http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/27/congress.wage.reut/index.html
The most striking fact revealed in the article is that "salaries for members of Congress have risen $31,600 during the time the minimum wage has been frozen." In case you didn't get that, Congress -- *ahem* the Republican-controlled Congress -- has given itself a raise of thirty-one thousand, six-hundred dollars over the last ten years.
The GOP has, in my lifetime, always been a "me first" organization -- anyone with any practical use of his or her brain knows this -- but their brazenness while in power still astounds me. Any time somebody proposes anything to benefit the lower class, the GOP trots out its "but it will be bad for small business" line. Just what exactly does the GOP consider a "small business," anyway? Radio Shack? IBM? General Motors? Microsoft? Most "small" businesses I know of don't have many "entry-level" positions that the GOP so passionately protects. The "American Success Story" is becoming increasingly more difficult to find (much less achieve), and nobody has done more to make it difficult than that best friend of Big Business, the Republican Party, a party now obviously much more interested in protecting existing wealth than promoting new wealth.
