Editorial: Penalty for the poor

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2006 | 7:31 a.m.

House Republicans have saddled a long-overdue minimum wage increase with an unpopular estate tax cut that is expected to tank when the Senate gets hold of it next week.

The measure, which passed Saturday, calls for increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over the next three years and also would allow the wealthiest Americans to receive a substantial estate tax cut that amounts to almost $300 billion over the next 10 years.

While raising the minimum wage for America's lowest-paid workers to an amount that, in 2009, still would place them below the 2006 federal poverty level for a family of three, the bill also would exempt from inheritance taxes $5 million of an individual's estate and $10 million of a couple's estate.

The nation's poorest workers could, three years from now, be earning a paltry $15,080 a year, while such families as Wal-Mart's Walton clan could be getting a tax cut that is expected to cost the government $268 billion. It is a mystery how House Republicans could pass this measure with a straight face when earlier this year Congress raised the national debt threshold to an unprecedented $9 trillion.

The Senate has firmly opposed cuts to estate taxes that this measure would provide and, according to the Associated Press, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has promised it will be rejected again. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome," Reid said.

House Republicans know this, but they are positively gleeful about the effects this could have on the November elections. The measure places Democrats in the position of having to accept a bloated tax cut for the wealthy or deny an increase for the nation's lowest-paid workers.

The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 1996. It is important enough to stand alone. Lashing it to a $268 billion albatross and turning it into a political game shows just how little these Republicans care about America's poor working families.