Hey 110th, where are with the minimum wage increase?

In general it appears that many Republicans are on board with a minimum wage bill that includes certain tax incentives. Why, then, hasn't the bill yet been able to make its way through Congress? Here's the answer:

Aides to some House leaders say they would be willing to allow some of the tax breaks. But others, including Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, are insisting that they will not concede any tax cuts.

House Democrats say that by forcing a vote on a clean bill they would force Senate Republicans to put themselves on record as opposing a wage increase, which was a popular campaign issue in the midterm elections.

“We are still operating on the assumption or hope that the Senate will pass a clean minimum wage bill,” said Stacey F. Bernards, a spokeswoman for Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic leader. “If it doesn’t happen, it’s because a minority of Republicans held it up. It’s their fault.”


Ok, so let me get this strait - certain Democrats are holding up the bill so that they can win a couple of political points against Republicans? Come on! Stop wasting our time and pass the bill with the tax incentives. These incentives seem entirely legit:

Among the tax breaks would be a five-year extension of the credit provided to employers who hire people who have traditionally had trouble finding jobs, as well as a tax credit for hiring veterans disabled in Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks; an extension through March 31, 2008, of a provision that allows businesses to deduct the cost of improvements to leased properties more quickly; and a permanent change to the tax code allowing small businesses to use the cash method of accounting.

The Senate Committee on Finance, which approved the small business tax breaks in the package being voted on, said the cuts would be covered by closing tax loopholes for companies and executives.


Time to turn the question on you, Mr. Rangel: Which of these incentives are YOU opposing?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Base64 decode to file

The internet sometimes sucks. I spent about 20 minutes searching the internet for an easy way to decode a base64 file in linux. Shouldn't be that hard. In fact, there is a base64 command. But fuck me, I sure couldn't get it to work with the file I had (which was supposed to decode into a .jpg). There is tons of nonsense about the theory and some stupid unhelpful web applications, but no practical examples. That is, until I stumbled upon this little gem - which gave me exactly what I wanted. perl -MMIME::Base64 -ne 'print decode_base64($_)' < file.txt > out A one-liner in Perl (of course). The fact that this info was so easy, yet it was so hard to find pisses me off. I'm sure there are other ways to do this. In fact, if you know of other ways to do this, then please leave me a comment telling me how. I hate when good info gets buried under the load of crap clogging the internet tubes. Technorati Tags: linux , base64 , perl
Read more

Swiftboating from the Left - Paul Harris's "The Real McCain"

The teaser of Harris's article is this: "To his fans he's a lovable patriot with a maverick streak. But to his critics he's an anti-abortion Creationist who surrounds himself with religious extremists. Paul Harris uncovers the dark side of John McCain" I'm an Obama supporter, but merely from the teaser I already want to run to McCain's defense. An "anti-abortion Creationist"? Really?? Bullshit. This is like the Obama "Terrorist fist jab" teaser on Fox - its utterly stupid. And provably so from a not-to-long ago debate: The rest of the article is blindingly obvious in its propagandistic machinery. Briefly mention a few reasons someone might think he's not such a bad guy (make sure to put it in the subjunctive). Claim this is all a facade to "propel him to the Oval Office". Expose the "dark side" that "lies behind his public mask". Pull out any dirt you can and start slinging. Precisely this formula is ...
Read more

Installing Virtualbox's Guest Additions on Debian and getting shared folders to work

Follow these steps to install the Guest Additions on your Debian virtual machine: 1. Login as root; 2. Update your APT database with apt-get update; 3. Install the latest security updates with apt-get upgrade; 4. Install required packages with apt-get install build-essential module-assistant; 5. Configure your system for building kernel modules by running m-a prepare; 6. Click on Install Guest Additions… from the Devices menu, then run mount /media/cdrom. 7. Run sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, and follow the instructions on screen. Once you install and reboot, then you can add shared folders from the device menu, and mount it with the following command: # mount.vboxsf [the_name_of_the_shared_folder] /media/[name_of_mount_point]
Read more