Hillary's Grand Idea

New York Senator and 2008 Democratic “It Girl” Hillary Rodham Clinton has recently introduced a bill into the U.S. Senate that would link Congressional wages to minimum wages. After cryptic political legalese, the “Standing with Minimum Wage Earners Act” (S. 2725) attempts to make Congress think twice before upping their pay.

Co-sponsored by liberal all-stars Obama, Kennedy and Kerry, the act would raise minimum wage to $5.85/hour 60 days after the bill is enacted and then will have 24 months to play catch up, until reaching $7.25/hour, where it will then only fluctuate in correlation with the Congressional salary. There are nearly 600,000 Americans being paid the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour.

Skeptics and bloggers (often one in the same) are brushing this off as political grandstanding or calling it a move that might cause inflation. Proponents view this as an attempt to quell perpetual Congressional pay raises, with some, especially liberal Democrats, seeing it as an optimistic sign of things to come from a presidential hopeful.

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*Image (c) Matt Wright on flickr*