Blogger Call With Speaker Pelosi

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.

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