Minimum Wage Jumps to $6.55, No Thanks to John McCain
On Thursday, Americans saw the minimum wage jump to $6.55 an hour. Boosted by the second of three 70 cent increases passed by the new Democratic majority in Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, the minimum wage will move to $7.25 next year. But to be sure, the two million Americans who got a raise today won't have John McCain to thank for it.
McCain's record on the minimum wage isn't a pretty one. In March 2005, McCain opposed Ted Kennedy's bill, instead siding with Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum on a limited measure which would have topped out at $6.25. In November of that year, McCain told NBC's Tim Russert that he would not back changes at either the federal level or his home state of Arizona without protections for small business owners. As the AFL-CIO web site details, the multimillionaire McCain scoffed at the tactics used by minimum wage advocates:
When the Senate was debating a minimum wage increase in 2006 and the Senate's many pay raises over the past decade were brought up, McCain called the comparison "a very clever ploy." He defended his opposition to the minimum wage increase, saying he had foregone Senate pay raises, "...sometimes to the dismay of my family."
But after the Democratic wave captured the House and Senate, McCain joined Republican obstructionists in early 2007 hoping to block the wage boost initiative then favored by 86% of Americans. On January 24, 2007, McCain joined GOP Senators in a filibuster to halt Kennedy's bill. Instead, McCain along with 27 of his Republican colleagues backed an amendment by Wayne Allard (R-KS) which would have effectively gutted the federal minimum wage law. In 56 words, Allard's proviso would have shifted the wage standard to the states:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an employer shall not be required to pay an employee a wage that is greater than the minimum wage provided for by the law of the State in which the employee is employed and not less than the minimum wage in effect in that State on January 1, 2007."
(Ironically, that would have punished workers in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush for President.)
Ultimately, John McCain caved to public pressure and voted for the compromise package that included $5 billion in business tax breaks demanded by Congressional Republicans.
As it turns out, John McCain's opposition to fair pay for American workers doesn't end with the minimum wage. McCain has opposed protections for workers' overtime rights and repeatedly sought exceptions to the Davis-Bacon Act rules on prevailing wages. When President Bush and some of his Republican allies in Congress sought to wave prevailing wage requirements in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, John McCain supported the move to allow federal contractors in the disaster area to pay wages below market rates.
In 1989, McCain's economic brain Phil Gramm declared, "The plain truth is there should be no minimum wage law in this great land of free enterprise." (Apparently, the minimum wage is for whiners.) No doubt, as some Americans pocket their 70 cent raise today, it's no thanks to John McCain.
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