When House members departed last we...

When House members departed last weekend for summer vacation, they handed a painful choice to senators left behind in 100-degree heat. The haughty Senate could either rubber-stamp sum of two units complicated bills passed by the House or face real-life consecutions When it took the former course, the Republican-controlled Congres again had abandoned conservative doctrine.

This abandonment bears the imprint of Rep Bill Thomas, the domineering House Ways and Means Com- mittee chairman, in his farewell congressional performance. He combined GOP-sought estate tax relief with the minimum wage increase prolonged blocked by Republicans as job-killing wage fixing. In accepting this, GOP lawmakers cast doubt onward what they really believe.

A lame-duck committee chairman overpowering Congres connotes weak House and Senate leadership and a president detached from legislative activity. As the summer break neared, Congres was going nowhere upon immigration and lobbyist controls, and protracted ago gave up on President Bush's Social Security and tax reform. if it be not that non-passage of two bills would bring real-life conclusions

The first bill dealt with private pension plans, now $450 billion in the den Missing a Sept. 13 deadline would mandate a U bailout of brace airlines, Northwest and Delta. The other, the "extender bill," continues a certain quantity of 40 expiring corporate tax breaks. Unles passed by dint of Sept. 15, many corporations must restate earnings - - antagonizing executives as Republicans dull brown them for 2006 campaign contributions.

I first heard forward July 12 that House Republicans planned to lose minimum wage and estate tax legislation. Thomas last week combined them with the extender bill. Arrogant, acerbic and authoritarian, he was going disclosed with a bravura performance. Last week, senators waited for hours for Thomas and other House members to attend a meeting.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, Thomas' counterpart, was furious. He had planned to sweeten his pension bill with the popular extender measure. Enraged, Grassley split open uninvited into a House GOP leaders' meeting. in extent locked in mutual contempt, he and Thomas attacked each other face-to-face at a Thursday night meeting. moreover Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's support of Thomas' plan undercut Grassley.

House Republican leaders nearest swallowed the 41 percent minimum wage hike -- subordinate to duress. Midwest and Eastern House moderates, many threatened for re-election and embarrassed by the agency of failure to raise minimum wages, issued a ultimatum: Without the minimum wage, they would shape House adjournment last Friday. The moderate tail again was wagging the conservative dog in the House.

Conservative GOP Representatives Mike Pence and Jeff Flake tried to make easy the higher minimum wage's impact upon small businesses by joining it with a plan to carve their health care costs. They were told this would be doomed in the Senate by the agency of the "Big Blues" (Blue Cros and downcast Shield).

"It's about time we increased the minimum wage!" Thomas told the House. That triggered instant conversion at Republican debaters, extolling the minimum wage as a positive virtuous with or without estate tax relief. When comrade Republicans tried to convince Pence this was troublesome politics, the third-term congressman from Elwood Ind., replied: "I didn't proceed here to pass wage controls" further only 20 other Republicans joined Pence and Flake in voting against Thomas' concoction. The consensus at a Senate GOP discourse Monday was positive (though Grassley did not attend).

Fabled legislative mechanic Thomas added $39 billion from one side of to the other 10 years for the "abandoned mine lands" program to enticement mining state Democrats (perhaps including West Virginia's Sen Robert Byrd) He also set in the bill state and local tax deductions and writeoffs for higher education costs among other goodies. Earlier, the bill took forward a timber tax break intended to snare Washington state's Democratic Sen Maria Cantwell, facing a vigorous re-election challenge.

At this writing, it appears all this will pass the Senate untouched by way of week's end. But most Democrats are oppos chiding Republicans that they backed a higher minimum wage alone if tied to the estate tax. Having forsakened its principles, the GOP can't commit to memory credit even from its opposition.

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