Senate rejects minimum wage/estate tax bill

On August 3, Senate Democrats declined to swallow the poison pill that Republican legislators were offering them -- the bill linking an increase in the minimum wage to cuts to the estate tax that passed the House on July 30.

OMB Watch has a good analysis that breaks down the costs that the estate tax cuts would have imposed.

Frist opened floor debate ... insisting, if not threatening, that this would be the Senate's last opportunity, perhaps assuming that a majority supporting each of the parts translated into a majority supporting the whole.

But in the end, the estate tax provision, which would have eliminated about 75 percent of estate tax revenues, amounting to $750 billion including interest costs in the first decade of full implementation, proved too costly to bear for Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV), citing the fact that, under the bill, "8,100 of the wealthy and well-off hit the jackpot, while millions of working families get $800 billion in [national] debt," managed to hold on to the votes of 38 Democrats, despite at times intense lobbying by Frist. Reid was also quick to point out that estate tax repeal will not benefit the middle-class, but rather the richest of the rich in this county.

It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will continue to make the right kind of hay out of this cynical manipulation as the mid-term elections approach. Let's hope we hear them insisting at every opportunity that this was an open attempt by Republicans to undermine the increase in the minimum wage that Democrats have been working for.