Dead or Alive: Wage Bill Serves The Elites
By Jack Tuckner, Esq.
The failure to increase the minimum wage in the US for the first time in a decade (it is now still $5.15 per hour--decidedly not a living wage for anyone over 18 not living with their parents), is nauseating, to say the least.
It came by design, as the Congressional Republicans tied the success of the proposed $2.10 hourly increase for struggling lower and middle class workers to an obscene permanent reduction in the estate tax for individual millionaires (the proposal was to increase the tax-exemption amount on an individual's estate to 5 million dollars by 2015 and 10 million dollars for a couple).
The raw effrontery of wealthy, elected, amoral "law makers" such as Bill Frist to bark, shill and cover for purely greedy special interests is as astounding as it is infuriating and indefensible.
San Francisco Chronicle says today:
Instead of providing a clear vote on the minimum wage, Republicans teamed it with legislation that would have cut the estate tax. Republican leaders hoped the bill would allow them to defang the Democrats' criticism that the GOP was hostile to the working poor while also achieving one of their top goals -- reducing taxes for wealthy families.To sweeten the pot, Republican leaders threw in a host of tax provisions they hoped would appeal to individual senators, particularly Democrats whose votes were needed. So the bill contained, for example, tax breaks for coal-mining companies, aimed at Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and timber tax breaks aimed at Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
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