As a senior in college I did an internship that took me many times to the Minnesota State Legislature. One of my academic tasks was to write a summary of my activity each week for the internship director. I later learned that this professor had read my first entry to his Introduction to Politics class. I had expressed amazement that legislators sometimes say one thing and do another, that they make deals behind closed doors, that they engage in a lot of public posturing. In short, I was surprised to find politics going on among politicians. Well, I was in college, and I did receive an education.
Now Democrats are squawking because Republicans are attaching a minimum wage hike to a bill that also cuts the estate tax (sometimes called the "death tax").
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged to kill the hybrid bill. "The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," he said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."
(snip)
"It's so cynical on the part of Republicans because they know that the minimum wage with these poison pills is dead on arrival in the United States Senate," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Me thinks the Democrats protest too much. First, are we to imagine that the Democrats make a big deal out of the minimum wage every even year simply out of a love of the American working man? If so, their love has a regular cycle to rival Old Faithful. Certainly part of their support for a higher minimum wage is principle, and some of it is politics. They hope to make Republicans look bad by forcing them to oppose a popular minimum wage increase.
Here is the rub. As I have stated before, "playing politics" has two meanings. First is what we can call a "higher meaning." Playing politics simply means an honest expression of a party's priorities. Republicans think A, B and C are the most important priorities, and Democrats say D, E and F are. That's politics: arguing over priorities. We also play politics in a lower sense: we attempt to portray our priorities in such a way as to gain partisan advantage. We sometimes call this "partisanship." Well, that's politics, too. To illustrate, let's look at both the 2002 and 2004 elections. Republicans wanted the nation to focus on the war on terror, and Democrats wanted us to focus on domestic issues. That is politics in both senses. Both sides would agree that fighting terrorism and,say, health care, are important issues, but they differed as what their ultimate priorities were. And surely both tried to emphasize issues that would best help them on election day. Both played politics in both senses I have described.
Almost every issue of any importance will be a mixture of both kinds of politics, and this minimum wage issue is no different. All Republicans are doing is forcing Democrats to make a choice about priorities. Democrats want to raise the minimum wage and keep the estate tax as it is. Democrats are being forced to decide: do they love the minimum wage more than the estate tax? They must make a choice about priorities. That's politics, and Democrats would act no differently if they were in power.
On a side note, I happen to agree with the Democrats on the policy preferences here. The economy is strong enough that it can likely withstand an increase in labor costs, and the estate tax is a useful mechanism to break up large conglomerations of wealth. That said, Democrats should be aware that in times of high fuel prices adding another large burden to business is risky, and there is a sensible argument to be made that it is unjust, after taxing a man's wealth his whole life, to then take a final extra chunk after he is dead.
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