WASHINGTON — On the eve of adjourning for a month of campaigning in their districts, House Republicans early today pushed through a controversial bill linking a minimum-wage increase to a package of tax cuts.
The hastily crafted measure almost certainly will die in the Senate, a prospect that several Republican lawmakers acknowledged even as they prepared to cast votes.
But the bill's 11th-hour path to the floor of the House of Representatives highlighted the parties' scramble to stake out positions in advance of the fall election campaign.
In the end, the measure passed 230-180, with 34 Democrats joining the Republican majority.
Democrats have been pushing for years for a provision that would raise the minimum wage.
And with congressional elections barely three months away, Democratic strategists were preparing to use the issue this fall in their bid to wrest control of Congress from the GOP.
Facing the prospect that they would be portrayed as obstacles on an issue popular with many voters, nearly 50 mostly moderate Republicans this week appealed to their leaders to act.
The group threatened to vote against adjourning for the August recess until their party's leaders agreed to give them a chance to vote on a minimum-wage hike.
On Friday afternoon, GOP House leaders relented.
They announced they had tacked it onto a 180-page bill that would cut the estate tax and extend a host of temporary tax cuts -- moves that Senate Democrats have made clear they would block through a filibuster if necessary.
Under the measure, the minimum wage would rise from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 in three 70-cent steps starting in January.
The maneuver linking the tax cuts to the wage increase outraged Democrats.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said Republican leaders knew that the tax provisions would surely be killed in the Senate. He accused them of giving their moderate members a chance to go on record in favor of boosting the minimum wage without having to deliver results.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called it "the kind of cynical ploy that makes Americans lose faith in their government."
California is one of 18 states that enforce higher minimum wages than the federal $5.15. California's minimum is $6.75, a level that would be exceeded only with the last of the three increases in the federal minimum, which would occur in June 2009.
