In many quarters they’re going to say “Hooray! The GOP has agreed to allow an increase in the minimum wage.” But wait — as the infomercials like to say — “there’s more!”
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, congressional aides said Friday.
No one can accuse the GOP of not staying “on message.” And the message they are sending to many Americans — including those who are NOT Democrats — is that they won’t do something for working Americans unless they can hold a gun to legislators’ heads making them pass something that will give a tax break to wealthy supporters and/or contribtors. Will this be a “poison pill” that dooms the measure (so GOPers can then try to blame the defeat on Democrats)?MORE:
A package GOP leaders planned to bring to a vote Friday or Saturday in the House also would renew several popular tax breaks, including a research and development credit for businesses, and deductions for college tuition and state sales taxes, said a spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The minimum wage would increase from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years, said Boehner spokesman Kevin Madden.
The maneuver is aimed at defusing the wage hike as a campaign issue for Democrats while using its popularity to achieve the Republican Party’s longtime goal of permanently cutting taxes on millionaires’ estates.
So are politicos of both parties rushing to embrace the idea? It sounds as if they’re embracing it as strongly as a patient who has bird flu:
It was not immediately clear whether the plan by GOP leaders would succeed. Lawmakers did not rush to embrace the idea.
And even if the House manages to pass the measure, success in the Senate is hardly assured. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, does not like the idea and wants to couple the business tax breaks with a bill to overhaul U.S. pension laws.
Bill Samuel, top lobbyist for the AFL-CIO said adding the estate tax to the minimum wage “is the mother of all poison pills. It can’t possibly pass the Senate.”
Democrats expressed outrage at the plan, saying low-income workers deserved a straight vote on increasing the minimum wage uncoupled to other measures.
“It’s political blackmail to say the only way that minimum wage workers can get a raise is to give a tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. “Members of Congress raised their own pay no strings attached. Surely, common decency suggests that minimum wage workers deserve the same respect.”
The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said the move by GOP leaders who actually oppose the minimum wage hike was a cynical exercise to give political cover to GOP moderates while ensuring the wage hike does not become law.
But it FAILS to provide GOP moderates cover. How can it give GOP moderates cover when it is linked at the political neck with an inheritance tax break that would not have passed otherwise? It’s the same tactic used (unsuccessfully) to try to allow oil drilling in some of the pristine areas of Alaska.
It truly sounds as if the GOP is now hopelessly inflicted with a political hubris and could be fatal come November. How many workers who are cynical about whether the GOP really cares about them will want to vote for a GOPer who voted for an increase in the minimum wage that was shoved through under threat of defeat unless an inheritance tax break was grafted onto it?
SOME OTHER VIEWS:
Bring It On: “Sometimes, staying the course is stupid. In November, change the direction.”
—Say Anything says the strategy is brilliant: “The idea is, we force the Dems to either vote for the tax cuts, or against the wage increase. Either way, it’s win-win for the GOP. The Dems are crying like little babies already.”
—Desert Beacon: “If you’re watching C-SPAN now you’ve noticed that the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives has shifted from the “arsenic” poison pill (health care plans) to a current attempt to add “strychnine” to the Minimum Wage bill. The Republican leadership has inserted a provision to get rid of the estate tax, and another provision to make sales taxes deductible in states not having an income tax — read Nevada, et. al. — to the bill.
—Project LOGIC notes all the political posturing on this: “Welcome to Bizarro-World America.”
—Ezra Klein at Tapped:
But there’s something kind of awesome about seeing the GOP’s strings so clearly — they really can’t help the poor without further wrecking the country to aid the rich. According to my sources on the Hill, Democrats do plan to stand against this, but it’s unclear whether they can really block the effort. That said, they should do their damndest. The elimination of the estate tax would deprive the government of billions that currently go to programs that help the neediest Americans — the practical effect of this bill, then, would be a lift in wages, but also further instability and frugality in such programs as Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, and Social Security. Progressivism and regressivism, together at last.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.