Dana Bell

It's been ten years since the last minimum wage increase. Every year it's proposed, and every year the Republicans put it aside. With their emphasis on what's good for business, it'll be a hard sell to get one passed next year.

Meanwhile, the lowest paid workers in our country often have to work two jobs to make ends meet. It doesn't just affect the young minimum wage workers, however. The minimum wage sets the scale for many others in the workforce. One of the ironies is that while the Republicans are tauting traditional family values, those parents who might be with their children can't because they have to work so much.

It's not really about putting down low paid workers. It's about building big business at the expense of the low and middle class. If it weren't political suicide, they might even lower the minimum wage. In fact, there are some Republicans that would favor circumstances where business get practically free labor, the labor of Mexicans that will work for next to nothing just to stay in the country. How close do you have to get to call it slavery?

The next time a pay raise comes up for the members of congress, they don't even have to vote to get that passed. The congressional raises are put on auto-pilot to avoid bad press, while issues like minimum wage have to be debated. They could have set the minimum wage to use the cost of living as a factor. That's politics, and that's one reason so few people go to the polls.

Yes, I know about all the problems with amendments, sharing and trading votes for this and that. Instead of letting their yes be yes, politicians swear, and wheel, and deal, until they've become part of the very injustices that they were elected to eliminate.