Partisan fight impedes minimum-wage bills
Increase unlikely in federal rate
WASHINGTON -- Democrats and Republicans are poised to defeat each other's versions of a minimum-wage increase today, with election-year maneuvering likely to cause the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage to remain unchanged for the ninth straight year.
Democrats are proposing to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, but Senate Republicans are using a legislative tactic that will force the measure to get 60 votes to pass. In its place, Republicans are offering an increase to $6.25, but say they will pair it with reductions in overtime pay and tax cuts for businesses -- a move that appears likely to arouse enough Democratic opposition to kill all attempts to raise the minimum wage this year.
The parliamentary plays are the latest in the partisan game of tit for tat that has long stymied efforts to raise the federal minimum wage. Senate Republican leaders initially sought to sink the minimum-wage increase by linking it to an unrelated measure that would make it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion -- a move designed to rob the bill of crucial Democratic support.
In the House, where a key committee shocked Republican leadership last week by including a minimum-wage increase in a spending bill, leaders are using a cruder legislative technique. They're simply refusing to let that bill, which covers spending for labor, education, and healthcare programs, come to the House floor.
``There are limits to my willingness to just throw anything out on the floor," said House majority leader John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican. ``It's very bad economic policy."
The maneuvering around the minimum wage is nothing new. House Republican leaders haven't allowed a vote on the minimum wage since the last increase went into effect, in 1997. In the Senate, Republicans have used filibusters and other tactics to prevent an increase from being approved.
Democrats have served notice that they intend to use the frozen minimum wage as an issue on the campaign trail this fall. They point out with glee that just last week, House members voted to authorize themselves a 2 percent pay increase, raising their salaries to $168,500 per year.
States can set their minimum wage above the federal minimum. Massachusetts' minimum wage is $6.75 an hour . 