Senate Passes Minimum Wage Hike - With Tax Breaks for Business
The Senate voted 94-3 yesterday to raise the minimum wage by $2.10 over two years. Unlike the minimum wage hike passed by the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago, the Senate bill also includes a package of tax breaks and other offestting provisions to replace the revenue.
Polls indicate that at least 80 percent of Americans — including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents — want to see the minimum wage increased. One poll even shows that three out of four small business owners think a minimum wage increase will have no effect on them. Yet President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have come to the strange conclusion that in order to pass both chambers of Congress, any bill increasing the minimum wage must include new tax breaks for business in order to compensate companies for the alleged damage it will cause them. As Jared Bernstein and Lawrence Mishel explain in the American Prospect, the idea that business needs to be compensated because Congress is raising the minimum wage from its lowest inflation-adjusted level in 50 years is nonsensical.
On the other hand, some Republicans and business lobbyists complain that the tax cut package doesn't do enough for business since a large part of the tax breaks go to hiring welfare recipients, newly disabled veterans and individuals from other at-risk groups, rather than other tax breaks that businesses find more beneficial to their bottom line. They have also complained because the offsets are "tax increases" on business, in their thinking.
