The Senate is on a collision course this week between backers of a higher minimum wage and supporters of a sharply reduced estate tax. Leaders in both parties were busily taking temperatures and counting votes yesterday, saying the outcome is too close to call.
Most Democrats support the minimum-wage hike and oppose the estate tax cut. Most Republicans take the opposite stand. But their choices will not be easy because the House -- with Senate GOP leaders' blessings -- approved both proposals in one bill Saturday and then left town for the summer. The legislation will preoccupy the Senate during a hectic week that also will include action on offshore drilling, military spending and a rewrite of pension law.
The wage-tax showdown, likely to occur Friday, will boil down to this: Do enough Democrats sufficiently detest the estate tax cut -- which would benefit the wealthiest Americans -- to reject a chance to increase the federal minimum wage, which would benefit the working poor?
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Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) virulently opposes the coupling of the minimum-wage hike and the estate tax cut, which he called "a cynical, cheap political trick" in a speech yesterday. "This attempt at political blackmail is not going to work," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101020.html