At Least Marie Antoinette Offered Cake. More than Senate Republicans

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/03/09/at-least-marie-antoinette-offered-cake-more-than-senate-republicans/

At Least Marie Antoinette Offered Cake. More than Senate Republicans

by Mike Hall, Mar 9, 2007

It’s been nearly two months since the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the minimum wage, stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997. That paltry hourly wage has been battered by inflation to its lowest buying power in half a century and is losing more and more value every day Senate Republicans hold a wage increase hostage.

Senate Republicans say they’ve got to take care of business first—that is, business interests—to the tune of more than $8 billion in tax breaks for large corporations and smaller firms, before workers can get their $2.10 an hour raise.

In a drive to jump-start the stalled pay hike, House Democrats say they intend to attach the wage increase to an emergency spending bill for the Iraq war, which will be up for a vote soon.

In case you’ve missed it, lets go back a bit to see how we got here, in what most predicted would be a simple, straight-forward process.

After the House on Jan. 10 passed a clean bill—a raise for minimum wage workers, not giveaways to business—the Senate Republican minority maneuvered to put a bullet in the back of its head. After killing the clean House bill Jan. 24, they spent another week stalling—filibustering—until Senate Democrats agreed Feb. 1 to pay an $8.3 billion ransom payment in the form of a package of tax breaks for business as part of the wage increase bill.

But it wasn’t enough for Senate Republicans to win the tax giveaway for their corporate friends—they claimed the cash would give a break to small businesses, but a look at these findings from the Congressional Research Service show otherwise. They then refused to let the minimum wage bill go to a conference where lawmakers from both Houses might be able to find a compromise. Try to move to conference and we will filibuster, they said.

Hoping to move things along, the House passed a $1.3 billion package of small business incentives. But Senate Republicans scoffed at the package as small change, crumbs. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says the House package isn’t even peanuts, just a “peanut shell.” Geez, a $1.3 billion peanut shell, who knew?

Today, Senate Republicans still refuse to move the bill, saying they’re working on it. Never mind that gas, food and health care isn’t getting any cheaper and nobody knows that better than the millions of workers stuck at $5.15 an hour. But such trifles likely don’t make much difference to a group of well-connected, well-off and out-of-touch lawmakers.

At least Marie Antoinette offered cake.

[MasonJar]

1. Marie Antoinette was a kid who was a victim; these Republics are

malicious and an expendable waste of space.