Estate tax and extention of tax relief acto of 2006

ESTATE TAX AND EXTENSION OF TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - July 28, 2006)

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in opposition to this bill and to lament the fact that we did not do what 250 Members of this House want to do.

Mr. Speaker, 250 Members of this House have indicated they want to see a raise in the minimum wage, that they want to see it now, and they want to see it in a simple straightforward bill to say to those working at the lowest rungs in America, doing what we expect them to do, working day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year to support themselves, their family, and contribute to the welfare of our country. We expect them to work; we ought to pay them. We ought to pay them a wage that does not leave them in poverty.

We could do that, because 250 of us would vote for such a bill. But, unfortunately, once again, we are playing a game. This bill was referred to as an Estate Tax Bill, not a minimum-wage bill. Minimum wage is included in the Estate Tax Bill. But that is the reason you put this bill on the floor, to pass a bill you have already passed but can't pass the Senate, or at least has not passed the Senate.

Therefore, attaching the minimum wage, which 48 of your Republican colleagues say they want to be for, is to design a process for failure. Not a failure for us, none of us work for the minimum wage; but a failure for 6.6 million people and, indeed, some 12 million more people who rely on help from those earning the minimum wage to support themselves and their families.

How sad. How sad that a 250-Member majority of the House of Representatives cannot summon the will or the courage or the good sense to offer simply a bill which does what we want it to do, to raise from $5.15 the minimum wage over three increments to $7.25.

If a minimum-wage worker was earning now what he or she earned in 1968, they would be earning $9.05 an hour. This bill simply has an increase to $7.25, the bill that we proposed. Now, we will have that available in a motion to recommit, along with the extenders that everybody is for, which could have passed on a separate suspension bill, I suspect. But the fact of the matter is that this bill is designed to fail because the majority leadership opposes raising the minimum wage. How sad. How shameful.

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