WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders, giving in to political reality, plan a vote to raise the $5.15 minimum wage before leaving Washington this weekend for a five-week recess.
“Whether people like it or not, we need to go ahead with it,” said Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supports the idea. “There’s a general agreement among Republicans (opposing the raise) that “maybe we don’t like it much, but we need to move forward with it just for political reasons.”
The No. 3 House GOP leader, Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, said the plan was to have a vote before week’s end. But Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans leaders were working to pass the increase but that “no decisions have been made.”
It was a decade ago, during the hotly contested campaign year of 1996, that Congress last passed an increase in the minimum wage. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage makes $10,700, which is below the poverty line for workers with families.
Democrats have made increasing the wage a pillar of their campaign platform and are pushing to raise the wage to $7.25 per hour over two years. In June, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to raise the minimum wage, rejecting a proposal from Democrats.
The minimum wage in Washington state is $7.63.
Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said the GOP would embrace the increase to $7.25 per hour and probably attach a proposal passed last year that would make it easier for small business to band together and buy health insurance plans for employees at a lower cost.
But the minimum wage bill probably will not include tax cuts such as a repeal of the estate tax.
It was not clear what other potential add-ons might soothe unhappy lawmakers and GOP opponents of a wage increase such as the small-business lobby.
House Democrats cried foul on Thursday, saying Republicans planned to add “poison pills” for their business allies. Many Democrats oppose the small-business health insurance legislation because it would overrule state laws requiring coverage for procedures such as diabetes care and cancer screenings.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California demanded a vote on a bill that would just increase the minimum wage. She spoke out against “the usual Republican poison pills of attaching tax cuts for the wealthy or other so-called sweeteners for the Republican special interests.”
A Senate GOP leadership aide said that chamber would not be able to pass a wage hike with the small-business health provisions attached, a view shared by AFL-CIO lobbyist Bill Samuel.
Inflation has eroded the minimum wage’s buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years. Yet lawmakers have won cost-of-living wage increases totaling about $35,000 over that time. So House GOP leaders are bowing to the inevitable on the increase.
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