QUOTE
House, Senate Dems Realize Power Limited
DAVID ESPO | AP | March 10, 2007 12:26 PM EST
WASHINGTON — At first, legislation to raise the minimum wage loomed as a clean, quick triumph for Democrats eager to celebrate their new majority in Congress. Two months later, it stands as an early lesson in the limits of their power.
A cohesive Republican minority backed by the White House, the Senate's complex rules and internal divisions among Democrats have combined to slow the measure's progress since it cleared its first hurdle in mid-January.
While final passage is highly probable, Democrats and their allies in organized labor long ago capitulated to GOP demands, agreeing to accept business-friendly tax cuts as the price for the first minimum wage increase in a decade.
"The minimum wage-tax relief package was a good early lesson for them as to how things will work," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said with a chuckle in a recent interview.
Complete via Huffington LINK
DAVID ESPO | AP | March 10, 2007 12:26 PM EST
WASHINGTON — At first, legislation to raise the minimum wage loomed as a clean, quick triumph for Democrats eager to celebrate their new majority in Congress. Two months later, it stands as an early lesson in the limits of their power.
A cohesive Republican minority backed by the White House, the Senate's complex rules and internal divisions among Democrats have combined to slow the measure's progress since it cleared its first hurdle in mid-January.
While final passage is highly probable, Democrats and their allies in organized labor long ago capitulated to GOP demands, agreeing to accept business-friendly tax cuts as the price for the first minimum wage increase in a decade.
"The minimum wage-tax relief package was a good early lesson for them as to how things will work," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said with a chuckle in a recent interview.
Complete via Huffington LINK
I don't see anybody else chuckling!
