Cruelest freeze of all: the minimum wage

One of the hardest things to understand about the current legislative session is the Republican refusal to raise the state's minimum wage.

It is a simple and modest proposition: To raise the minimum wage from the current miserly $5.15 an hour to $6.50, in two steps by October 2006.

It's not some bleeding-heart giveaway program dreamed up by the Democrats. It is a proposal from a state advisory council that includes representatives of business, industry, labor and the legislature. That system was set up to take politics and posturing out of the equation and try to reach a fair agreement that everyone could live with. It is the same way the state deals with changes in unemployment compensation, workers' comp, and other potentially touchy labor-management issues.

Republican allies and industries most affected by the change -- Wis. Manufacturers and Commerce, Wis. Restaurant Assn., Wis. Merchants Federation and others -- all support the increase.

It sounds like a no-brainer.

But Wisconsin Republicans have blocked any action to raise wages for the 200,000 workers who make the minimum.

No matter that the minimum wage hasn't been raised for seven years -- and that during those seven years legislators have had their own pay raised seven times.

No matter that in those seven years inflation has eaten away at the minimum, so an hourly wage worth $5.15 in 1995, when the last raise was passed, is worth $4.23 now.

The Republican State Senate has refused to even vote on the bill. On a party-line vote, the GOP sent it off to a committee chaired by State. Sen. Tom Reynolds, one of the majority's real wing nuts. Reynolds says he won't even hold a hearing on the bill.

Every time Reynolds gets himself from West Allis to Madison, he gets $88 in expense money from the taxpayers. He gets it whether he stays in Madison for 8 minutes or 8 hours. And he gets the $88 on top of his $45,569 annual salary, plus travel expenses. Did I mention that the $88 a day is tax free?

Meanwhile, the poor, hard-working guy (or woman) who's trapped in a minimum wage job will make $41.20 for working an eight-hour day. That, of course, is before taxes.

Working full-time for a year, he/she will make $10,712 -- a full $1,142 more than the 2005 federal poverty threshold. So what's to complain about? (Of course, if that wage earner is a single parent with one child, the poverty threshold is $12,830 -- $2,118 more than minimum wage. So you can work full-time and still be eligible for federal poverty programs.)

This is a matter of simple justice. The issue is fairness. Americans have always believed that if they do a fair day's work they can expect a fair day's pay.

Those days appear to be over.

Wisconsin Republicans have fallen in love with the concept of freezing everything. Freeze spending. Freeze taxes. Freeze state aid. Freeze benefits. And freeze the minimum wage.

Wednesday, on the same day Speaker John Gard was proclaiming that the GOP was "kicking the Wisconsin economy into overdrive," State Senate Republicans were kicking minimum-wage earners and their families in the teeth, refusing to raise the minimum wage and passing a bill to prevent local communities from raising it on their own. But don't just blame the Senate GOP; the Assembly Republicans are even more right-wing and anti-worker.

Republicans are making a huge mistake, one that could cost them dearly in 2006.

They come off as mean-spirited and heartless -- because they are.

What ever happened to compassionate conservatism?