Minimum wage bill stalled, line-item veto failed
Brian Beutler
Published:
Wednesday January 24, 2007
 A controversial line-item amendment proposed by a Republican senator fell out of the Senate version of the minimum wage bill today, but a controversial tax cut measure has stalled the increase, at least for the time being.
A spokesman for Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told RAW STORY, "[Democrats] don�t have the votes to keep the bipartisan tax relief package off of the bill. When cloture fails, the Democrats will accept the bipartisan, committee-approved substitute amendment."
The vote on cloture went 54-43. Democrats needed 60 votes to end debate on the tax cut provision.
The roadblock marks the second in a series of major Democratic initiatives to be blocked by Republican amendments.
Other Democratic hurdles
Last week, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) introduced the line-item veto amendment�presented as a way to cut down on excessive congressional spending�for the first time this session, attempting to attach it to an ethics reform bill that otherwise dealt mainly with tightening the rules on member ties to lobbyists. Democrats were unable to amass the 60 votes needed to close debate on the ethics bill after Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) came out against Gregg�s amendment.
However, a last minute agreement between Senate leaders from both sides saved the ethics bill by moving debate on the line-item amendment to the minimum wage bill. That amendment died today when Democrats denied cloture on it.
Before the Gregg amendment died, Susan Irby, spokeswoman for Assistant Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), told RAW STORY, "We expect Democrats to vote against responsible earmark reform by denying cloture and a vote on Senator Gregg�s amendment."
The line-item veto amendment, now defunct, would have given President Bush the opportunity to "second-guess" earmarks and other Congressional spending.
Under the terms of the amendment, the president would have been allowed to send any provision in any bill back to Congress to receive a floor vote before signing it into law. A majority vote in favor of such a provision in either Congressional House would then be required to salvage it.
Tax cuts get in the way
Now the bill is at risk because of a controversy over an amendment, supported by Republicans, that would institute the minimum wage increase along with small-business tax cuts. Senate Democrats attempted to hammer the "clean" House version through today without the tax cut amendment, but that effort failed. Now, Democrats will have to reckon with the Republican provision.
High-profile Democratic members of both houses in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) had come out strongly in favor of a clean minimum wage bill.
But now that doesn�t seem possible, and, if the bill can make it through the Senate, it may experience problems when it�s sent back to the House for final approval.
A CNN.com article quotes Reid spokesman Jim Manley: "Majority Leader Reid has taken a look at the votes and doesn�t believe a so-called �clean� minimum wage bill passing through the Senate is possible."
(Editor's note: Apologies for the multiple errors in this article, since the news regarding the bill changed multiple times during the editing process, the entire original sequencing was changed and parts erased were restored incorrectly before and after publication.)
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