Minimum wage gets new wrapping

WASHINGTON — The House headed late Friday toward a vote to raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by June 1, 2009, phased in over three years. It seemed likely to pass the House but faced an uncertain fate in the Senate.

Republicans typically echo objections from business advocates that raising the minimum wage forces businesses to hire fewer employees. Democrats typically support raising the minimum wage as a matter of fairness, arguing that the working poor deserve a wage high enough to keep up with the cost of living.

But this House vote was different, because Republican leaders attached the minimum-wage increase to legislation extending several tax cuts and sharply scaling back a tax on estate inheritances for the wealthiest Americans. Most Republicans deride the estate tax as the "death tax."

The Senate couldn't reach agreement on repealing the estate tax earlier this year. Because the minimum-wage boost is attached to a measure the Senate wouldn't accept, Democrats said the House bill was a political stunt.

Republicans saw combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting a permanent cut to the estate tax, which produced powerful lobbying by farmers and small-business owners and superwealthy families such as the Walton family, heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune.

"This is the best shot we've got; we're going to take it," said Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., however, pledged to kill the hybrid bill and its $300 billion-plus cost if it got to the Senate.

"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate-tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."

Democrats said the House vote was designed to give moderate Republican lawmakers facing tight races for re-election in November the political cover of having voted to raise the minimum wage, secure in the knowledge that the Senate would never let it become law.

"It's so cynical on the part of Republicans because they know that the minimum wage with these poison pills is dead on arrival in the United States Senate," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

But Republicans insisted the legislation was a serious effort to forge a consensus that could pass Congress and said the Senate might pass the package and send it to President Bush. "We'll have to wait first and see," said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Senators expect to vote on the measure next week before leaving town for a month. The House plans to leave today.

If the minimum-wage increase is enacted, it would be the first boost in nearly a decade. Congress passed the last increase in 1996, and it went into effect in 1997. Since then, federal lawmakers have approved cost-of-living increases for themselves to the tune of $32,000, boosting members' annual salaries to about $165,000.

Americans overwhelmingly tell pollsters they support raising the minimum wage. The Pew Research Center in April reported that 83 percent favored a $2-an-hour increase, to $7.15.

Fewer than half the states mandate minimum wages higher than the federal government's, but several legislatures passed increases this year. The minimum wage in Washington state is $7.63 an hour.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.