Senate Hikes Minimum Wage

ABCNews.com ^ | 2/1/07 | Z. BYRON WOLF

[conservative in nyc]

After weeks of debate and parliamentary wrangling, the Senate passed a long-awaited $2.10 increase in the minimum wage by an overwhelming margin of 94-3 — the first such hike in a decade, though it will be spread over two years.

Raising the minimum wage, usually a rallying cry for more progressive or liberal Democrats, became an unlikely but effective campaign issue in the 2006 midterm elections that, along with voter frustration over the war in Iraq and perceived corruption on Capitol Hill, brought them back in control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 12 years.

A similar bill to increase the minimum wage passed the House of Representatives in January, but that measure did not include tax breaks for small businesses, which have been tacked onto the Senate bill so that it can gain enough votes to overcome Republican opposition.

House and Republican negotiators will have to hammer out a compromise bill before the wage hike can be sent to the President for his signature. Bush has indicated he will sign the legislation as long as it still includes the small business tax breaks added in the Senate.

[conservative in nyc]

I don't know what Chuckie thinks is more important than raising wages for the most vulnerable among us. </sarcasm> He voted to invoke cloture yesterday. He just didn't feel like showing up to work today, I guess.

[kemathen7]

FINALLY! Only a few more approvals, and poverty will be gone! No one will go hungry! Everyone can afford to support their families and eat fruits and vegetables and watch cable tv. YAY!

/sarcarm, but I hope its that obvious.

[Owen]

Way too much knee jerking around here.

There are few people affected by this. In total, they are not enough to increase labor cost pressures on business and force price increases even 1 penny -- and even if they were, the tax break would undo those pressures.

This is like the health care plan. It quietly and subtly embeds in the process the concept of managing issues via tax policy. Tax policy rather than government bureaucracy addresses the problems -- and almost always via tax cuts.

This embeds a norm and the left hates it. That's why they hated the concept of these small business tax cuts.

I see nothing wrong with this and I will bet that the House Democrats rebel and refuse to accept the tax cuts.

[California Patriot]

I think most of them don't care much about the party. And when it comes to themselves individually, they think they're immune as long as they kill liberal butt and mouth the usual cliches to the conservatives.

[California Patriot]

Oops ... I meant "kiss" liberal butt. God forbid they should "kill" them.

[California Patriot]

And to think that the Senate is a body of 100 lucky guys and gals in a country of ... 300 million. This is the best we can do? What a thought.

[Txsleuth]

I don't think Pres. Bush will sign it if they take the tax breaks for small businesses out of it.

[NonValueAdded]

I thought Nancy promised to fix that loophole, which raised eyebrows as to how she could fix a bill after the House passed it. The committee process is the only way left. Now that raises the question, if neither the House or the Senate versions address AS, can the conference committee add a provision or are they stuck with only what is present in the sum of the two bills? If it's the latter, then Nancy owes someone big because they let her off the hook. "I wanted to fix it in committee, I really did. I never worked harder on anything in my life. But the Senate left it out and now my hands are tied." I guess she might really be star-kissed!

[gbs]

I was in Pago Pago less than a year ago, for three months, and talked to several of the old time maintenance men at the Tuna plant there. They ALL said that if the wages were raised to meet the US Minimum Wage Standard that the plant would most likely close. Competition from SE Asia Plants and the low tuna fleet production was the reasons I heard. So this would be an example of companies closing to wage hikes contrary to Democrat propoganda.

[conservative in nyc]

I'm not sure what some of this means in English, but here's the title of the small business tax relief sections of the main Senate amendment:

Sec. 201. Extension of increased expensing for small businesses.
Sec. 202. Extension and modification of 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements and qualified restaurant improvements; 15-year straight-line cost recovery for certain improvements to retail space.
Sec. 203. Clarification of cash accounting rules for small business.
Sec. 204. Extension and modification of combined work opportunity tax credit and welfare-to-work credit.
Sec. 205. Certified professional employer organizations.
Sec. 211. Capital gain of S Corporation not treated as passive investment income.
Sec. 212. Treatment of bank director shares.
Sec. 213. Special rule for bank required to change from the reserve method of accounting on becoming S Corporation.
Sec. 214. Treatment of the sale of interest in a Qualified Subchapter S Subsidiary.
Sec. 215. Elimination of all earnings and profits attributable to pre-1983 years for certain corporations.
Sec. 216. Expansion of qualifying beneficiaries of an electing small business trust.

The main bill also included "revenue provisions" - increased taxes or fees that supposedly come from closing loopholes:

Sec. 221. Modification of effective date of leasing provisions of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.
Sec. 222. Application of rules treating inverted corporations as domestic corporations to certain transactions occurring after March 20, 2002.
Sec. 223. Denial of deduction for punitive damages.
Sec. 224. Denial of deduction for certain fines, penalties, and other amounts.
Sec. 225. Revision of tax rules on expatriation of individuals.
Sec. 226. Limitation on annual amounts which may be deferred under nonqualified deferred compensation arrangements.
Sec. 227. Increase in criminal monetary penalty limitation for the underpayment or overpayment of tax due to fraud.
Sec. 228. Doubling of certain penalties, fines, and interest on underpayments related to certain offshore financial arrangements.
Sec. 229. Increase in penalty for bad checks and money orders.
Sec. 230. Treatment of contingent payment convertible debt instruments.
Sec. 231. Extension of IRS user fees.
Sec. 232. Modification of collection due process procedures for employment tax liabilities.
Sec. 233. Modifications to whistleblower reforms.
Sec. 234. Modifications of definition of employees covered by denial of deduction for excessive employee remuneration.

There were also a handful of amendments to that amendment that also passed - I haven't compiled what those amendments contained. One was to establish a small business child care grant program through block grants to states. Another had something to do with renewal grants for women's business centers.

[cicero's_son]

God, I love Sen. Coburn.

[PhiKapMom]

My one OK Senator voted Nay and the other one was unavailable for the vote. If Senator Inhofe had been available for the vote, there would have been FOUR NAYS!

[Disturbin]

Why was upChuck Schumer absent?

That would be like Barney Frank skipping a vote on legalizing public sodomy!

[staytrue]

Senate Republicans are a cowardly, unintelligent, unprincipled lot. Pathetic.

Isn't is so much better now with the democrats in power instead of these weasels?

[staytrue]

He is useless. He does not know what a veto pen is ---

It will be great when that bum is gone in 2008 and a democrat is elected.

[California Patriot]

No, it's worse. But the Senate Republicans are a lame opposition and were a lame majority.

[right-wingin_It]

If it did get slipped in, do they have to pass it back to the house ?

I don't think it's in there. But if these things get put into a bill for one body and not the other, they get worked out in committee, where they are compromised on. I suspect, with Dems controlling both bodies, they could succeed in putting it into the other that didn't have it (the House). However, their are procedural stops that the rupublicans could employ...Just as the Dems held up many Republican bills at committee.