Blackmail!

First, Republican Congress leadership blocks every attempt to introduce a minimum wage increase to debate. Then they use the debate as an opportunity to give the rich millions more.

What does one have to do with the other? This is such obvious pork it's disgusting. It's like saying we'll get you your next meal, but only if we can give an island paradise to this rich guy over here...

Now, I'm not really against the estate tax repeal. Not really for it, either, but to force it upon us this way is blackmail!

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Edited From Associated Press article
House Approves Minimum Wage Increase
July 29, 2006

WASHINGTON - Republicans muscled the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House early Saturday after pairing it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.

The House passed the bill 230-180 before leaving for a five-week recess.

The GOP package would increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years.

Inflation has eroded the minimum wage's buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years. Lawmakers have won cost-of-living wage increases totaling about $35,000 for themselves over the last 10 years.

Under current law, the estate tax is phased out completely by 2010, but jumps back to 55 percent on estates larger than $1 million in 2011.

The bill passed Saturday would exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to rise to 20 percent. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30 percent by 2015.

The maneuver was aimed at defusing the minimum wage increase as a campaign issue for Democrats while using the popularity of the increase to achieve the Republican Party's longtime goal of permanently cutting estate taxes.

That left Democrats fuming.

"Just think of what it is to have a bill that says to minimum wage workers, 'We'll raise your minimum wage but only if we can give an estate tax cut to the 7,500 wealthiest families in America,'" said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

As part of the plan, Congress would also pass a bill shoring up the U.S. pension system. That bill easily passed the House Friday night and seemed more likely to succeed in the Senate than the minimum wage-estate tax plan.

The No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said the move by GOP leaders — who actually oppose the minimum wage increase — was a cynical exercise to give political cover to GOP moderates while ensuring the wage increase does not become law.

Republicans countered that it was only fair to business interests opposed to the wage to reward them with estate tax relief and other tax cuts. And they said adding the estate tax was the only way to get their Senate GOP counterparts — who rejected a minimum wage increase just last month — to vote for it.

"The Republicans in the Senate have twice defeated this," said Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. "You know what? If the Senate wants the estate tax and the (tax cut) extenders, they've to give us the minimum wage. That's how it's going to become law."

LaTourette organized a drive by almost 50 rank-and-file Republican lawmakers to persuade House leaders to schedule the wage measure for debate. Democrats have been hammering away on the minimum wage issue and have public opinion behind them.