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For the second time this year, Senate Republicans voted against giving the nation’s lowest-paid workers a pay raise, killing a proposal by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) to boost the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour. Yet members of Congress are set to give themselves their eighth pay raise since the last minimum wage increase in 1997. The new pay raise for Congress means the salaries of senators and representatives have gone up by $31,600 since 1997 while minimum wage workers still earn only $10,700 a year.

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FOR THE first time in recorded history, U.S. household incomes did not rise for the fifth year in a row, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, the poverty rate increased for the fourth straight year, to 12.7 percent. Median household income is at its lowest level, adjusted for inflation, since 1997. In the past year, median full-time wages fell two percent for males and one percent for females. Total income would have fallen except that cash-strapped workers compensated for falling wages by working more hours. Sensing the enemy's moment of weakness, the Republican junta now declares war on the American working classes.

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Congress also took bold action to trim the federal budget by suspending affirmative action hiring procedures for federal contractors in the Gulf Coast region. Civil rights programs join Medicare and Medicaid as programs that are not affordable. Wait -- how does suspending affirmative action programs of private firms save the government money? Never mind: Apparently private contractors are facing budget problems that resemble those of the federal government. In order to give Halliburton and others some breathing room, Congress suspended the Davis-Bacon Act for federal contractors in the Gulf. Since 1931 the act has required that federal contractors pay the regional "prevailing wage," generally based on the union wage. Now the folks who lost their homes can work for Wal Mart wages, which is great for the cutting the deficit, because I'm sure that Halliburton is returning all that money it saves directly to federal coffers.

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On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.


About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. The cuts would be part of $3.7 billion pared from Agriculture Department programs over five years as part of government-wide spending reductions

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"It is hard to imagine any congressional action that is more detached from reality," said James Weill of the Food Research and Action Center.

"Cutting food stamps now is a scandal," said David Beckman of Bread for the World, pointing to losses from hurricanes.

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"You have not even come clean that kids are going to lose school breakfast and school lunch under this," he said.

Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said states unfairly "have taken the opportunity to expand food stamp eligibility" beyond what the federal government intended. Democrat John Barrow of Georgia said Goodlatte was punishing states for using welfare reform laws to respond to local needs.

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USDA said 11.9 percent of households, "at some time during the year, had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources."

Food stamps help poor Americans buy food. About 25 million people get food stamps monthly.

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U.S. senators -- who draw salaries of $162,100 a year and enjoy a raft of perks -- have rejected a minimum wage hike from $5.15 an hour to $6.25 for blue-collar workers.

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The lawmakers are hardly hurting. They get health insurance, life insurance, pensions, office expenses, ranging from $2 million on up, depending on the population of a state. The taxpayers also pay for their travel, telecommunications, stationery and mass mailings.

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AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said the rejection was "outrageous and shocking."

Sweeney said minimum-wage workers "deserve a pay raise -- plain and simple -- no strings attached."

He said it is "appalling that the same right-wing leaders in Congress -- who have given themselves seven pay raises since the last minimum wage increase -- voted down the modest wage increase proposed by the Kennedy amendment."

During the same period since 1997, raises that the Senate has given itself bolstered senatorial pay by $28,000 a year, Kennedy said.

"If we are serious about helping hard-working families, we will give a fair raise to America's low-income workers without taking away essential protections," he added.

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A higher percentage of Texas households were at risk of going hungry over the past three years than in any other state, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Agriculture Department.
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Between 2002 and 2004, more than 16 percent of Texas households at some point had trouble providing enough food for all their family members, the USDA report said.

In nearly 5 percent of Texas households, at least one family member actually went hungry at least one time during that period because the household couldn't afford enough food. That's the fourth-highest rate in the country.

Nationwide, 11.4 percent of households were at risk of going hungry during that period, and 3.6 percent of U.S. households had at least one member go hungry, the USDA said.

The latest national figures were higher than in the previous three-year period. Between 1999 and 2001, an average of 10.4 percent of households were at risk for hunger, and an average of 3.1 percent of households experienced hunger.

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Consumer sentiment dropped in October, falling short of economists' expectations for only a slight decline, a report showed on Friday.

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Employers' wage costs grew 2.3% over the past year, the slowest growth rate on record, according to today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Factoring in the recent energy-driven increase in inflation, the real wage is down 2.3%, also the largest real loss on record for this series that began in 1981.

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With hourly wages falling in real terms, the only way working families can raise their incomes is by working more hours-certainly not the path to improving living standards that we would expect in an economy posting strong productivity gains.

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For the first time in this employers' costs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics presented these values adjusted for inflation. Both wages and compensation are losing growth in real terms, down 2.3% and 1.5%, respectively, as slower nominal wage growth is colliding with faster inflation. In both cases, these are the largest yearly real losses on record.

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The Senate is digging into a budget plan that would bundle mostly modest Medicare and Medicaid spending cuts with a controversial plan to open an Alaskan wilderness area to oil drilling.
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Republicans are seeking to burnish their budget-cutting credentials but face unanimous opposition from Democrats who contend it is part of an overall plan that will actually increase the deficit once a companion $70 billion tax cut bill is passed.

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The bill reflects the influence of moderates providing swing votes in the chamber and on key committees such as the finance panel, which drafted provisions curbing the growth in Medicaid and Medicare, the federal health care programs for the poor and the elderly.

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Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999.

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"This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome," noted center director Dr. J. Larry Brown, a leading scholarly authority on domestic hunger. "This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control." According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, food insecurity increased by nearly a million households from 2003 to 2004.

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"With this astonishing level of food deprivation in America," Brown concluded, "we need President Bush to step up to the plate. If he now asks Congress to cut federal food programs, hunger will increase even further. We need the moral leadership to stem this crisis."

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