Comments By: Brent Usry
The republican congress moved to pass the minimum wage hike as long as there would be a huge tax cut for multi-million dollar estates. In other words they are willing to allow the poorest people in the country to make 7.25 an hour as long as the richest people in this country.... Congressmen and their wealthy friends can get off without paying taxes on their inheritance taxes. Pretty damn white of them I would say!
GOP Makes Conditions on Wage Increase
Republican leaders want to couple minimum wage increase with estate tax cut
WASHINGTON, Jul. 29, 2006
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer
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(AP) 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, lawmakers said Friday.
The House appeared headed for a session stretching past midnight and a close vote. But even if the plan passed the House, it seemed likely to die in the Senate, keeping the minimum wage frozen at $5.15 per hour as it has been for a decade.
Republicans saw this as their best chance to date of winning permanent cuts to the estate tax, which comes in response to a powerful lobbying campaign by farmers and small businessmen _ and super-wealthy families such as the Walton family, heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune.
"I think it will become law," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as he left a closed-door meeting of Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., however, pledged to kill the hybrid minimum wage-tax cut bill _ and its $310 billion cost _ if it got to the Senate.
"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."
The move would also put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of voting against the minimum wage increase and the estate tax cut _ and an accompanying bipartisan package of popular tax breaks, including a research and development credit for businesses and deductions for college tuition and state sales taxes.
But there was GOP discontent, too. Some conservative in the House were unhappy about the minimum wage vote, while moderates in the party were restive about its being tied to cuts in the estate tax.
The GOP package would increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years.....................
11:51:03 PM 
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