As expected, one of the more shameless GOP stunts in a while passes the House last night, by a fairly narrow vote.
The House approved an increase in the federal minimum wage on Saturday, but its future was clouded because Republicans tied the pay change to an estate tax cut that had been blocked in the Senate.
In a prelude to a summer of campaigning in the battle for control of Congress, lawmakers clashed bitterly over the Republican decision to link the tax break for affluent Americans to a $2.10 increase in the minimum wage before the legislation was approved after 1 a.m. on a 230 to 180 vote. […]
The maneuver to couple the minimum wage increase long sought by Democrats and moderate Republicans and the estate tax change backed by conservatives left some Republicans uneasy and Democrats fuming. Opponents of the bill said the estate tax change and other tax breaks included in the $310 billion bill could kill it. They accused Republicans of a cynical ploy to make it look as though they were pushing an increase in the minimum wage when their real intent was to block it.
“It’s a political stunt designed to give vulnerable Republicans in tough elections the opportunity to say they voted to raise the minimum wage, even though they know this bill is going nowhere in the Senate,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.
That’s a pretty good summary. As it turns out, however, the stunt might have failed if more Dems stuck together.
Looking at the roll-call vote, 34 Dems went along with this transparent nonsense, which made the difference. Now, it’s hard to predict what would have happened if those same 34 voted no — 21 Republicans voted against the measure, and they could have been pushed by GOP leaders to get back in line if it would have affected the outcome.
Regardless, the end result was the same — at least in the House. The Senate is another story.
…Senate Democratic leaders, who have repeatedly thwarted the push to cut the estate tax, said they would do so again even if the proposal included the first increase in the minimum wage since 1997.
“The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, who added that the Republican approach amounted to legislative blackmail.
“If the Republicans were serious about raising the minimum wage for the first time in nearly 10 years and extending tax relief for working Americans,” Mr. Reid said, “they would not hold them hostage in their effort to give the wealthiest Americans hundreds of billions more in additional tax giveaways.”
I’d say congressional Republicans should be embarrassed, but I’m confident they’re no longer capable of feeling shame.