Boosting the Minimum Wage is a Good Test of Republican Bipartisanship

by Mike Hall, Nov 13, 2006

Come January, millions of low-wage American workers have a lot better opportunity to get a raise, with the new Congress expected to propose an increase in the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage. The boost will come after more than a decade of inaction and deliberate blocking tactics by Republican congressional leaders and six years of Bush administration opposition. 

Last Tuesday, voters not only overwhelmingly approved ballot measures in six states to raise the minimum wage above the federal rate, but voters across the nation said they’d had enough of Republican leadership—especially on economic issues—and gave Democrats control of both the House and Senate.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who authored the most recent Senate version of minimum wage legislation to increase it to $7.25 an hour, says:

Washington wouldn’t act on raising the minimum wage, so America did and now the new Congress will.

The new leaders who will set the congressional agenda when they take over in January are Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who will be speaker of the House and likely Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). Both say immediate action on the minimum wage is at the top of their to-do list. In fact, Pelosi says the House will vote on a minimum wage bill in the first 100 hours of the new 110th Congress.

In the current 109th Congress, which now is meeting in a lame-duck session, majorities in both parties have supported a minimum wage increase. But rather than vote on a straight bill increasing the minimum wage, congressional Republicans repeatedly added poison pills such as slashing the estate tax for millionaires and cutting the wages of tipped workers—or refused to allow a simple up-or-down vote on a clear minimum wage bill.

Let’s hope with majorities in both Houses, any Democratic bill won’t be loaded down with such egregious provisions. Already, Arizona Sen. John McCain—who told Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that he voted against raising Arizona’s minimum wage—says he will not support a clean minimum wage bill in the Senate.

How will President Bush react? In a post-election press conference in which he promised to take a bipartisan approach in working with the new Congress in a bipartisan manner, Bush said he might be able to find “common ground” on a wage increase, but hedged his bets when he suggested “compensation” for businesses as part of a package.

Perhaps Bush—and McCain—didn’t look closely at Tuesday’s results. In the six states where the minimum wage was on the ballot, election observers and political pros all say the wage issue drove Democratic voters to the polls. In Missouri, Montana and Ohio, voters defeated Republican Senate incumbents with long records against raising the minimum wage.

Support for boosting the minimum wage is so broad—more than 80 percent according to recent polls—that just this year, 12 state legislatures passed minimum wage increases, in addition to voter-approved initiatives in the six states (Arizona, Colorado and Nevada round out the six.) The AFL-CIO and ACORN led the get-out-the-vote mobilization around the wage initiatives and legislative action through the union movement’s America Needs a Raise campaign and our joint 7 Days on the Minimum Wage vlog event.

Will the bipartisan promise extend to signing a minimum wage bill or is it simply post-election spin?

Already the Bush White House has said it would oppose promised Democratic efforts to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices for its prescription drug plan (click here to read more).  

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