Thursday, June 22, 2006
Sen. Ted Kennedy wants to see the rate raised by $2.10.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON -- A battle over whether to raise the minimum wage is spilling into the hard-fought congressional campaigns, with several Democratic challengers staging campaign events on the issue and Democrats promising to hike the wage as one of their first acts should they win control of Congress.
Democrats have already crafted a campaign message attacking Republicans for accepting annual cost-of-living increases in their own salaries while denying a raise to approximately 6.6 million low-income workers, who have not seen a minimum wage increase in nine years.
The fight heated up Wednesday as the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to boost the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. The vote was 52-46 in favor of the higher wage, with eight Republicans joining Democrats to back the change, but that left proponents eight votes short of the 60 necessary to prevail under a parliamentary deal between the two parties.
Democrats have tried several times to raise the minimum wage since the last increase in 1997, and they are portraying themselves as allies of ordinary hard-working Americans. "This battle will continue all across America until at long last justice is done," Kennedy said. "It's time for the Republican leadership to stop its obstruction and get out of the way."
Hurting the poor?
While business groups are unalterably opposed to raising the minimum wage, the GOP is stressing that, contrary to what Democrats assert, doing so would hurt workers. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he would "probably not" allow the issue to come up for a vote on the House floor, adding that whenever the wage is raised, the poorest workers with the least skills wind up losing their jobs.
"I have had every rotten job there ever was," said Boehner. "I could sit here for 20 minutes and carry on about all the bad jobs I ever had, and I was glad to have every single one of them. And you raise the minimum wage, you take away the first rung of the economic ladder because, particularly, people who are making minimum wage do not have skills."
Nevertheless, seven House Republicans broke with party leaders and voted for a wage increase last week when Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., offered an amendment to one of the annual spending bills in the Appropriations Committee. That amendment is expected to be stripped from the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill before it reaches the House floor.