Last year-- in fact just short of a year ago-- the House voted on a Democratic proposal to raise the minimum wage. It failed 184-233, with every single Republican and 6 of the most corrupt, right-wing Democrats voting with the GOP, these six:
• John Barrow (New Dem/Blue Dog-GA)Hated by their own Democratic bases, Matheson, McIntyre and Owens are all retiring prematurely. Peterson will decide within a few weeks. Barrow, thankfully, is likely to be defeated in November. The Senate will be voting on increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 next month. The last increase-- to $5.85 and then $6.55 and then $7.25-- passed in 2007, 94-3, and the only NO votes were from blatantly anti-working family fanatics Jim DeMint (R-SC), Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). The other anti-working family extremist from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe, was sick that day and didn't vote or it would have been 94-4. Today, many of the Republicans who voted YES-- like Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Richard Burr, John Thune, Jeff Sessions-- are too cowed by the Koch brothers and their phony-baloney Tea Party brigades to back increasing the minimum wage again. Unfortunately, the story is similar for the Senate's most conservative Democrat, Mark Pryor.
• John Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Mike McIntyre (New Dem/Blue Dog-NC)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
Yesterday, Pryor voted with the Democrats to break the Republican filibuster on extending unemployment benefits for almost two million workers who have lost their jobs as part of the Bush Recession and Wall Street's transpartisan and terrrible "free" trade policy that has shipped so many U.S. jobs overseas. But a Senator owned by WalMart can only go so far towards a populist agenda and yesterday's vote is not indicative of how Pryor will vote on the minimum wage increase next month. This week Kathleen Hunter reported for Bloomberg that the anti-worker Republicans can count on Pryor in their next big class war stand against American families. This will alienate Pryor's Democratic base and mean a GOP win in November. Tom Cotton is likely to be as bad and extreme a senator as Ted Cruz-- only more extreme and more irresponsible.
Senator Mark Pryor, whose home state of Arkansas is headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), says he will oppose raising the minimum wage.The day Pryor votes against the minimum wage increase next month will be remembered as the day he committed political suicide-- and the day the execrable Cotton won a seat in the U.S. Senate. What a tragedy! Watch the video up top for an insight into how Pryor's mind works.
“I know $10.10 still isn’t a whole lot of money, but I think it’s too much, too fast,” Pryor, who is seeking a third Senate term, said in an interview at the Capitol. “I’m not supportive of that.”
The National Retail Federation and the National Restaurant Association are among groups lobbying against the measure that have contributed to Pryor’s re-election bid. Arkansas also is among four states-- Georgia, Minnesota and Wyoming are the others-- that have set minimum wages below the federal level.
“For voters, this issue transcends ideology a little bit,” said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. “Arkansas is generally not a prosperous state and it has a lot of minimum-wage jobs. These people want a raise.”
Arkansas’ median household income in 2012 was $40,112, compared with the nationwide median of $51,017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
…[P]ublic opinion polls register strong support for raising the $7.25-cent federal wage, and Democrats are aiming to make Republicans’ opposition to the issue a part of their income-inequality campaign theme. A Jan. 8 poll by Quinnipiac University found 71 percent of Americans, including 52 percent of Republicans, support raising the minimum wage.
That puts Pryor, 51, in the awkward spot of being off-message with his party. He’s the only Senate Democrat so far to say he’ll oppose the wage increase, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to bring up in early March.
…Wal-Mart has been one of Pryor’s top sources of re-election money, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks election spending. The company is the world’s largest retailer.
Individuals and political action committees associated with the retailer contributed at least $22,350 to his campaign’s $5.1 million haul through the end of September, making Wal-Mart his sixth-biggest contributor. Wal-Mart’s PAC gave Pryor’s leadership committee another $25,000.
The company’s executives also contributed to Pryor’s 2008 election, giving his campaign and leadership committees $37,300 of the $6.4 million when he was unopposed… Pryor’s presumed Republican challenger, freshman Representative Tom Cotton, voted against a wage increase to $10.10 in March of last year.
