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Saturday, July 29, 2006

Disgusting Greedy Bastards
Posted by Jill | 8:05 AM
I'm referring, of course, to Congressional Republicans, who are willing to allow a minimum wage increase, but only if it's coupled with a tax cut on multimillion dollar estates:

Republican leaders are willing to allow the first minimum wage increase in a decade but only if it's coupled with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, lawmakers said Friday.

The House appeared headed for a session stretching past midnight and a close vote. But even if the plan passed the House, it seemed likely to die in the Senate, keeping the minimum wage frozen at $5.15 per hour as it has been for a decade.

Republicans saw this as their best chance to date of winning permanent cuts to the estate tax, which comes in response to a powerful lobbying campaign by farmers and small businessmen — and super-wealthy families such as the Walton family, heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune.

"I think it will become law," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as he left a closed-door meeting of Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., however, pledged to kill the hybrid minimum wage-tax cut bill — and its $310 billion cost — if it got to the Senate.

"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."

The move would also put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of voting against the minimum wage increase and the estate tax cut — and an accompanying bipartisan package of popular tax breaks, including a research and development credit for businesses and deductions for college tuition and state sales taxes.

But there was GOP discontent, too. Some conservative in the House were unhappy about the minimum wage vote, while moderates in the party were restive about its being tied to cuts in the estate tax.

The GOP package would increase the wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, phased in over the next three years.

It would also exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15 percent and scheduled to rise to 20 percent. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30 percent by 2015.

The maneuver was aimed at defusing the wage hike as a campaign issue for Democrats while using the popularity of the increase to achieve the Republican Party's longtime goal of permanently cutting estate taxes.


Yes, let's tie a meager minimum wage hike that would bring the wages of low-income workers up to a real value of $5.35 when adjusted for inflation -- to a tax cut for the already-wealthy. I'd like to see how long the Walton kids would last in a minimum wage job.

Disgusting. It's time to throw these fuckwads out.
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