[Vision2020] Senate Votes to Boost Minimum Pay to $7.25

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (February 2, 1007) Spokesman Review -

"The Senate voted 94 to 3 in favor of the measure, which would raise the
minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years."

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Senate votes to boost minimum pay to $7.25 
But new tax breaks set up House clash

Associated Press

Lori Montgomery 
Washington Post
February 2, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to increase the
federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade but added
small-business tax breaks that are unacceptable to House leaders, preventing
Democrats from claiming a quick victory on one of their top legislative
priorities.

The Senate voted 94 to 3 in favor of the measure, which would raise the
minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years.

To attract Republican support, Senate leaders agreed to extend tax credits
and expand deductions for businesses that would be hit hardest by the
minimum-wage increase. 
 
Those tax breaks, worth $8.3 illion over 10 years, are coupled with a
proposal to raise taxes by a similar amount on corporations, their chief
executives and other highly paid workers.

Senate Republicans praised the measure as a responsible package that would
help workers who earn the minimum wage and the businesses that employ them.
They implored House leaders to accept the compromise and send it to
President Bush, who put out a statement Thursday praising the Senate bill.

"I want to reiterate our hope that the House will not derail this bipartisan
approach," said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. "Middle-class relief is in their
hands."

Democrats were less effusive. After the vote, presidential candidates
Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., lined up at a
press conference with the bill's sponsor, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and
bemoaned the complications. Earlier, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,
said he would prefer to pass a minimum-wage increase without "all these
business pieces of sugar."

As approved by the Senate, the bill would extend several business-tax
deductions and credits, including one that allows small businesses to
accelerate deductions for new purchases. It would extend for five years a
tax credit for employers who hire welfare recipients and "high-risk youth"
and expand the provision to include disabled veterans.

To cover the costs of those provisions, the bill would close loopholes used
by corporations that do business overseas and increase penalties for tax
evasion. It would also place new restrictions on one of the most popular
perquisites in corporate America, by forbidding executives from deferring
more than $1 million in pay every year and placing the money in tax-deferred
accounts. Anyone who exceeded the allowable amount would be forced to pay
taxes on all income deferred since Dec. 31, plus a 20 percent penalty.

House leaders have demanded that the tax measures be stripped from the bill.
They argue that business needs no additional help after six years of breaks
from the Bush administration and that, in any case, procedural rules require
revenue bills to originate in the House.

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Three vote no 
The three senators voting against the bill were: 
Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma
Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona
Republican Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown