Minimum Wage Hike Back on Track

After it was looking like a raise in the minimum wage was about to face a Senate stalemate, the Senate late last week easily passed a hike, albeit tied it to tax relief for small businesses (via CNNMoney.com):

The Senate voted 94-3 Thursday to increase the federal minimum wage in three steps from $5.15 to $7.25 in a bill that also gives $8 billion worth of tax cuts to small business.

The bill, following an exhaustive debate that brought dozens of proposed amendments mostly by Republicans, now goes back to the House of Representatives, where the original bill passed on Jan. 10 with no amendments.

Although there is still a chance that the House and Senate conferees will not be able to reconcile the two versions of the bill, Democrat staffers on the House side are quoted in the article as saying that, "the mood in the House is to let the Senate do what it needs to do in order to get a bill passed there."

If the minimum wage bill passes, it would be the first such raise since 1997 and "would directly affect 6.6 million workers currently earning the $5.15 wage, according to the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute."

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