Democrats Want Problems Not Solutions

An Estate Tax Twist Reverses Party Roles On Minimum Wage

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 3, 2006; Page A01

For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change. This week in the Senate, however, the AFL-CIO is pushing to kill the wage increase while practically the entire business lobby is demanding that it pass.

The reversal is the product of election-year politics and clever -- critics say devious -- legislative packaging that has been dubbed the "trifecta." In the same bill, senators are being asked to raise the minimum wage (the liberals' goal), cut the estate tax (the conservatives' objective) and approve a laundry list of popular, though narrowly targeted, tax breaks.

"The sides have flipped," said Peter R. Orszag, an economics scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Prodded by moderate Republicans eager to undercut criticism by Democrats that GOP economic programs overwhelmingly favor the rich, the House approved the package last week, including a three-year phased-in boost in the nation's minimum allowable hourly wage to $7.25 from the current $5.15. It would be the first increase in the minimum wage in nine years.

The Senate intends to vote on the package this week, but the outcome is too close to call, lawmakers from both parties agree. Several Republican committee chairmen are unhappy with how the House GOP leadership stitched together the bill, and they may raise objections on the floor. But the biggest obstacle to passage is the strong opposition from Democratic leaders and their labor-union allies to the estate tax provision, which would permanently reduce the federal levy on estates left by the wealthiest Americans.

Once more we see the truth about Democrats. They love to complain about the problems confronting our society, as they see it, but when they are given an opportunity to support a really good solution by the Republican majority, they invent some reason to object to it. It is amazing how slow some American voters are to figure out that the Democrats don't care about the people who vote for them, only about attaining and retaining power.

If they actually cared about the "plight" of the minimum wage worker, they would vote for this bill, but they see the cut in the Death Tax as reducing the amount of money available for buying special interest's votes through directed spending.

Democrats want political issues on which they can run rather than solutions to solve the problems that confront America. Once more, in the lexicon of Democrats, Captitalism=Bad, Higher Taxes=Good.

Full Story: For Democrats It's Politics As Usual

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