No, the Denny Hastert has not suddenly become champions of the common man. They tied the measure. The House Bill tied the increase in the minimum wage to the permanent elimination of the Estate Tax – a measure to benefit 8,100 of the wealthiest American families at a cost to the treasury of 268 Billion Dollars over the next ten years. The House Republicans thought they would benefit their favorite constituency by putting the Democrat minority in a vise. Either they voted for the tax cut for the very rich or they voted against the minimum wage. Either way they thought that it would play well in November and especially among the major donors.

Buried in the bill was a provision that would have superseded the statutes of seven states that have over ridden the provision of the existing minimum wage law that lets employers pay as little as $2.13 an hour to service workers; waiters and bartenders for example; and then claim that tips bring the workers total compensation up to satisfy the minimum wage. The Democratic Senate minority called the Republican bluff and spearheaded the campaign to scuttle the measure.

Republican spokesmen are spinning the vote as a Democratic flip-flop on the minimum wage issue. They are betting on short memories – that the electorate will forget who controlled Congress for the past decade and stagnated incomes of working Americans while their patrician patron’s pockets swelled with profits. On the other hand Democrats are convinced that the President’s party has placed a sucker’s bet.

In an attempt to describe Republican political strategy President Bush has supposedly said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time and those are the ones we have to concentrate on.” For their part the Democrats have faith in the electorate’s ability to see through the political posturing and that “some of the people” are fewer and fewer every day.