Is Bush going to try and steal minimum wage as an issue?

November 30, 2006

The day after the elections, at a White House press conference, a reporter asked the president which parts of the Democratic agenda, if any, he could support. Bush only mentioned one issue specifically: “[O]ne of these three characters asked me about minimum wage. I said, there’s an area where I believe we can make some — find common ground.”

With this in mind, it seems safe to assume that when the Democratic Congress passes an increase early next year, the president will have the good sense to resist the urge to veto it. The only concern I have, however, is that Bush may not only be prepared to join Dems on this, he may also be prepared to steal the issue for himself.

Senior administration officials are working on what one dubbed a “big, big” agenda the president plans to unveil at the start of the new year via the budget and State of the Union address.

Most of the issues have already been revealed, but what one insider said is new is just how hard the president plans to work to win passage of a minimum wage bill, broad immigration reform, reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, and entitlement reform. (emphasis added)

“There will be no cruise control,” said an associate. “These are big, big ideas and we will be pushing them with all our might and energy.”

Given this item from U.S. News & World Report, it certainly sounds as if the president is adding the minimum wage to his 2007 agenda.

There are, however, at least two reasons this little game won’t work.

One, a lot of people may be uninformed about current events, but I don’t think there’s any doubt which party champions a minimum wage increase. Bush may try and take credit for something he’s long opposed — it certainly wouldn’t be the first time — any semi-conscious person would see through the nonsense.

And two, Speaker Pelosi probably won’t give the president the chance to pull this little stunt off.

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi made clear Tuesday she’s not willing to cede the public spotlight to President Bush in the weeks before his State of the Union speech.

Pelosi plans to start the 110th Congress with a bang on Jan. 4 — when the House holds its ceremonial swearing in and elects her as speaker — by immediately setting off on a sprint of several weeks to enact the Democrats’ ambitious 100-hour agenda. […]

Pelosi, in a statement, said the rapid start is needed to tackle a lengthy to-do list that includes everything from passing new ethics rules to raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

Bush may be looking to present a “big, big” agenda in his State of the Union address, and may want to add a minimum wage increase to his wish list, but that’ll be tough if the bill is already sitting on his desk, awaiting his signature, by the time he gives the speech.

Just as an aside, it’s probably worth remembering that Republicans frequently accused Clinton of appropriating their issues in the ’90s, and the WaPo reported the other day that the Bush gang was looking to the Clinton example on how best to survive a disastrous midterm cycle.

But Rove & Co. do realize that Clinton never embraced a GOP issue that he had diametrically opposed, don’t they?

“[O]ne of these three characters asked me about minimum wage.” – BG2

Is that not the most insulting way to refer to elected officials of the United States government?

Ah! Let Boy George II have a little credit. Not vetoing a law is going to be so hard for him after having limited himself to only one veto for the first six years?

I bet he’s getting pretty anxious to do scadloads of pardons too. The Democrats need to really get going on those investigations.

  • The only way a Republican will push forward a minimum wage bill is if a guest worker program is attached to satisfy the corporate interests that still want to provide only sweat shop wages here in the US. Populism doesn’t serve the Republican base.

  • Duh, he wants a minimum wage raise with tax cuts for the businesses that he claims are affected by it. If Pelosi/Reid send him legislation without one, he’ll threaten to veto it because it doesn’t do enough to protect the economy.

    And a month’s worth of bullshit editorials and columns from the WSJ and WaPo won’t be enough to wipe away his crocodile tears, but they’ll certainly try.

    I expect George Will, for one, to run at least three columns calling Democrats “rude” and “uncivil” and “big fat meanies” for not caving in immediately to Teh Decider.

  • My first take on this is that Bush will use the minimum wage issue as an entre to get a comprehensive immigration bill—and maybe more trade agreements.

    The guest worker program that petorado refers to is more likely to be for IT workers from eastern Europe and India—to drive down middle-class salary pressure on American corporations.

  • It is how you play the game in divided government.

    When one side says they are in favor of a specific somewhat popular measure, the other side says it favors it as well.

    But the devil is always in the details.

  • “I expect George Will, for one, to run at least three columns calling Democrats “rude” and “uncivil” and “big fat meanies” for not caving in immediately to Teh Decider.” – Chris

    I couldn’t get through Will’s column either. Does he really think that Boy George II and the Bushites deserve civility?

    Where has he been for the last six years. Wasn’t slandering Max Clelland grounds enough to treat these morons as the trash they are?

  • Dear Mr. Will,

    It’s not nice to lie to your readers. Why throw away the slim bit of credibility you have by trying to slap down Webb with inaccurate information?

    Signed
    Sometime Reader

    Like Grumpy implies, it’s most important that the minimum wage law pass no matter who gets the credit, but like Brian said, the devil is in the details. And one detail is what the law is attached to.

  • “entitlement reform” means, of course, that he’s after social security again. why the dems aren’t actively noting this is beyond me….

  • More of the same. He’ll blow all kinds of smoke up our arse’s with the state of the union about how he’s gonna do this and that fer the werkin’ man. The day after, back to politics as usual – figuring out how to split the dems in congress and how further divide the electorate for 2008.

    Or, he may be serious this time and try to keep the dems busy with this instead of investigations. But, mostly, it’s just more PR.

  • You know it just struck me that Boy George II walking up to Webb and asking him how his son is could be taken as a threat. If Webb doesn’t toe the line BG2 implies his son is going to be walking point for the rest of his tour.

    Considering the President’s inability to articulate his message, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was getting that threat across.

  • You would have thought that most rational people could have seen through Bush’s claims to be an education reformer, or through justifying the exact same massive tax cuts first because the economy was healthy and then because it wasn’t, but look how those turned out in 2000-2001.

  • It’s nice to see Bush indicating support for not one, not two, but three issues that could rip apart the already-fractious Republicans: minwage, immigration (the big one), and NCLB.

    The Democrats have their own divisions on the last two, but neither is likely to split the party or dominate the 2008 primary season. Immigration and, to a lesser extent, NCLB (as a proxy for “bigger gov’t and unrestrained spending”) could do that for the Republicans, but Dubs really couldn’t care less: you gotta love the notion that after flipping the bird to all of us for so long, he’s about to do it to his own party, just as they need him to calm the waters.

  • If Pelosi is smart, and I think she is, she will send a clean bill to W. which has no riders or attachments. Then if W vetoes it, he is unmasked once again as being the clasic jerk that he is. The minimum wage bill does not have to be attached to anything. What’s the matter with a separate bill for each of her priorities? College loans, prescription drugs, and some of her other priorities seem to stand alone. Why confuse the issues with other stuff? I think the voters have had enough of that behavior.

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