January 24, 2007: Line Item Veto Is Stripped From Min Wage Bill

[17:53]
The Allard amendment did not pass.  Indeed, many Republicans voted against it including Chuck Grassley (IA), John Thune (SD), Jeff Sessions (AL), Pete Domenici (NM), and David Vitter (LA).  The final vote was 28 yes, 69 no.


[17:06]
The Senate will shortly vote on an Allard (CO) amendment.  This amendment would allow each state to set its own minimum wage, nixing the concept of a federal minimum wage.  Allard says that his amendment will give states flexibility.

Compare this to a DeMint Amendment that would raise the minimum wage in each state immediately by $2.10.  Recall that the House version of the minimum wage bill, which the Senate is now considering would raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25.


[12:00]
The Senate is now voting on a cloture motion on the House version of the minimum wage bill.  The question is: should debate on the bill be brought to a close?  Kennedy urges "yes"; Enzi (WY) for the minority says "no."  Republicans are not yet happy with the bill because it does not yet contain any small-business tax breaks.  The majority needs 60 votes here, meaning 10 Republicans.

Republican ayes: Warner, Specter, Collins, Coleman, Snowe
Democratic nays:

Motion only gets 54 votes.  So, a clean version of the minimum wage bill (i.e. the House version) will not pass the Senate.  The Senate will now vote on amendments to the minimum wage bill.  Many of these amendments will be in the form of business tax breaks.


[11:33]
Cloture vote on "enhanced rescission authority."  Expect Repubs to vote "aye," meaning they vote to end debate on the bill and proceed to a vote on its passage; and at least some Dems to vote "no" meaning that debate should not end, effectively stalling the amendment and killing it.  So far party line...

Republican nays:
Democratic ayes: Bayh (ID), Lieberman (CT)

Motion is NOT agreed to.  For now, once again, the line item veto is dead.


[11:29]
OK, now Gregg says he is not going to give the President 365 days to make a decision on rescission but will roll that back to 30 days.  Big difference, still unconstitutional.


[11:24]
The cloture vote on the Gregg Amdt. is near.  The Dems have time left to debate the measure but no one is on the floor to talk about it.  So Edward Kennedy (MA) the majority floor manager of the underlying minimum wage bill repeats what he has been saying about the minimum wage throughout the week.  He lists all of the luminaries who have asked for a raise in the minimum wage.  That hard-working Americans who have played by the rules deserve a modest raise.  The wage raise will make a difference to children in the society, to women, and those men and women of color who are just entering the job ranks.  $7.25 in the richest country in the world is not too much to ask.


[11:16]
The Gregg Amendment allows the President to single out certain provisions in a spending bill and send them back to the Congress where the Congress must act within 10 days to affirm the President's decision to cut the provision out of the bill.  The President has 365 days to decide what he wants to do with a bill.  The Constitution says the President should only have 10 days to accept or reject a bill.  But the Constitution is neither here nor there, right?


[11:12]
Jim DeMint, SC.  Says that the President needs more choices when he gets a bill than: take it or leave it.  DeMint supports the line item veto.  I am wondering at this point why no Dems other than Byrd and Conrad have taken to the floor in opposition to the idea of a line item rescission authority.  DeMint says don't worry about the President holding this new authority over the heads of the Congress because "I know this body well enough to know" that we will not bow to the President.  The Republican line is that the nation faces a fiscal crisis and that we need to give the President as many tools as possible that will allow him to cut wasteful spending.


[11:10]
Kent Conrad, ND.  Believes this Amendment is unconstitutional.  He does not believe Congress should give any kind of line item veto authority to the President; that this is precisely the kind of power that our framers wanted to keep out of the hands of the President.  The President already has veto authority, says Conrad.  Let him use that.


[10:19]
Judd Gregg, NH.  He says that he hopes no one votes against cloture on his amendment (presidential rescission authority) on the theory that it is not relevant to the underlying bill (minimum wage).  He recounts the deal worked out with the majority last week whereby he agreed to take his amendment off of the ethics bill and save it for the minimum wage bill.  Senators are estopped from objecting to it on the basis that it is not germane, he says.  Because I wanted to bring it up in the context of ethics and earmark reform.


[10:01]
Ken Salazar, CO.  The junior senator from Colorado stressed that efficiency and the reduction of consumption are the best and quickest ways to cut our dependence on energy.


The Senate will kick off at 9:30 eastern.  The Gregg Amendment proposing a grant to the president of rescission authority for spending bills faces a cloture vote this morning.  It will need 60 votes to pass this procedural hurdle.  Senate followers know that West Virginia senator Robert Byrd, who has more votes in the Senate than anyone else in the history of the U.S. Senate, has vocally opposed this amendment on the floor waxing poetic about the esteemed position of being a senator, going back even to the Roman days.