GOP Holds Working Poor Hostage to Paris Hilton

In a conference call with Rep. Pelosi earlier today, she exposed as crass a political move as you could find by the GOP House leadership. They are killing a minimum wage increase with poison pills.

Republican leaders are willing to allow the first minimum wage increase in a decade but only if it's coupled with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, lawmakers said Friday.

As the House pointed toward a session stretching past midnight, it was anything but certain that the plan would work. In fact, the move seemed unlikely to result in a hike in the minimum wage, which has been frozen at $5.15 per hour for a decade.

Here's more from a letter sent by Pelosi to Democratic House members (by e-mail):

The Republican Leadership has stated that a minimum wage bill will be brought to the floor this evening. . . . The legislation will package three separate bills - minimum wage, estate tax, and the extension of expiring tax provisions - into a single package that will make Senate passage impossible. This is nothing more than a cynical, political ploy to defeat a minimum wage increase because this bill will go nowhere in the Senate. . . .

First, at this time, it appears that the Republican leadership plans to use the estate tax and extenders package as a "poison pill."  Senate tax-writers have already rejected, on a bipartisan basis, proposals that combine the estate tax with a tax extenders package.

Second, the cost of the combined tax package the Republican Leadership is proposing is likely to be more than $800 billion for the first ten years that the bill is in effect.   This comes at a time when Republican economic policies have already resulted in trillions of dollars in debt.

Third, the Republican Leadership has not yet decided whether they will provide a real minimum wage increase.  The amount of the increase, the number of years required for such an increase to take effect, and whether a large swath of workers now covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act will lose their protections is still undecided. There is no reason for any Democrat to support a minimum wage bill that reduces or draws out an increase, or which leaves millions of workers behind in coverage.

While the details of the Republican Leadership plan may change, their intention is clear: make every appearance that Republicans support a minimum wage increase, while ensuring its demise in the Senate by attaching "poison pills."

The only way to ensure that a minimum wage increase is enacted is to allow a straight up-or-down vote on HR 2429, the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which provides an increase to $7.25 an hour.

With the estate tax and other repeals, House Democrats will not support the legislation and it will never make it to the Senate floor. This is all about House GOP members being able to go home for the August recess and say they voted for a minimum wage increase. It's not about raising the living standard for the 14.9 million minimum-wage workers in this country. It's about trying to blunt criticism. That the GOP leadership is trying to push this fatally flawed legislation is a sure sign that they know they are vulnerable on the issue.

Make sure they get that message. Call your representative now and urge them to oppose any minimum wage bill that includes unacceptable "poison pills" that will prevent a real increase of $7.25 an hour from being enacted. Then take the poll.