Don't Be Fooled by the So-Called Minimum Wage Bill
What House Republicans forced through the Congress after midnight last Friday is really a tremendous tax-break for the richest of the rich.
Today, the Washington Post calls the GOP on their actions and lays out the reasons why the Senate should reject this horrendous legislation:
Unrelenting in their zeal to cut taxes for the richest Americans and unabashed about employing the most cynical of maneuvers to achieve this goal, House Republicans left town this past weekend for their five-week August recess -- after shipping over to the Senate a noxious package that combines an increase in the minimum wage with an outrageous near-repeal of the estate tax and an extension of expiring tax breaks. The House GOP win-win political calculation here is obvious: Marrying a tax break for the rich with a wage hike for the poor dares senators in an election year to cast a vote against increasing the minimum wage. That, combined with some extra goodies, might be enough to get the estate tax cut over the 60-vote Senate hurdle that has so far, fortunately, blocked congressional action. If not, Republican leaders wager, they've at least given nervous House members cover to assert (however insincerely) that they backed a minimum wage increase, only to be stymied by Democrats.But this is a bad bargain -- unaffordable, unnecessary and, as usual, dishonestly presented. Senators shouldn't be snookered, or intimidated, into going along with it.
...
The estate tax cut is being peddled as a less-expensive version of one already passed by the House and rebuffed by the Senate. Senators: Don't buy the new model. It's just a gimmick-laden version of the old one. Backers of the cut, which would raise the size of estates free from any tax to $10 million per couple and lower the tax rate on estates under $25 million to the capital gains rate, now 15 percent, argue that it would cost a mere -- mere ! -- $268 billion between 2007 and 2016, $15 billion less than the previous incarnation.
This is misleading on numerous levels. Because the cuts wouldn't actually kick in until 2010, that 10-year estimate is deceptively low, under either the old or new versions. The cost over the long term would be far greater: at least three-quarters of the cost of eliminating the estate tax entirely. From 2012 through 2021, according to estimates by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the new House measure would cost $599 billion, or $753 billion if the cost of extra interest payments on the national debt was factored in. And that's a low-ball estimate, because the new measure employs the now-familiar gimmick of phasing in cuts to make costs appear lower; the full effect of the change wouldn't be felt until 2015.
Oh, and did we mention how this bill will actually cut the wages of some minimum wage works? Nathan Newman explains that part over at DailyKos.
Democrats have tried to bring a real minimum wage bill to the floor over and over, only to be rebuffed by House Republican leaders. If Republicans in Congress were truly concerned about raising the wages of millions of American workers they would bring that bill to the floor for a clean up or down vote, and not use millions of Americans as political cover for November's elections.
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