Minimum Wage Hypocrisy - Congressional Raises and Filibusters

The Republican Congress yesterday provided a craven display of who they are and who they represent. First off, they used the threat of filibuster (an anti-democratic tool of the devil when used by the Democrats to refuse them an "up or down vote" on some crazed far-right judicial nominee) to defeat a well-grounded, popular proposal to raise the minimum wage. As discussed here before, the minimum wage is good policy, and a good example of trickle-up economics, where money put into the hands of the lower economic classes has a multiplier effect to decrease misery rather than increase Maybach imports. 52 Senators supported the bill, but the pro-wealth, anti-worker majority of the reublican party managed to kill it. Where are the cries of "up or down" vote now? "Scand" Alito got one - why does he deserve an up or down vote more than the person who cleans his office?

The second dose of hypocrisy on the vote is that Congress denied a raise to the poorest workers in our country only a week after handing themselves a nice $3,300 raise. This is ironic, in that the productivity of the American worker has been rising steadily in the ten years that the minimum wage has been shrinking in value, while Congress is being rewarded for a year in which a solid majority with a same-party president and a same-party Supreme Court has managed to accomplish almost none of their legislative goals.