Senate Finally Passes Minimum Wage Boost—But It’s Not Over Yet

by Mike Hall, Feb 1, 2007

Nearly two weeks after senators first began debating a bill to raise the minimum wage, the Senate today passed the bill. It calls for a $2.10-an-hour raise for minimum wage workers, but hands businesses $8.3 billion in tax cuts.

It’s hard to believe there was anything left to debate after 10 years of arguments, filibusters and obstruction by Republican lawmakers who’ve blocked every attempt to raise the minimum wage for a decade.

Of course, during the past two weeks of official filibuster and “filibuster by amendment” from most Republicans, they’ve recycled the same tired arguments while demanding billions of dollars in tax break for business as ransom for a $2.10-an-hour raise for minimum wage workers.

As the debate dragged on yesterday, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked:

How long does it take? How long does it take for this body to be able to say: Yes, we are going to increase the minimum wage. How many more amendments are over there on the Republican side? We have none. We are prepared to vote on final passage right now. But oh, no, we can’t do that. There should be no doubt in the minds of working families, of the middle class, who is standing for those who are earning the minimum wage.

Even after today’s 94-3 vote, it’s going take a little longer before any minimum wage workers see a dime of the raise that will increase the wage floor from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour.

In their obsession for even more corporate tax breaks on top of the more than $300 billion in tax cuts the business community received since the minimum wage was raised, the Republican minority killed the House-passed bill that just included the minimum wage increase, with no corporate giveaways. Later, 28 Senate Republicans even voted to repeal the minimum wage.

The House passed the clean bill (315–116) with 82 Republicans voting for the “clean” wage hike legislation. But now the two bills must be reconciled in a House and Senate conference and it isn’t clear when that would take place.

Stay tuned.