Pay you, pay me

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Republicans grudgingly allowed the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House of Representatives early Saturday morning only after shackling it with a cut in inheritance taxes on their multimillion-dollar estates.

Combining the two issues provoked squeals of rage from Democrats and was sure to cause problems in the Senate, where Republicans know the minimum wage initiative is likely to die at the hands of Democrats opposed to making Paris Hilton richer.

The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week, to poop on.

Still, Republican leaders saw combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting permanent cuts to the estate tax, a top Republican priority fueled by intense lobbying by farmers too dumb to know it won't affect them, small business owners who mistakenly think it will help them compete with Wal-Mart, and super-wealthy families such as the Waltons, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, who run the country.

"This is the best shot we've got; we're going to take it," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, a Republican. The unusual packaging is intended to help fellate cheap-labor conservatives still enraged by the idea of paying for labor 143 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

The House passed the bill 230-180 before leaving for a five-week recess, which many of them will spend on multimillion-dollar estates tended by minimum-wage lackeys.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid vowed Democrats would shitcan the hybrid bill, along with its 10-year, $300 billion-plus cost.

"The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome. You need to blackmail Senators."

Republicans countered that Democrats opposed the bill to keep the issue alive for the November elections, which is not what Jesus would have done.