Kay Bull*&%t Hutchinson

Hypocrisy, dripping with...

...the failure of the bill linking the wage increase and the tax cut was a significant defeat for Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader entering his last months in the post. Mr. Frist had hoped to steer the measure through the Senate, partly with the help of an accompanying series of tax incentives and federal aid to woo lawmakers.

Mr. Frist and his allies in business viewed the wage increase, stretched over three years, as an acceptable trade-off for a permanent reduction in the estate tax and $38 billion in tax breaks and federal aid that constituted the third part of the measure. But they could not overcome intense opposition from Democrats and organized labor.

Republicans said Democrats were choosing partisanship over policy and were stalling the measure to allow them to attack the record of the Republican-led Congress.

“It is an excuse to make it a do-nothing Congress,” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said. “And we are turning our back on the middle-class and poor people in this country who depend on the minimum wage and death-tax relief.”

Right. I am certain they depend on repeal of the Paris Hilton Relief Act, but for what, I dunno.

Congratulations to Harry Reid and the rest of those Democrats who held firm against this awful piece of corrupt legislation that tied real relief for wage workers to a tax repeal for the rich.