Sen­ate Fails to Raise Min­i­mum Wage — New York Times:

A labor-backed mea­sure by Sen. Edward Kennedy would have raised the min­i­mum to $6.25 over an 18-month peri­od. A Repub­li­can coun­ter­pro­pos­al would have com­bined the same $1.10 increase with var­i­ous breaks and exemp­tions for small businesses.

The Kennedy amend­ment to a spend­ing bill went down 51–47, and the GOP alter­na­tive 57–42. Under a Sen­ate agree­ment, they would have need­ed 60 votes for approval.

Kennedy, D‑Mass., said Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na demon­strat­ed the depth of pover­ty in the coun­try and he point­ed out that a sin­gle par­ent with two chil­dren work­ing a min­i­mum wage earns $10,700 a year, $4,500 below the pover­ty line.

He said it was “absolute­ly uncon­scionable” that in the same peri­od that Con­gress has denied a min­i­mum wage increase, law­mak­ers have vot­ed them­selves sev­en pay rais­es worth $28,000.

The increase in the min­i­mum wage would par­al­lel the rise in Con­gres­sion­al salary, rough­ly a 20% increase. This is a rate that fails to match infla­tion, accord­ing to the CPI cal­cu­la­tor. A rise that matched infla­tion would take the min­i­mum wage to $6.38. (To get that, find out how much buy­ing pow­er $5.15 in 1997 would have in 2005 dollars.)