"Morality, decency, and fairness" - that's what
Paul Hodes, running for Congress in New Hampshire's second district (and a
netroots candidate) has to say, in a
Nashua Telegraph Story, about raising the minimum wage. Hodes has pledged to donate any pay raises he receives as a member of Congress to charity until Congress approves an increase in the minimum wage; he also advocates regular increases to keep up with inflation.
You know what? What representatives for the Republican incumbent, Charlie Bass, have to say on this issue isn't even worth talking about. All they seem to be able to do is try to make this a partisan issue, as if people making a decent living for hard work is some dirty gotcha trick the Democrats are trying to pull on poor Charlie.
While the minimum wage has not changed since 1997 (good thing prices haven't gone up since then on anything like, oh, say, gas):
During the same period, congressional pay has gone up $31,000 or about 20 percent, Hodes said.
The minimum wage should be $6.50 to $6.75 an hour and go up annually in step with the general rate of inflation, Hodes said.
Someone now earning the bare minimum receives $206 for 40 hours a week, before taxes, and that's still only a third of the average monthly rent in New Hampshire of $626.
"It's wrong, it's unconscionable and it's got to change. I will not vote for a congressional pay raise until Congress raises the minimum wage," Hodes said.
The notion that this could be a partisan issue is just sick, and Charlie Bass seems to be trying to spread that kind of sickness. Indeed, the day after his people were quoted trying to paint Hodes' argument for a straightforward minimum-wage raise as distasteful partisanship, Bass, who has repeatedly voted against raising the minimum wage, went on to vote for the bill that tied a raise in the minimum wage to tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.
According to New York Times coverage of the bill, the estate tax cut will lower federal revenue by $268 billion over 10 years, so that the extremely wealthy do not have to suffer the indignity and injury of becoming only very wealthy. And as for partisan motives, how's this?
The minimum wage vote came after House Republican leaders scrambled to respond to appeals from Republicans in the Northeast and the Midwest who said they needed to dilute escalating Democratic attacks and were worried they would be pounded in the August recess by labor groups. Some Republicans said they would have preferred that the wage increase be tied to legislation other than the estate tax cut, with a health initiative for small businesses one popular alternative.
But Republican leaders seized on the opportunity to advance the estate tax plan, and advocates of a wage increase went along. "It could have been done differently," said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, "but it is done."
I'll close by repeating Hodes' words again: "I think it's an issue of morality, decency and fairness."