Ah, Politics.  It greases the soul and smears the senses with its zesty stink of rhetoric and lies.

Ok, I admit it, I am cynical.

Maria Cantwell, the junior Senator here in Washington is someone I grudgingly supported in 2000 because I felt she brought more modern ideas to the table then her opponent.  I hoped that she would be a benefit to the State.

I won’t say she is horrid, I just have not been terribly impressed.

Many of her positions are ones I disagree with.  I knew that before hand, I just felt that the good outweighed the bad.

Her position on the war, and her support of the troops has been fairly good.  Her help in the gas prices debate and her position on oil drilling has not.  I will avoid the typical issues, like abortion.

But the minimum wage is one that concerns me.  Minimum wage is a tough issue, trying to balance a fair wage with the cost to the economy is tough.

In the recent debate on Capital Hill, she voted against the bill, and in the following blog listed her reasons why:

Senator Cantwell: Washington State’s Working Families Deserve Better

(Note from the Executive Director: On behalf of all of us at the Northwest Progressive Institute, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Senator Maria Cantwell to the Official Blog. We are deeply honored that she is sharing her perspective with our readers in this special guest post.).

(suck up)

I grew up in a working family – a family with five kids. Our parents worked hard and we worked hard alongside them.

With the help of financial aid, I was the first person in my family to go to college. Without it, I couldn’t have afforded to go to school. But even the aid didn’t go far enough to cover all of my costs, so I bartended too. And it was hard, tough work.

I know how important a living wage job is and what a fine line there is between making enough to get by and making enough to plan ahead for your family’s future.

I cannot support what amounts to a minimum wage penalty for over 122,000 Washington minimum wage earners. Why would the federal government work to lower the maximum wage rather than setting a minimum protection?

I am not buying this cynical Republican ploy.

It isn’t, however, the first time Republicans have tried to convince us that we can’t have strong businesses and a living wage. In Washington State we have been proving them wrong for almost a decade. In 1998, Washingtonians overwhelmingly voted to raise our minimum wage for every worker to one of the highest in the country, and our economy continues to thrive. Why would we change course now?

Please note that our high minimum wage is accompanied by one of the highest cost of livings and most expensive housing markets in the country.  So much for living wage…

There is a better choice than what the Republicans offered – we can increase the minimum wage fairly for all working families and we can do it without penalizing Washington and six other states for already doing right by our citizens. I’ve been working in Congress to increase the minimum wage, because I know that Washington State’s example shows how we can do much better for all our working families. We should not settle for anything less.

But instead of doing what’s right, instead of doing what they ought to – the Senate Republican leadership made a different choice. And that choice is wrong for Washington State.

So here are the cold hard facts on why I am voting to protect the Washington State minimum wage.

The Republican proposal is a bait and switch. They wrote the language so that it preempts our state law. What they’re calling a minimum wage increase is in fact a minimum wage penalty for 122,810 workers.

The Republican proposal would cut these workers minimum hourly wage by $5.50. That means workers who earn $7.63 an hour plus tips could see their wages drop to $2.13 an hour plus tips.

The Republican plan directly targets Washington families already struggling just to get by. Many of the workers who would be most affected are already juggling multiple jobs just to make ends meet. These workers’ average annual income is only $16,000. That’s the poverty line for a family of three. The Republican proposal cuts these workers’ income to $4,400 annually plus tips.

I hope Republicans are ready to start leaving really big tips on the table for those workers to help them make up the difference.

When America’s families are facing rising prescription drug costs, tuition rates, and gas prices, how can we take money away from those who are barely getting by?

The Republican leadership in Washington D.C., just keeps making choices that are wrong for Washington State. Rather than making it harder for some Americans to afford basic necessities, we should be working to make health care, education, and energy more affordable.

They’ve refused to put that agenda on the table and Washington State’s working families deserve better.

Since she does not specify fully what that issue is, let me.

The bill had a provision to allow employers to pay their employees less then the minimum wage as long as their tips made up for the difference.  The idea was that if an employee was making a huge amount of tips, there was no need to pay the minimum wage, I guess.  I don’t feel it is fair, but oh well.

This would let them reduce the minimum wage to 2.13 an hour as long as their total wages+tips totaled more then the minimum wage.

Her letter indicates that there are 122k workers that would be affected in Washington.  She is right.  It should be notef d though that Washington has an exclusion written in it’s minimum wage laws, so employers cannot do this presently.

She contended that the Bill would have forced states to apply the deductions (7 states have an exclusion like Washington’s) against their own state law’s exclusion.

She backed it up with a letter (from the State Department of Labor) which indicated that:

Under our preliminary analysis, this proposal, in effect, appears to nullify an employer’s obligation to pay the minimum wage rate…with regard to tipped employees." the Washington State Department of Labor wrote. “This means that Washington workers who receive tips – typically service industry workers – would see a decrease in income.” (emphasis in original)

So in that sense, her claim that the law would penalize Washington workers is true….except for two things:

1. The bill contained a provision to allow the states to reinstate their laws.
2. The US Dept of Labor indicated that the law would not have such effect in the first place.

Referencing her letter above, she selectively quoted it.  The full quote says:

Under our preliminary analysis, this proposal, in effect, appears to nullify an employer’s obligation to pay the minimum wage rate in RCW 49.46.020 with regard to tipped employees. This means that Washington workers who receive tips – typically service industry workers – would see a decrease in income. However, the proposal does give states the right to amend their laws to specifically reinstate their current minimum wage rate laws. Until and unless the Washington State Legislature amends the minimum wage act to reinstate the current minimum wage rate provision for tipped employees, it would diminish workers’ rights in Washington State.

By characterizing this as a done deal, and in stone, she is misleading her constituants about the issue.

Further, the US DOL sent this analysis, a copy of which was provided to her:

You have asked for the views of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Divisions (WHD) regarding Section 402 of the Estate Tax and Extension of Tax Relief act of 2006 (the act).  If Section 402 ("tipped Wage Fairness") were passed into law, WHD would read Section 402 as protecting the minimum wage of the tipped employees in the seven states that now exclude a tipped employee’s tips from being considered as wages because to do otherwise would be inconsistent with what we understand to be the intent of Congress and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which WHD enforces.

So not only does it not remove the state law exclusions, it actually enforces them.  And even if it did not, it allows the exclusions to be reinstated.

Not to mention this blog by David Postman, that chronicles in detail  the attempts by Frist to make a deal on it including offering reassurances on the issues Maria Blogged about.

So exactly what was the issue then?

The above clearly shows that she was aware of the truth of this, yet she not only voted against it, she falsely cited this as her reason.  They call that lying.

The bill was a laundry list of other issues, any of which could have been enough to justify her opposition, yet she phrased it almost solely in terms to inflame and incite her constituents and even went as far as to turn it into an anti republican tirade.

In other words:  Politics, as usual.

I am not suggesting that Frist did not have his ulterior motives in making the deal with her, not by any means.

But when she blogged it, she laid out specific objections that she knew to be true, and I hate liars.

Sound Politics discusses this here.

One last thought:  The minimum wage was never intended to provide a "living wage", as she notes above.  Her choice of words here is again inflammatory and worthy only of political hackery.

Not surprising I suppose, but still disappointing.

Note, several comments have indicated unhappiness with my (apparently) using the Seattle Times as my link source for blog.  A comment about fair use was made.

Her blog was openly posted to NW Progressives, and I used it in its whole form to ensure her context was kept.  It was properly linked and attributed.

As for the two documents, I did quick link them from the Seattle Times, but they were both from the various senators.

The Maria Cantwell letter about the State DOL, which she misquoted, is here:  http://cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=261290

The letter from the US DOL clarifying the tip income was from Sen Frist here:  http://frist.senate.gov/_files/DOL.pdf

Both were public press releases.  Since I did not use any of the Seattle Times’ original content as a source or quote, only the respective documents already  released by the Senators, then I don’t see the issue.

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