Editorial: Scrooge act getting old

Monday, July 10, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

Since 1997 members of Congress have helped themselves to eight pay increases worth a total of $31,600.

The increases alone amount to nearly three times the annual salary of workers earning the federal minimum wage, whose hourly pay has not increased a dime in all those years.

Another raise for members of Congress is scheduled for January. It would boost the salaries of rank-and-file members to $168,500 a year.

And all the while that Congress has automatically approved these raises, the Republican leadership has just as automatically rejected bills by Democrats to give minimum-wage earners a small boost in their paychecks. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour since 1997.

Now Senate Democrats have hit upon a plan that we strongly support. They are building momentum for a bill that would block the scheduled January increase for members of Congress unless the Republican leadership stops acting like Ebenezer Scrooge.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently said that if Republicans want a raise "they're going to have to earn it" by approving an increase for American workers, according to a story by Hearst Newspapers.

Why Republican leaders keep squashing minimum-wage bills is beyond us. Many members of their own party support an increase, and a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed that 83 percent of Americans support one.

Here in Nevada, voters approved Question 6 in 2004, which would amend the state Constitution to guarantee small but steady increases in the minimum wage. Voters will have to approve the question again this November for the amendment to pass.

Republicans in Congress should take a cue from Nevadans and other voters. But if they don't, we think it is only fair that their own salary increases be denied.