Weldon Vote Watch: Minimum Wage Edition
Curt Weldon likes to play that he's a rare Republican who looks out for the little guy. But his record shows what he's really made of.
The American population is overwhelmingly in favor of a long-overdue increase in the minimum wage. In a July NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, respondants were asked "Do you favor or oppose raising the minimum wage from five dollars and fifteen cents an hour to seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour?" 76% were in favor, only 20% were opposed. Other polls have shown percentages as high as 85% in favor. A CBS Poll even showed 75% of Republicans in favor of a two-year increase to $7.25/hour. (See pollingreport.com.)
Even so, Weldon voted against increasing the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years in a straight up-or-down vote.
Instead, he backed a shameful Republican-backed plan (HR 5970) that stretched the wage increases over three years and gave a massive estate tax break to corporations and the super-rich. According to the non-partisan Roll Call Report, the Republican bill's overall cost was projected at more than $300 billion over ten years.
[For our friends over in the PA-06 and PA-08 districts, Gerlach and Fitzpatrick voted in lockstep. While this blog supports Sestak, we definitely want to send him to Washington with Lois Murphy and Patrick Murphy.]
It's shameful that the Republican-controlled Congress could make this giveaway to the rich a national spending priority when we have a national debt totalling $8.4 trillion. And doing so while holding the most economically vulnerable members of society hostage when the number of Americans living in poverty is increasing?
Compassionate conservatism was a sham.
Joe Sestak is clearly the better choice for working families and for deficit-busting fiscal responsibility. Not only would Sestak have voted unequivocally for the minimum wage increase, he has laid out a detailed plan for strengthening the economic security of America's working families.
The American population is overwhelmingly in favor of a long-overdue increase in the minimum wage. In a July NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, respondants were asked "Do you favor or oppose raising the minimum wage from five dollars and fifteen cents an hour to seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour?" 76% were in favor, only 20% were opposed. Other polls have shown percentages as high as 85% in favor. A CBS Poll even showed 75% of Republicans in favor of a two-year increase to $7.25/hour. (See pollingreport.com.)
Even so, Weldon voted against increasing the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years in a straight up-or-down vote.
Instead, he backed a shameful Republican-backed plan (HR 5970) that stretched the wage increases over three years and gave a massive estate tax break to corporations and the super-rich. According to the non-partisan Roll Call Report, the Republican bill's overall cost was projected at more than $300 billion over ten years.
[For our friends over in the PA-06 and PA-08 districts, Gerlach and Fitzpatrick voted in lockstep. While this blog supports Sestak, we definitely want to send him to Washington with Lois Murphy and Patrick Murphy.]
It's shameful that the Republican-controlled Congress could make this giveaway to the rich a national spending priority when we have a national debt totalling $8.4 trillion. And doing so while holding the most economically vulnerable members of society hostage when the number of Americans living in poverty is increasing?
Compassionate conservatism was a sham.
Joe Sestak is clearly the better choice for working families and for deficit-busting fiscal responsibility. Not only would Sestak have voted unequivocally for the minimum wage increase, he has laid out a detailed plan for strengthening the economic security of America's working families.
posted by EB at 10:16 PM
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