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On the Hill

Posted by on June 21, 2006 at 09:20 AM

We expect the Senate to vote on the Iraq resolution today.

From the Washington Post, the Republicans are planning hearings on immigration.

House GOP leaders yesterday announced a series of field hearings during the August recess, pushing off final negotiations on a bill until fall at the earliest.

The announcement was the clearest sign yet that House Republicans have largely given up on passing a broad rewrite of the nation's immigration laws this year. They believe that their get-tough approach -- including building a wall along the border with Mexico and deporting millions of illegal immigrants -- is far more popular with voters than the approach backed by Bush and the Senate, which would create a guest-worker program and allow many illegal immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Republicans are trying to kill the minimum wage bill now being debated. From the Boston Globe:

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.

The House will likely vote today or tomorrow on first reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act since it was signed into law in 1965.

UPDATE: The vote will not take place as planned. From the Associated Press:

The four-decade-old law enfranchised millions of black voters by ending poll taxes and literacy tests during the height of the civil rights struggle. A vote on renewing it for another 25 years had been scheduled for Wednesday, with both Republican and Democratic leaders behind it.

The dramatic shift came after a private caucus meeting earlier Wednesday in which several Republicans also balked at extending provisions in the law that require ballots to be printed in more than one language in neighborhoods where there are large numbers of immigrants, said several participants.

It is unclear whether the historic Voting Rights Act will come up for a vote this year.

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