The Senate shoulders the lonely burden of the rich

(Thanks to Lisa for the heads-up.)

Sometimes you just get the feeling that our legislators don't always have our best interests at heart. Is it because they're too beholden to the interests of others, or is it simply that they're not even remotely clued-in about what our interests might be?

Some choice, isn't it? Here's today's news.

U.S. senators -- who draw salaries of $162,100 a year and enjoy a raft of perks -- have rejected a minimum wage hike from $5.15 an hour to $6.25 for blue-collar workers.

[ . . . ] The proposed increase was sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and turned down in the Senate by a vote of 51 against the boost and 49 in favor. Under a Senate agreement, it needed 60 votes to pass.

All the Democrats voted for the wage boost. All the negative votes were cast by Republicans.

Four Republicans voted for it. Three of the four are running for reelection and were probably worried about how voters would react if they knew that their well-heeled senators had turned down a pittance of an increase in the salaries of the lowest paid workers in the country.

The minimum wage was last increased in 1997.

[ . . . ] The lawmakers are hardly hurting. They get health insurance, life insurance, pensions, office expenses, ranging from $2 million on up, depending on the population of a state. The taxpayers also pay for their travel, telecommunications, stationery and mass mailings.

[ . . . ] During the same period since 1997, raises that the Senate has given itself bolstered senatorial pay by $28,000 a year, Kennedy said.

Meanwhile, the purchasing power of that pissant minimum wage has dropped considerably: What $5.15 would buy in 1997 would cost $6.07 in 2005.

Let's do some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic:

At $5.15/hour, working 40 hours per week and taking no time off, it would take over 2 years and 7 months to earn that $28,000 raise. It would take a little over 15 years to earn what a Senator earns in one year.

(Last June, working people got the same treatment from the House. You can read about it, including the numbers, here.)

You want a Constitutional amendment? Forget about flag burning, gay marriage, and all the other bugbears of the Right. Make it the law of the land that anyone who wants to run for national office first has to pass the Ehrenreich Test: Give them each $200 stake (tax-free, of course; we don't want to dampen the American entrepreneurial spirit) and a hearty handshake, then send them out to find a job, a place to live, food, health care, etc., for six months with only that and whatever minimum-wage work they can find. No cheating, no borrowing, no old-boy networking, no tapping into the trust fund, no selling off investment property.

It would improve American government a lot more than having all the candidates spending six months kissing up to people in coffee shops in Iowa and New Hampshire.