Tuesday afternoon, Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a conference call with bloggers about Iraq and the First 100 Hours Agenda. I asked her if the final minimum wage bill would be "clean" without any special interest provisions tacked on, or would it include tax giveaways for the CEO lobby.
As I blogged earlier, the House is expected to pass a clean bill on Wednesday, but what happens after that with the Senate and the eventual House-Senate conference is unclear.
Speaker Pelosi's comments were along the same lines:
"We will bring to the table our clean bill, and our view that in order to give a 10-year overdue increase in the minimum wage to America’s workers that we shouldn’t have to [also] give a tax cut.
...
"I can’t really tell you what will happen on the Senate side … This is a very important priority for us, and we don’t want to just pass anything. But I cannot predict to you what will come out of the Senate."
Though she ended on a hopeful note:
"But my meeting with Senator [Harry] Reid yesterday gave me confidence that I think we’ll be in pretty good shape."
Still, it looks like we're going to have to keep the pressure on to make sure the final bill is a good one.
