by Mike Hall, Jun 21, 2006

In a mostly party-line vote, the Senate today refused to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

The vote was 52–46 in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly 10 years. (See how your senators voted.) But thanks to what Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the “parliamentary gymnastics” of Senate Republican leaders, his minimum wage increase amendment to the U.S. Department of Defense Authorization bill needed 60 votes rather than a simple majority to pass.

As a smoke screen to give Republican senators election year cover for voting against raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25, Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) offered an alternative $1.10 an hour raise loaded with “poison pill” measures that would actually harm workers and their families.

Enzi’s amendment, which also was defeated, would have gutted several provisions of the Fair Labor Standard Act. Like previous Republican maneuvers to block a real minimum wage increase, Enzi’s amendment would have eliminated wage and hour protections for millions of workers, cut overtime pay by replacing the 40-hour workweek with an 80-hour, two-week work period and lowered wages for tipped workers.

The Senate’s defeat of the minimum wage hike came just a day after a new study revealed the wage’s buying power had fallen to a 51-year low. It also followed, by a little more than a week, a House vote to raise congressional pay for the ninth time since the minimum wage was last increased. Recent polls show a huge majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage. At a press conference yesterday, Kennedy said that was because:

It’s fundamentally about fairness and Americans understand fairness. They know the difference between right and wrong. It’s wrong that hard-working men and women can’t afford to put food on the table or heat their homes. It’s wrong to give billions and billions of dollars in tax relief to the wealthy and then turn your back on the hard-working families who live in poverty.

Kennedy said he will continue the fight to win a minimum wage increase in the Senate.

Meanwhile, in the House, Republican leaders continue to block a vote on the minimum wage. But Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) announced the House will find time to vote on a bill to give more huge tax breaks to the wealthy by slashing the estate tax that only multimillionaires pay. We will tell you more about that later today. 

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