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Sen. John Warner may hold the key to a minimum wage increase Date published: 1/18/2007
ROCKY GAP--OK, let's just OK, now let's multiply that by four weeks and, voilá, there's your monthly salary, $824--again, before taxes. With this salary, how do you pay for food, rent, phone, electricity, or anything else for that matter? This is not a hypothetical situation. Hundreds of thousands of hardworking people in this country are not getting a fair deal. They work, and work, and work some more, yet they cannot afford the basics for survival. They are house cleaners, day care workers, coffee slingers, care givers, bookstore workers, retail clerks, janitors. They are a part of the fabric that keeps our society and our economy going. They deserve to get paid a living wage--a wage that can stop the poverty treadmill. Raising the minimum wage is a first step and the least we can do. The 110th Congress claims it has heard the voice of the people. Democratic members of the House of Representatives announced their "100-hour agenda," and raising the minimum wage was a key piece of that plan; it has now been accomplished. I applaud these efforts--but it's not just up to the House. The U.S. Senate needs to do the right thing and also support raising the federal minimum wage. We Virginians are also watching to make sure the efforts to raise the minimum wage are not polluted with tax breaks for the rich, or other pork barrel spending measures that would dilute a minimum wage increase. We have not forgotten the slyly crafted trifecta legislation of 2006 that connected a minimum wage hike to the abolishment of the Estate Tax. We need legislation unburdened by add-ons that can start addressing some of the systemic problems that create a class of working poor, many of whom cannot sustain themselves Sen. Jim Webb already announced his support for Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. Since then, the minimum wage has lost about 20 percent of its value. The real purchasing power of the minimum wage is the lowest it has been since 1955.
...probably cost MROE than $824.
Why any blue collar person would vote republican is beyond me. This past 12 years republicans have given the working class a boot in the forehead.
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