"Political Cover for Cowards"
Friday night I left the DNC at a pretty normal hour. I enjoyed dinner with some of my co-workers and I headed home. Around 10 p.m. I got home, did the obligatory e-mail check and flipped on the news. Before leaving work I had been keeping an eye out for news on the GOP attempts to hijack the minimum wage issue and poison it before leaving for their August recess.
Sure enough, that is exactly what was happening. As I watched the Congress debate a pension bill, knowing the minimum vote was approaching I was increasingly disgusted with the actions of the Republican leaders of Congress. Here it was almost midnight on a Friday night, and Republicans in Congress were bringing a minimum wage bill to the floor.
This was not the same bill that Democrats had tried to bring up for a vote 7 times. This was a bill that GOP leaders hoped to pass in order to claim victory on the minimum wage, knowing it had little chance of being signed into law.
At the same time they were proposing raising the minimum wage of millions of hard-working Americans, they were trying to give billions away to the richest 7500 families in America with a revision of the estate tax. Although I have become accustomed to the under-handed, two-faced tactics of the Republican Party, this was a move I had to see for myself.
So, just before 11 p.m., I walked from my house to the United States Capital and went to watch the debate in person. I wanted to see for my own eyes how they could justify these grossly manipulative actions.
As I took my seat in the Gallery, the Congress was wrapping up debate on a pension bill. I had never been to see Congress in person, so while they voted on the measure I took in the scene. The chamber I watched daily on C-Span seemed much smaller in person. Yet the activity was more vivid, the speeches more passionate, the seemingly dull parliamentary procedures more urgent. I saw several familiar faces in conference out of view of the cameras, a flurry of young pages running to and fro with messages and paperwork, the grimaces or smiles as the Members watched their colleagues debate and reacted to their words.
As I watched the minimum wage bill come to the floor and the debate began I was struck with a tremendous amount of respect for our Democratic Caucus. They were passionate about their support for working families and their words and movements reflected how deeply they cared about the issue.
"This proposal that links the estate tax and the minimum wage and a bill you know that is not going to pass the senate is the most ethically dishonest, morally bankrupt ploy I have ever seen in a legislative body. For you, Mr. Speaker, and your party, to perpetrate this conscious deliberate deception, not only on the American people but the poorest and hardest working among them is something I would have thought previously you would have been ashamed to do but apparently shame has become entirely irrelevant for you and your party."
Across the aisle, the Republican Caucus lounged in their seats, smug grins plastered on their faces as they goaded the Democrats time and again, a fact they weren't trying to hide:
“You have seen us outfox you on this issue tonight," one Republican remarked.
Democrats countered that they were being held hostage by the vote, knowing that this bill had little hope of being passed by the Senate because it paired a minimum wage raise with a tax cut for the richest of the rich, and would cost billions in revenue.
I have no doubt that Republicans, who are terrified of losing control of Congress, will quickly begin to campaign on this vote. They hope their midnight charade will fool American voters into thinking that they actually care for the working poor. Yet they know that this bill has little hope of passing the Senate and being signed into law.
Democrats tried over and over to raise the minimum wage during this Congress. Seven times they have been blocked by Republican leadership who refused to allow a clean vote on the issue. Republican leaders would not even consider this topic until they found a way to poison the bill - linking it to billions of dollars in giveaways for a few thousand families.
"We are robbing America's families who are struggling for a better future for their children in order to give a tax cut of $800 billion. Not only is this a burden for these low-income families, they are saying to them: 'Your children and future generations, and everyone alive and paying taxes today will be paying for $800 billion added to our national debt. Values – foisting that on to our children and the American taxpayers. Values – putting in a sham bill to give political cover for the cowards who won't stand up and bring a clean bill to this floor to see where the choice would be...We are here to get the job done for the American people. We are not here to transfer wealth to the wealthiest people in America. And who pays the price? The middle class. If we are going to survive as a healthy democracy that is a model to the world it is about time we understood that central to that democracy is a thriving, expanding middle class whose job we are here to do. Let's have tax cuts for them, not the wealthiest people in the country and send the tax bill to the middle class."
On Friday night, I witnessed the best and the worst our Congress has to offer. I saw House Democrats being boxed into a corner by their GOP counterparts but standing firm and fighting back, fighting for the hard-working Americans who deserve a real raise, not a political ploy. In contrast, the GOP stood up for the most obscenely rich families in the country and pulled a political stunt disguised as legislation that has no hope of actually helping working families.
“In all my years here, this is the height of hypocrisy,” said Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who said Republicans considered a raise in the minimum wage only out of fear of losing House seats in November. “If you really cared, you would have acted long ago. This is not an election-year conversion; it is an election-year trick.”
The American people will see this election-year trick for what it is. And come November, a Democratic Congress will enact a real increase in the minimum wage, one that will pass the Senate and reward hard-working Americans the raise that they deserve.
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