Rigid Republicans Flip on Minimum Wage Issue!

House republicans try to blackmail democrats and America on minimum wage hike using cheap parlor tricks to diffuse a wedge issue in the up-coming November election.

BY FRANK J. RANELLI


The House republicans now, all of the sudden, want to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. This latest is a reversal after stonewalling the democrats on raising the federal minimum wage for several years and voting it down in session at least three previous times.


These are the same reckless, conscienceless, heartless people that tried to paint John Kerry as a “flip-flopper” when he changed his mind! The old double-standard – republicans can change course whenever the political winds opposing them are too strong whereas they might crash on the rocks or bottom out, but democrats are just bleeding heart, limp-wristed, cut and run liberals when they do it!


Anyone who sees a silver lining here, look closer. The republicans are not putting forth a straight vote on a minimum wage hike. The republicans are attempting to tie the wage hike bill to a permanent cutting of taxes on millionaires' estates! If that wasn’t enough, republicans are attempting to weasel into the package incentives that includes a research and development credit for businesses only.


The word “shyster” comes to mind. Unscrupulous and greedy, a misanthropic lot; these republicans -- whose impudent behavior, can only be summed up as nauseatingly perverse. Would it really be that complicated to simply give the 1.9 million people in the U.S. toiling away at a pathetic $5.15 an hour a leg-up without reaching into the cookie jar and handing businesses and trust fund babies more money to indulge in excess with?


According to Deborah Pryce of Ohio, the answer to the above question is a resounding, yes! “We're right in the middle of trying to put a package together that will provide relief to small businesses that raising the minimum wage would tend to hurt,'' said Pryce. Another arcane, baseless accusation that raising the minimum wage hurts small businesses, which the partisan-right continues to propagandized for their masters; money and businesses.


Ostensibly, they seem to suddenly want to help those Americans who haven’t had a pay raise in 10 years – while congress has given itself an average pay raise of over $35,000 per year, over the last ten years combined. Where was the wage increase for the poor while these plutocrats were in line for their self-appointed hand outs?


This latest capricious act by the republican leadership is nothing more than a cheap, blatant attempt to actually portray they care about the poor and underprivileged in an election year that clearly shows the American public has caught on to their charlatan act. It’s a vain attempt to diffuse another wedge issue in the up-coming, mid-term elections cloaked in free-for-all giveaways to the rich, while throwing a bone to the poor – just long enough to divert their attention while they steal another election.


Sorry, but not this time. The pungent stink of a dirty rat is all over this desperate attempt to distance the party from Bush’s sinking ship. We have had more than enough hand-outs to businesses and wealthy aristocrats. Its time for an uncompromising helping-hand to those who need it most without some malfeasant bill attachment to a very noble idea: lend a hand to those less fortunate than you and I!

# # #

Sources:

Columbus Dispatch; Republicans now want to raise minimum wage
Yahoo News; GOP makes conditions on wage increase