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Randy Shaw | Dems Must Stay Firm in Minimum Wage Fight    [

    Kennedy to Republicans: "What Is it About Working Men and Women That You Find so Offensive?"
    BobGeiger.blogspot.com

    Friday 26 January 2007

    It's a sure bet that Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has a lot of bottled-up frustration from years of fighting the Republican party to get a simple minimum wage increase for America's families and it boiled over on the floor of the Senate Thursday night.

    Angry about Republican filibustering of the minimum wage increase that easily passed the House of Representatives two weeks ago, Kennedy erupted on the Senate floor, demanding of the other side of the aisle "When does the greed stop?"

    After listing many of the unrelated and pricey amendments for business that the GOP has tried to join to a minimum wage hike, Kennedy blasted Republicans and demanded to know how they can be as cruel as they are to the working poor in America.

    "We have now had amendments that have been worth over 200 billion dollars… Amendments that have been offered. We've had amendments on education of 35 billion dollars. We've had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000… We've had those kinds of amendments and we're looking at the Kyl amendment at 3 billion dollars. But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents - over two years. Over two years!

    "What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more, are you asking, are you requiring?

    "When does the greed stop, we ask the other side? That's the question and that's the issue."

    Kennedy, upset about the noises Republicans made just three weeks ago about their renewed bipartisan spirit and seeing them already blocking simple legislation that is favored by the vast majority of Americans, angrily chided them for the ridiculous number of amendments they have offered on a bill that went untouched through the House.

    "Make no mistake about it - they have on the Republican side, 70 more amendments. 70 more amendments!" said Kennedy. "We have none. We're prepared to vote now. 70 more amendments… 'Oh yes, we want an increase in the minimum wage, we want this, we want that but… let's have some other kinds of amendments that have virtually nothing to do with this.'"

    But Massachusetts' Senior Senator - who has seen his efforts to increase the minimum wage shot down in the Senate three times in the last two years - really unloaded on his Republican colleagues for their utter contempt for working people in this country.

    "240 billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations. 36 billion dollars in tax breaks for small businesses. Increase in productivity - 42 percent over the last 10 years," yelled Kennedy emotionally. "But do you think there's any increase in the minimum wage? No. At 12 after five today, on Thursday, I speak for all of our Democrats and say we're prepared to vote now. Now!"

    "Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? Why don't you just hold your amendments until other pieces of legislation? Why this volume of amendments on just the issue to try and raise the minimum wage? What is it about it that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something! What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"

    And at this early stage of the 110th Congress, Kennedy has already had it with the hypocrisy that has always characterized the Republicans in dealing with Senate Democrats - and he called them on it.

    "We don't want to hear any more from that side for the rest of this session about permitting or not permitting votes in here when you're denying it on the most simple concept of an increase in the minimum wage," said Kennedy. "We don't want to hear any more about that."

    "This is filibuster by delay and amendments. I've been around here long enough to know it when I see it and smell it, and that's what it looks like, that's what it is, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it."

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    Dems Must Stay Firm in Minimum Wage Fight
    By Randy Shaw
    BeyondChron.org

    Friday 26 January 2007

    The same Senate Republicans who passed tax breaks for billionaires with record speed are now threatening a filibuster to prevent an increase in the federal minimum wage. On Wednesday, only 54 Senators voted to cut off debate over the long overdue minimum wage hike, six short of the 60 votes needed. Nearly all Republican Senators are opposing the stand-alone bill, joining President Bush in assuming that they can force Democrats to link the wage hike to new tax breaks for business. Democrats can agree to the tax breaks to ensure the paltry $5.15 minimum wage is increased, or draw a line in the sand and let Americans know that Republicans are to blame for holding up passage. In light of how President Clinton and fellow Democrats allowed the last minimum wage hike in 1996 to be linked to a bevy of special interest tax cuts, Democrats must learn from this mistake and stay firm.

    Although as many as 80 House Republicans backed a stand-alone minimum wage hike from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years, Republican Senators believe they can get credit for enacting the increase while also giving tax breaks to business. Their plan is to prevent an up or down vote on the wage hike, forcing Democrats to accept new tax breaks as the price of passage.

    It's a smart strategy. Should Democrats go along, Republicans can claim in 2008 that they backed the minimum wage hike, and few voters are likely to recall their opposition to a stand-alone bill.

    That's what happened the last time the minimum wage was increased in 1996. Newt Gingrich controlled the House at the time and insisted on tying a wage hike to corporate tax breaks. The resulting law raising the wage from $4.25 to $5.15 was even titled the Small Business Job Protection Act, and it enabled Republican House members to argue in their re-election campaigns that they had fought to increase the minimum wage while concealing the huge windfall for corporations.

    That's why Democrats must not again give Republicans the opportunity to benefit from obstructionism.

    Major news web sites on January 24 and 25 gave little attention to the Republicans' opposition to the wage hike. As a new vote occurs next week, the vast majority of voters likely know more about Republican support for the wage hike in the House than the Party's stopping the bill in the Senate.

    This means that Democrats must call the Republicans bluff and let them continue voting to stop low-income Americans from earning only $5.15 an hour. Keep the Senate in session for days if necessary, so even apolitical Americans will become aware of the Republicans all-out effort to keep working families in poverty.

    San Francisco had a clear analogy to the Republicans example back in 2001, when our Board of Supervisors was asked to approve a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the city's downtown corporations to invalidate the city's business tax.

    Accepting the advice of the City Attorney, the Supes voted to pay tens of millions of dollars in settling the case. The majority saw this as prudent, fearing that an adverse Court of Appeal ruling would cost San Francisco much more.

    But the settlement prevented most San Francisco taxpayers from learning about the massive looting of the city's treasury by the Hearst Corporation (owner of the SF Chronicle) and other plaintiffs in the case. In contrast, had the Court of Appeal ultimately ruled again the city, banner headlines about "City owes Corporations Million$" would have created a public backlash against the corporations bringing the suit.

    None of the corporations filing the suit wanted to be publicly identified with causing hikes in Muni fares, closures of recreation centers, reduction in AIDS funding and cuts in children's programs. And thanks to the settlement, the vast majority of San Franciscans do not associate these corporations with such actions.

    In fact, most do not even recall the lawsuit that has taken over $200 million from the city's treasury.

    A similar result will occur if Senate Democrats quickly cave in on the stand-alone minimum wage hike. Every single Republican will be able to claim during the 2008 campaign season that they supported an increased minimum wage, even when virtually all Republican Senators only did so when it was teamed with a tax cut.

    Even worse, it now appears likely that at least some Republican House members voted for the stand-alone bill because they knew their Senate allies would force a different deal. These members can say they voted for the stand-alone bill, while telling their business allies that they only did so knowing it would be stopped in the Senate.

    In the previous session of Congress, Democrats gave up the right to filibuster certain judicial nominees, which resulted in conservative Janice Brown winning confirmation to the influential DC Court of Appeals. Now Jim Webb's Party needs to prove it has the courage he has, which means calling Republicans bluff on its plan to prevent a vote on the wage hike.

    In Frank Capra's classic film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart engaged in an heroic filibuster to prevent a corrupt land deal. The filibuster rules have since changed, so that it would now have to be proponents of the wage hike controlling the Senate debate while Republicans would only have to come forward if a call for a vote was made.

    Some have suggested that such a scene would cause Democrats to be blamed for bringing the Senate's business to a halt. But there's nothing wrong with bringing business to a halt over such a critical cause, and the American people are not going to side with Republicans on the minimum wage issue.