"Words that make actions speak louder."
Yesterday, I noted that Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is whining that the new minimum wage compromise doesn’t have enough tax favors for business. From CQ Today (subscription required): “The Senate package was barely adequate,” [Grassley] said in a statement. “I called it peanuts. The House package was puny. I called it a peanut shell. Now […]
Congressional leaders took a big step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge late Friday, reconciling House-Senate differences in their minimum wage bills. The two chambers split the difference on the size of business tax breaks, ending up at $4.8 billion. The ideal would have been zero, to reject conservative claims that any raise for low-income workers […]
Today through Saturday, when Republicans and conservatives gather in Washington for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, will they face up to the biggest obstacle preventing them from connecting with voters? Their “secular problem.” Lots of ink has been spilled about how Democrats and liberals suffer from a “religion problem” — a perceived hostility towards […]
CQPolitics.com today highlights new research from the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, finding that minimum wage initiatives in five states significantly boosted voter turnout: Voter motivation and reported interest in the election was disproportionately high among Democratic base voters, African-Americans, unmarried voters and women — especially where minimum wage initiatives were in play… …[For example,] Democrats […]
The House Ways & Means Committee yesterday cleared a bill with less than $2 billion in business tax breaks, as part of a plan to resolve differences in the House and Senate minimum wage bills. While I noted earlier that the House is passing the tax bill separately from its wage bill — keeping the […]
Trying to break a House-Senate stalemate over competing minimum wage bills, Rep. Charlie Rangel is planning on moving a bill with $1 billion in business tax breaks, separate from the minimum wage bill, according to CQ Today. That’s much smaller than the $8.3 billion handout in the Senate minimum wage bill. And, keeping the bills […]
Late today, the Senate passed its version of a minimum wage increase 94-3. Unlike the House bill, the Senate version includes tax giveaways to business, and it’s unclear what happens next. (Who are the three winners of the Deepest Hatred of Workers Award? Bob Geiger reports: Sens. Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint.) Both […]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a conference call with bloggers earlier this afternoon. I asked him where the minimum wage bill will go after this week’s expected approval of a version including business tax breaks. Yesterday’s NY Times said that the Senate bill either will go to a House-Senate conference, where it can be […]
Today, the NY Times checks in on the minimum wage battle, and we may be seeing a little movement towards a push for a clean bill without business tax giveaways. The piece notes that after the Senate passes its bill with such tax favors, two different procedural things could happen: “the Senate could hold on […]
Yesterday, Bob Geiger and the AFL-CIO Blog broke the story that 28 conservative Senators tried to outright eliminate the federal minimum wage. Immediately, the blogosphere reacted in shock, at both the raw cruelty and the political inanity. TomPaine.com labelled the whole lot, “The Senate Anti-Worker Caucus,” fundamentally out of touch with the electorate, since “Voters […]