Democrats have waffled on a number of policy issues since voters handed them control of Congress, but one cause has been closed to compromise: raising the federal minimum wage.
New Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her charges have been adamant that all Americans would benefit from boosting the country's pay floor, currently at $5.15 per hour, to $7.25 over the next year or so.
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The increase was the most publicized part of Speaker Pelosi's ambitious "first 100 hours" agenda, and the House easily passed the bill Wednesday.
However, the increase did not apply, as Speaker Pelosi demanded, to all Americans. It turns out the speaker, who promised a Congress that served its people instead of the lobbying influences and special interests that created a Republican "culture of corruption," carved out an exemption for American Samoa.
The South Pacific islands are dependent on the tuna industry. StarKist, which is owned by Del Monte Foods, has a huge cannery there. Del Monte Foods just happens to be headquartered in San Francisco, which is represented in the House by ... Speaker Pelosi.
"Something is indeed fishy when the federal minimum wage is good for all Americans, as espoused by the Democrat majority, yet we exempt a small, in many terms economically struggling island," Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said last week.
Indeed, Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat who represents American Samoa in the House as a nonvoting delegate, has said applying the minimum wage increase to his territory would devastate the tuna industry -- and thus the island chain's economy.
That Speaker Pelosi would go along with this argument undermines her party's contention that minimum wage increases are all roses and no thorns.
Now a backtracking Speaker Pelosi has asked a committee to tweak the legislation to cover all U.S. territories before it goes to the White House for President Bush's signature. She's willing to sacrifice a developing economy to appear principled.
