There are times when the low regard members of Congress show for the nation/s poorest citizens is absolutely stunning.

One of those occurred in the small hours of the morning last Saturday, when the House of Representatives voted to raise the federal minimum wage.

Now, you may wonder how raising the pay of the working poor is a disregard for those folks. After all, adding a dollar or so an hour to their paychecks would be an enormous assist in helping them climb out of the poverty hole.

Only if the minimum wage legislation actually gets passed and signed into law, which it won/t.

House Republicans made sure of that when they attached to the same bill a change in the federal estate tax rules, which provides a loophole for about 7,000 ultra-wealthy Americans that would add another ,268 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next decade.

Senate Democrats won/t go for the estate tax change, which means there will be a few hours, or perhaps minutes, of heated debate designed to provide campaign sound bites, and then the minimum-wage increase will be dead for yet another year.

That/s been the case for the past 10 years, since Republicans gained control of Congress. Minimum wage increase bills come and go, but the federal wage remains the same.

But lest we come off as sounding cynical about such matters, we can say that Congress is not reluctant to raise some workers/ pay 7 their own, for example. In that same 10-year span of Republican majority rule of Congress, lawmakers/ annual paychecks have increased by ,35,000.

True, you could make the argument that members of Congress have more important jobs than hamburger flippers. But that ignores the fact that the buying power of a person earning the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in the past half-century.

Twenty-three states recognize the inadequacies of the federal minimum wage, and have raised theirs. California/s minimum wage is ,6.75 an hour.

Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration believe raising the minimum wage kills jobs. Data from those 23 states suggest otherwise. Members of Congress need to be thinking more about other citizens, and less about themselves.

August 2, 2006