Posted by
Rich from NW Indiana on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 11:46:02 PM
The Minimum Wage and Defense Spending, what do they have in common. Nothing, until recently. Since funding for the war in Iraq had strings attached, the minimum wage got a boost for the first time in ten years. Since the minimum wage increase was the lessor of two evils, (the first bill for war funding included a pullout date) President Bush signed it. Neither Republicans or Bush supported the minimum wage increase.
So what is wrong with this picture. In order to get funding for the military, President Bush had to give the Democrats and its ally Big Labor (well not so big) a victory. How does it that unrelated items end up on the same bill? A few years ago, the line-item veto was tried during the Clinton adminstration to stop these add-ons. The Supreme Court of course shot down that idea almost right away.
Why can't we stop Congress from sending bills to the president with these add-ons. All items should be separate bills not all lumped into a big mess that it is today. The president and the executive branch cannot check the legislative branch this way. In order for things that need to be done, all the other unwanted things happen too. The president needs to be able to check the excesses of Congress.
If all things came separate, we wouldn't have the bridge to nowhere. Or any of that nasty pork that is bankrupting the country. Everything would have to stand on its own. We need to stop all the bad ideas that turn into law because they got tacked on to something important. I guess if I were president I would veto almost everything. The funding for the military is important but the minimum wage shouldn't even be government business. Its the way we got the minimum wage in the first place, it came with other depression era relief items.