Minimum Wage War

Isaiah J. Poole

June 16, 2006

An important part of the Democratic Party’s "New Direction" agenda formally unveiled Friday is an economic "wedge issue"—raising the minimum wage—that will get a higher profile in the coming days.

Like the Republicans’ so-called "marriage protection amendment," this is a sure loser legislatively, but it will certainly make clear where lawmakers stand—either with working Americans or with big business leaders and archconservatives. And, unlike the fight to ban same-sex marriage, this is an issue that will make a real, positive difference for millions of Americans.

Leading the fight are Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Hoyer has a measure to increase the minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, to $7.25 an hour over a two-year period. He had already succeeded, on June 13, in including the wage increase in a Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill, with the help of seven Republicans who broke with their party to vote with Democrats for the increase.

But Hoyer said that House Republicans leaders have decided not to bring the bill to the floor with the minimum wage language. Continuing the undemocratic tactics of his predecessor, Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader John A. Boehner is refusing to let members of Congress vote on anything that does not bear the rubber stamp of the White House and a cabal of Republican ideologues. Just as they refused this week to allow an honest debate on an Iraq War resolution that would have allowed both Democrats and Republicans to offer amendments to what was otherwise a Republican political prop.

Democrats will fight back by voting against the resolution, sent to the floor by the House Rules Committee, that sets the terms for debate on the appropriations bill. If the Rules Committee resolution strips the minimum wage increase from the appropriations bill, Hoyer said, "we are going to make that rules vote a minimum wage vote."

Beginning Monday in the Senate, Kennedy is expected to attempt to add language increasing the minimum wage as an amendment to the Department of Defense spending bill. The most recent attempts to increase the minimum wage have been either rejected by a majority of Republicans or have been attached to poison pills that Democrats could not in good conscience accept.

If Republicans think that 2006 is a year for wedge issues, then this is a good one. Hoyer said Friday that if the minimum wage had been indexed to the rate of inflation, an estimated 7 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 working mothers, now earning the minimum wage would be receiving $9.05 an hour.

"Minimum wage workers are now living in poverty," Hoyer said. "That’s not right."

It is appalling that Republicans would be eager to vote against the minimum wage at the same time that Republicans in the Senate are gearing up for yet another vote on eliminating the estate tax for millionaires. But if the Republicans are willing to bang their heads against the legislative wall on behalf of the super-rich, while erecting the wall against the people who empty their trashcans and change the sheets on their hotel room beds when they are on the road campaigning, let them do it. Fighting for "the least of these" is something Democrats should continue to do no matter how many times Republicans beat them down.