I don’t know how much more [Republicans] want. We haven’t had a minimum wage increase in 10 years.

The House and Senate each passed a minimum wage bill to increase the current $5.15 an hour rate to $7.25. The House version, passed in the first 100 hours of the new Democratic-controlled Congress, was a clean bill—no tax breaks or corporate giveaway, just a long-overdue raise for millions of hard-working people.

But Senate Republicans rejected the clean House bill and insisted that their business friends were also needy—to the tune of an $8.3 billion package of tax break and incentives. The wage and tax break bill was passed by the Senate on Feb. 1.

In an effort to avoid a stalemate and move the bills to conference—and the $2.10 raise into the pockets of workers—the House passed a smaller package of $1.3 billion in business tax breaks. But that move hasn’t placated the Republicans. Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), who in the 2006 elections opposed a ballot measure in his home state to raise the state’s minimum wage, says that unless House leaders agree to cave in to more business breaks, he is likely to block the bills from a House-Senate conference.

If that happens, Reid says Senate Democrats will move to another vote on a clean minimum age bill. The last vote was 54–43, but because Republicans were filibustering the minimum wage bill, it required 60 votes. The same obstruction tactics are expected if a new vote does take place. Says Reid:

That’s a choice Republicans have to make.…They’ll decide if they want to kill it.

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (0)