Senate defeats Democrats minimum wage increase

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday defeated a proposal pushed by Democrats to raise the federal minimum wage in increments from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by January 1, 2009.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat, unsuccessfully tried to attach the proposal raising the wage for the first time since 1997 to a defense authorization bill that is expected to be passed by the Senate soon.

While a majority of the Senate, 52 senators, backed the move to increase the minimum wage, it failed to win the 60 votes needed for passage under a procedural agreement worked out earlier.

Operating under those same rules, the Senate was expected to also defeat a Republican-backed amendment that would raise the minimum wage in two steps to $6.25. But that measure also would change some work rules, drawing Democratic opposition.

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060621/pl_nm/economy_wage_dc_4>

Or carp out of the river

...when you're making slave wages.

It's not fair. Companies just got huge tax break. Yet the GOP doesn't think those companies can afford to pay workers at least a dollar raise. What more can they ask for?

So much for good work ethics of working hard for your own bread.

Reagan said so. :puke:

Good catch

thats not even enough for 2 gallons of gas an hour...in some situations it could cost almost as much to get to work as you would be making. :wtf:

n/t

I just don't get that one. I would insist on a straight up and down vote--you know like the one right wing judicial nominees must get.

They'd have a greater impact on our behalf if they just refused to show up on the hill until the GOP quit their evil partisan tactics.

otherwise, it would have died in committee. At least this way, we have them on record saying how much they hate working Americans

That they remember the old saying:

"Two can play at this game."

Them's the Americans they like.

up what seems like daily, benefits cut, good jobs going overseas and the repubs have the nerve to say the economy is improving. Wow, let try and guess who in the US has seen the benefits of the "improved" economy.

Here is a great article: <http://pewresearch.org/obdeck/?ObDeckID=18>

Here's an excerpt:

"By an overwhelming margin (83% to 14%), the American public favors raising the federal minimum wage to $7.15 per hour -- a hefty $2.00 an hour increase. And nearly half (49%) say they strongly support such an increase. While there are differences in the extent of support across political and socioeconomic lines, raising the minimum wage receives widespread support from both Republicans and Democrats, wealthy and poor.

... In the 30 states where the federal $5.15 minimum applies, 82% say they support a $2-increase to $7.15, while just 16% are opposed. In states where a minimum wage of $7.15 or more has already been passed, 88% are in favor, a difference that is not statistically significant.

Democrats express more support for minimum wage hikes, but the gap between Democrats and Republicans is relatively small in this era of intense partisanship. Raising the minimum wage by two dollars to $7.15 is nearly universally supported among Democrats – 91% favor the idea and just 8% are opposed. Independents agree by an 87%-to-11% margin. A larger proportion of Republicans (24%) opposes an increase to $7.15, yet still 72% are in favor."

Here are a few more graphics:

for any Dem running for House/Senate. What a f**king' outrage.

They'll never amount to anything anyway!

:sarcasm:

I just saw on the 20th that the REPIGS also voted down a close vote (by party of course, the only R's to vote for it were, oh that's right ---- NONE DID!) to have a senate panel oversee FEDERAL CONTRACTS IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN..... Guess they got told by their corporate backers that they didn't want any oversight into their billion dollar contracts.




www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <--- Top Anti-Bush, Pro-Dem 06 08 stickers & shirts!

I'm going to email him and let him know I'll remember that he voted yea.

but as I said in my blog entry on this (link in my post below), the minimum wage has not been raised in a decade. Total pay raises the Senate has passed for itself in that time: $32,000

What else is there to say?

They get an AUTOMATIC cost-of-living increase ever year UNLESS the chamber votes to turn it down.

Yeah, right.

Here's a better idea... how about making a legislator's annual paycheck equal to twelve times the annualized minimum wage?

Hmmm... $5.15 an hour, times 40 hours per week, times 52 weeks per year (vacation? Ha!) times 12 equals $128,544 per year, or about 40 grand less than they are making now.

I'm thinkin' that we might see a new minimum wage fairly quickly. One that includes automatic inflation adjustments!!!

"Here's a better idea... how about making a legislator's annual paycheck equal to twelve times the annualized minimum wage?"

At least they would be connected in some way to the minimum working wage that others are required to make do with.

:(

Its time they lived like those who's lives they toy with.

and pay them ONLY for the time they're in Washington working. You'd see that minimum wage increased one-hundred fold instantly. Assholes! :grr: The Republicans WANT a "slave class" in this country. All their talk about family and values is BULLSHIT! Everything they do flies in the face of their supposed "values". Yet they get the ignorant to vote for them every time by shouting, QUEER, ILLEGAL ALIEN or TERROR! We truly do live in a nation full of nitwits. :cry:

http://blogs.southflorida.com/citylink_dansweeney/2006/06/ted_kennedys_yearly_attempt_to.html

No surprise here, I suppose. Once again, the Senate has shot down Sen. Ted Kennedy's annual attempt at a raise for America's poorest workers. The plan would have increased the minimum wage over two years from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. And we can't have that can we?

By the way, the minimum wage hasn't been increased in 10 years. In that time, the Senate has voted pay raises for itself totaling $32,000. The bill needed 60 votes, but only garnered 52. As for the 46 senators who voted against it, they're heartless fucking scumbags. Every single one of them.

$5.15 an hour, even if one includes the whole amount as take-home pay (which, of course, it isn't) comes to just over $10,000 a year for a 40-hour work week. No one can live on that. These senators ought to try for even a month and see how they do. Miserable, scum-sucking, tyranical bastards.

The usual GOP talking point about not raising the minimum wage is that employers would not be able to afford it and would have to fire workers. Of course, this is abscene on its face. First, corporations are currently enjoying record profits at which even the robber barons of the Gilded Age would blush. Second, this idea presupposes that corporations have scads of workers that they just hire out of the goodness of their hearts and could fire at a moment's notice if it would hurt profits. Ridiculous.

To quote Army attorney Joseph Welch's castigation of Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Know what the 46 who voted against it have in common? They're Republicans. Every single one of them. To whit:

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Remind people of this the next time they tell you there's no difference betwen the two parties.

Why do we, the American voters, put up with uncaring shit-eyed douchebags? I notice one of them, Mel Martinez, is from my own state. I'll be damned if he gets my vote. With a gun to my head and a right-wing Republican at the trigger, I would still not vote for Mel Martinez. Christ, what the hell is wrong with these mutants? And what the hell is wrong with us, that we continue to put bloodsucking greedheads like this into office, and then re-elect them again and again? ENOUGH! Tar and feather these people and catapult them into the Potomac. There is not a single good, decent thing about any of them, and I'm tired of trying to find it.

46 disgusting repig senators, there is such a detachment between us and them.

"Minimum wage equals minimum skills." What a douche bag.

I'm a college graduate, waiting to be accepted into the poli-sci graduate program. I've got a twenty year work history. Right now, I'm unemployed. I'd be happy to get any job. Be nice, too if I could survive on minimum wage.

I'm self employed with a national telemarketing company (inbound). I'm an independent contractor with that company but I only get paid when I'm actually talking to a customer, right now the call volume is very low and I'm making less then minimum wage ($4.37 per hour for the current week). I live in a rural area and the only "real" jobs I know of in my area are at minimum wage or there about (walmart is the largest employer in my town).

I called both of my senators and expressed my admonishment with their votes. I was actually told that raising minimum wage would hurt businesses profit. When I pointed out that there has not raise in almost 10 years, not even to adjust for inflation, therefore the profits are illegitimate I was immediately placed on hold and left there for about a half hour until I finally hung up.

chance in MO?

:hi:

the minimum wage, government spending, and price controls are all to blame for the high gas prices.

Never mind if people are paid more money they'll have more money to purchase goods and services. Never mind that inflation continues to rise even as the minimum raise only becomes a neocon joke. And never mind that supply-side economics has done nothing to increase the supply of goods and services..as the demand and cost of living only skyrockets!

Republicans still blame illegal immigration on our luxury minimum wage. They blame corporate losses on paying workers too much, while ignoring past profits once produced by climbing wages. Republicans will always defend the hiring of illegals as laissez faire economics, while blaming healthcare benefits and higher wages only as causes of inflation. They will always seek to blame stagflation on Jimmy Carter and liberalism, but when will they connect it with those now in power?

'Nuff said.

contrast those votes with the Big Oil CEO's (their pay and their oath-free testimony on the Hill). Nice images.

This is a MAJOR issue to get all the poor people on our side (we have most of them already anyway). The republicans hate/don't care about the poor and suffering of America - plain and simple.

People in the real world actually try to exist on minimum wage. As one Democratic Senator pointed out yesterday, the price of a year's worth of health insurance is greater than the annual wage of a minimum wage worker. It's inhumane, unAmerican and just plain mean not to increase the minimum wage.

:banghead:

i would like for them to live off the minimum wage

:argh:

Did you read the freaking story? Only repukes voted against the minimum wage increase.

:hide:

Plus congressional salaries have risen $30,000 since the last time the minimum wage was raised. That's a year's wages for many.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060622/ap_on_go_co/minimum_wage_8

Raise the minimum wage to the highest level it ever was in today's dollar. I think that was in the 50's and index it to inflation (not core but the inflation rate with energy and food)

That is only fair.

and, I can't believe they'd have the BALLS to give themselves raises and not working-poor, but Vitter, Martinez, and both Repig Texas senators Cornyn and Tammy Faye, all voting against it when they know (don't they?) how bad the hurricanes have hurt all of us who were affected and either lost our homes, or suffered such huge financial losses and didn't get much of any help from the govt (where'd the money go??), is disgusting!




www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <--- Top Anti-Bush, Pro-Dem 06 08 stickers & shirts!

How the R's can actually say their shouldn;t be a floor on wages and fight against raising the min., but by damn it we must have a raise as 160k+ we just can't live on.

I don;t know what you are going through with being in the affected areas of Katrina, so I can't offer emapathy, but I can offer my sympathy. COnsidering all that was wiped out, it sure was a heck of an opportunity to put into place actual new thoughts on reconstruction, but ended up being a ginat free for all on bringing out the blood suckers.

Peace and hope you are getting back on your feet in spite of the Government.

as "Dr. Leo Marvin" says in "What About Bob?", we're taking baby steps!

bush's laws and FEMA's corruption have left a horrible taste in everyone's mouth..

they are truly a crime syndicate.... gosh, somehow this country has to wake up and
start giving a shit about the fraud, doesn't it???

or maybe we are headed for the real downfall that all great nations have...


www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable

had been increased at the same rate as CEO compensation, it would now be OVER $23.00 per hour.

CLASS WAR

And the terrorists will have won! Why do Democrats hate 'Murka?


:sarcasm:

And abortions and flag burning will be rampant!! :scared:

They think it is too high right now. That's one reason why they keep letting Mexicans flood over the border. They want to flood the unskilled labor pool. This will drive down the average wage. Corporations will make more money.

Meanwhile they have no problem give themselves raises year after year. Wasn't it nine times since the last minimum wage increase?

They have totally lost their moral compass.

That's one of the reasons this country is going down hill - exploiting the poor and the weak without guilt and with pleasure.

Minimum wage workers in this country are modern slaves, and people with power love to keep it going.

.....from a bunch of heartless "Christians". How about ' There, but for the grace of God, goes I'.............When are we EVER going to see any justice?

he doesn't want to hurt small businesses that rely on teenage workers.

I wonder if he realizes that those teenagers are going to be able to vote soon... and I wonder what percentage of people earning minimum wage are teenagers compared to adults with families.

I thought that piece of legislation was suppose to cover the small business and teenage worker category. Wasn't it suppose to be effective for 6 months while teens learned to flip hamburgers and deep-fat fry fries?

On edit: Or are they suppose to "graduate" from the sub-minimum training wage to the standard minimum wage?

They want to keep those workers under the poverty line for sure. Yeah, it's a difference in philosophies alright: Scrooge pre-visitation vs. Scrooge after visitation.