with it,” said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supports the idea. “There’s a general agreement among Republicans (opposing the raise) that `maybe we don’t like it much, but we need to move forward with it just for political reasons.'”

The No. 3 House GOP leader, Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, said the plan was to have a vote before week’s end. But Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans leaders were working to pass the increase but that “no decisions have been made.”

It was a decade ago, during the hotly contested campaign year of 1996, that Congress 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.

Democrats have made increasing the wage a pillar of their campaign platform and are pushing to raise the wage to $7.25 per hour over two years. In June, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to raise the minimum wage, rejecting a proposal from Democrats.

The chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee said the GOP would embrace the increase to $7.25 per hour and probably attach a proposal passed last year that would make it easier for small business to band together and buy health insurance plans for employees at a lower cost. Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., said the minimum wage bill probably will not include tax cuts such as a repeal of the estate tax.

Great… So let me get this straight.

You’re going to give the Democrats what they ask for. In order to try to make it slightly more politically palatable, you’re going to barely ease regulations on small business. And when you might have an issue worth going tit-for-tat on, and actually getting a real concession from the Democrats, you roll over.

An estate tax repeal would be the ultimate poison pill for Democrats on this bill. I can just see the quandary they’d be in, knowing they can’t vote against a minimum wage, but being against the estate tax repeal. And it’s a politically great move. If you’re going to do something to help the rich, why not do it as an offset to helping* the poor. Yet the Republicans are not going to do it.

The Republicans are showing, once again, that they’re just as statist as Democrats, but with some nice religious authoritarianism and hyper-nationalism thrown in on top of it.

Thanks, guys. I really feel good about voting for you chumps in 2004.

* Yes, I realize the minimum wage hurts the poor. But in the political world, perception is reality, and the perception is otherwise.