Drama in the Senate: Rich Plan, Poor Plan

[cal04]

The Senate is on a collision course this week between backers of a higher minimum wage and supporters of a sharply reduced estate tax. Leaders in both parties were busily taking temperatures and counting votes yesterday, saying the outcome is too close to call.

Most Democrats support the minimum-wage hike and oppose the estate tax cut. Most Republicans take the opposite stand. But their choices will not be easy because the House -- with Senate GOP leaders' blessings -- approved both proposals in one bill Saturday and then left town for the summer. The legislation will preoccupy the Senate during a hectic week that also will include action on offshore drilling, military spending and a rewrite of pension law.

The wage-tax showdown, likely to occur Friday, will boil down to this: Do enough Democrats sufficiently detest the estate tax cut -- which would benefit the wealthiest Americans -- to reject a chance to increase the federal minimum wage, which would benefit the working poor?

(snip)
Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) virulently opposes the coupling of the minimum-wage hike and the estate tax cut, which he called "a cynical, cheap political trick" in a speech yesterday. "This attempt at political blackmail is not going to work," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101020.html

[TahitiNut]

1. There's something ironic about this. Evilly ironic.

It just MIGHT be "tax neutral." I suspect, in some secret cavern underneath a right-wing think tank, they figured out that the additional taxes that the lowest-paid workers would pay (excise, fuel, sales, FICA, etc.) would generate enough revenues to give every huge estate a tax cut.

They wouldn't want it to be known, though. After all, why ruin the myths they trot out repeatedly to oppose raising the minimum wage?

:crazy: :tinfoilhat: :banghead:

[izzie]

2. Since half the kids who will pay for the tax cut are not born why worry?

And Paris Hilton will most likely hire two new people for just the number of clothing she will buy. Two, and I say two, people making more money. Voodoo Eco. at work.