Boehner Really Hates the Minimum Wage

I did not realize that John Boehner once said that he would rather commit suicide than vote for a hike in the minimum wage. Sure, the comment came back in 1996, but he has remained opposed to raising the minimum wage ever since. The only time he actually voted to raise it, it was part of an election year show-vote that slashed the Estate Tax and was dead on arrival in the Senate.

You have to wonder about someone who would say something like that. You know, that he’d rather kill himself than give working people a small raise. That’s fucked up. That’s almost crazy.

Politically, it’s sub-mental. You’d think he’d be afraid to make a remark like that, but I guess it made him more popular with his corporate golfing buddies. Back in those days, Boehner was passing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the floor of the House. So, we know he had his priorities right.

Nothing has changed in the interim.

9 Comments

c u n d gulag on February 21, 2014 at 10:23 am

Sadly, he didn’t mean it, since it went up a few years ago.

BooMan on February 21, 2014 at 10:44 am

No, he had nothing to do with that:

Boehner voted against the wage hike again in 2007, when Democrats took over the House majority and in one of their first actions voted to lift the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour.

The only time Boehner voted to increase the minimum wage came in 2006, and that was on legislation destined for death. Boehner backed a GOP measure that raised the minimum wage to $7.25 over three years, but it also included deep cuts to the estate tax that made the bill dead-on-arrival in the Senate.

In this case, Boehner was trying to help his party by scheduling the vote.

The bill was an election-year gambit by Boehner aimed at keeping the minimum wage from becoming a campaign issue for Democrats in 2006, the year they won the House.

Eight years later, President Obama and Democrats are plotting a similar strategy to try to hold on to their Senate majority.

The Democratic-led Senate is expected to debate legislation in the next few weeks that would raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10.
- c u n d gulag on February 21, 2014 at 11:23 am
  
  D’oh!!!
  
  I realized my error, right after I hit “Post.”