Community | February 16, 2013 | 1 comment

65 Republicans Supported Increasing The Minimum Wage When Bush Was President

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President Obama’s call for a minimum wage increase in Tuesday’s State of the Union address — like nearly all of his proposals — was met with immediate opposition from Congressional Republicans. But six years ago, many of the same Republicans supported a similar proposal backed by Republican President George W. Bush.

A ThinkProgress analysis finds that at least 67 Republicans who are still in Congress today backed an increase in the minimum wage in some form, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Political momentum for an increase began in 2004, after President Bush announced his support for a bill by now-Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). After Democrats won majorities of the House and Senate in the 2006 elections, a minimum wage increase became one of their first priorities. The Fair Minimum Wage Act — which also included tax cuts for small businesses — passed the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. When the increase was folded into a larger appropriations bill, it again passed with strong bipartisan support and was eventually signed into law by Bush. 26 House Republicans even signed a letter to then-House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), asking for a vote on a minimum wage increase, including current Representatives Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Peter King (R-NY), Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Christopher Smith (R-NJ), and Fred Upton (R-MI). In incremental stages, the law raised the minimum wage from $5.15-per-hour to $7.25.

Though Ryan ultimately voted against the measure, he argued that he supported raising the hourly rate as long as it came with a suitable “offset” of small business relief. “Last year, I supported an increase in the minimum wage because it also included tax relief measures for employers to offset the cost of the proposed minimum wage increase,” he noted in a floor speech, as he announced “with great regret” that he could not back the bill without more small business tax cuts.

Like most Republicans, however, Ryan struck a far more defiant tone in response to Obama’s proposal, dispensing of any caveats and telling CNN that “I think it actually is counterproductive in many ways. You end up costing jobs from people who are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.”


In addition to the letter-signers, those voting for the 2007 increase also included current Members of Congress:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) Sen. John Thune (R-SD) Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA) Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL) Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)

Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)
Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-PA) Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC)
Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX) Rep. Candace Miller (R-MI)
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)
Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID)
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR)
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY) Rep. Frank Wolf (R-KY) Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
Rep. Bill Young (R-FL)

The minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Adjusted for inflation, the real hourly minimum has dropped 33 centers per hour already, since that year.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/15/1601831/65-republicans-supported-inc...
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1 comment // 65 Republicans Supported Increasing The Minimum Wage When Bush Was President

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      FYI to all the legitimate Current.com community members who belong here and aren't computer trespasser Felons, the U.S.' stats on inflation aren't realy the U.S. stats on inflation, nor is the actual source supplying them in ANY way honest & truthful. The inflation stats are issued by the infamous Federal Reserve, as phony as a $3 dollar bill. Tune into Dish network channel 224 weekends to Barry Chappel's Art & Coin TV. Barry or Shawn Leofler will show you why. The Federal Reserve has been so radicly over printing currency, while keeping their counterfeit currency digital, not even bothering to print that bogus script, since the early 1970s. For those not here during the 1970s, that decade saw massive inflation, which is due to too much currency being circulated. That inflation fever pitched in 1980 when Silver= $50 an ounce, Gold= $400 a Z. According to the 1980 buying power of that Fed Corporate funny money, if you honestly adjust for inflation how much currency has been secretly overprinted, recorded as digital data but not printed since 1980, the price of Gold, ( mainly an inverse barometer on the value of Gold ) would cost you $8760, an ounce now, Silver $506. Yet if you check the London Gold closing price it's priced to cost closer to $1700 now than $8700, and Silver about $30. If you watch the History channel series Brad Meltzer's Decoded episode Decoding Fort Knox, you'll witness a bona fide excellent expose on how the U.S. Govt. has been manipulating the world price of Gold by currency manipulation per se. So how are the inflation stats so misrepresented ?

      The Fed doesn't factor in citizens' ENERGY COSTS in their inflation index !!! That fudges their claimed inflation rate as badly as keeping their " currency " digital data to short the money supply, prolonging the Recession. if you're realy on the ball, you should know better than to believe the U.S.' stats on the REAL unemployment rate come from them, and not the Fed too, are badly under counted to put a favorable
      spin on the Bush/Nobama war without end regimes that have exported tax dollars as fast as a naval rail gun can shoot to keep the USA economicly depressed, yet make it appear not so to stimulate employers to hire-artificialy to make it look like a recovery that's " fragile ". What crap !!! Any real recovery is by it's intrinsic nature robust as it depends on production. The real recovery is in China, not in the USA anymore. They use Slave labor there too. Keeping you desperate by union busting keeps wages flat.

      ENERGY COSTS would be the core inflation index in any honest universe.But we don't live in an honest universe. We live in one of the several ones of Einstein's quantum parallel realities where Organized Crime Banksters dangle the Government they bought long ago by tight stings. Any sane person will tell you your food, utility, automobile gas costs get inflated too, but to the Fed no. For if they factored in how badly those prices have risen beyond the tricks used to keep them down, they'd be giving away the farm.
      Tricks like downsizing the food containers to minimize price increases have gone on for years. A can of tuna of 7.25 ounces in 1999 now measures 5 ounces, yet costs a lot more. I've blogged articles on current for going on 5 years now that talk of dangerously shortened food reserves, oil reserves being used to keep prices artificialy low. The Fed would like you to believe that the buying power of their " dollar " has diminished by only 33 cents. HA ! If that were true, then the hyperinflation their secretly overprinting their bogus currency started as far back as the Winter 1973 Arab oil Embargo causing that extreme hardship for Millions of Americans would not have happened...Nor would have the extreme radical change which the Treasury mints were forced to undertake in 1982 have happened by them having to Copper coat zinc slugs to con people into believing a penny was realy a penny. 33 cents my ass. Over the entire past century we've seen our
      Constitutional Gold, Silver,Copper standard of OUR money vanish with Usery Slavery replacing it. Paper is for titles. INKED PAPER WITH NUMBERS IS NOT MONEY !

      Being a coin collector & a History buff for 54 years has peaked a keen interest in me for citizen Journalism. In early 2001, reading an economic report stating the buying power of the 2001 Federal Reserve " dollar " was only 10% of what it bought in 1941, and 2% of what it bought in 1907, ( which was 6 years before the U.S. was hijacked by these Fed financial terrorists hell bent on controlling the world's nations' economies for their obscene profits by controlling the US Government. They do that by using US military force to implement the Fed dollar as the dominant market basket currency, in which the value of the world's citizens' work product subsidizes the value of our buying power in a form of involuntary servitude.) But that stategy has a drastic down side. It stretches resources so thin that it causes the ultimate bubble-the " dollar " itself, which hasn't realy been seen since 1982. It's our Treasury, that coins the real money which can't be paper. Case in point for what the real hyperinflation is: In 1963, I worked for $1.25 an hour, minimum wage then. That genuine Silver money is worth about $40 an hour today. not the $9 Nobama has proposed. In Denmark, their equivalent of the min. wage is worth $20 in Fed currency. Denmark's a much small country with many fewer people..

      12+ years since the 9/11 false flag event put the USA on this path of economic self destruct by maintaining a war without end Orwellian TV surveilance UnAmerican culture, the buying power of our " dollars " has plumeted. Ie, in only 12 years, Americans' standard of living has degenerated so badly by hemoraging the export of jobs abroad, war without end export of overprinted hyperinflated currency, that the buying power of our actual money is 500-1000 % less now than it was in 1980 when the minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. They've only adjusted the minimum wage to keep working people permanently impoverished-the reason why wages have been flat, why only 25% of American jobs are decent paying jobs with a full benefit package, why the middle class has diminished from 49% in 1980 to 23% in 2013, will be 11% in another 30 years. With the Federal Reserve's mismanagement of the currency supply and an inequitable tax code, the middle class is being squeezed to death by the hyperinflation tax already causing these " austerity meaures ". It's been shown austerity measures cause the same problems they suppose them to solve, and worsen them badly. IMF officials have publicly stated that, and have urged the world's nations to return to value based currency, ditch debt based currency as the Ponzi Scheme of fraudulent conversion on a level embarrasing Bernie Madoff. They lie about the national debt too, counting classified military expenditures, a whopping $70 Trillion "dollars " in an economy whose GDP is only $12.3 a year and the IRS collects only $2.3 of that $12.3 Trillion.., And in which the " dollar " is yet another God damned lie you can't truly believe as fractional reserves or unlimited profit=fractional currency. Metals don't lie. You're Copper cored quarters are worth only ( 4 ) Half Cents current before the Big G, it's sellout to the Grand Larceny motivated Banksters arrived in 1913. Nobama's campaign was financed by the .0001% who own the Federal Reserve. Why he's so afraid of them he'll never ever advocate a living wage. It would take U.S.Treasury Notes currency to guarantee that high standard of living and the future of the middle class in the USA. " Minimalism "
      SHIT !!!

    • 3 months ago

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