Teasing lowest-wage workers

Scripps Howard: The president and Congress agree that the minimum wage should be raised, and by rights it should have been increased last year, if not earlier. But our national capital doesn't always work the way the civics textbooks say it should.
Last year, when the Republicans controlled the House, they passed an increase but got a little too politically cute and attached a steep cut in the estate tax, knowing that this was unacceptable to Senate Democrats. The idea was to force the Democrats into an embarrassing vote, reneging on one campaign promise to make good on another, but the Democrats simply bottled it up and the bill died with the old Congress.
You would think that the Democrats would have learned some lessons from that about being in the majority, but political logic is not the same as textbook logic. The Democratic leadership instead tied the minimum-wage increase to an Iraq-war funding bill.
Emergency legislation
The Iraq bill is an emergency supplemental spending bill. The minimum wage, while vital to workers at the bottom of the wage ladder, is hardly an emergency. President Bush has said all along that he will veto the Democrats' Iraq bill, and the fact that the minimum wage is tucked in there won't make him change his mind.
Thus, a measure that would be easily passed on its own will now be caught up in feuding between the White House and congressional Democrats over Iraq timetables, deadlines and troop withdrawals.
The federal minimum wage is currently 5.15 an hour. This bill would raise it to 7.25 an hour. rse,