Senate Republican Hearts Grow Blacker.

The US Senate, which had given energy companies seeing record profits a record amount of corporate welfare in the energy bill, last Wednesday rejected two proposals to raise the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has not been changed in the last eight years when the Clinton administration raised it from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour.

Senator Ted Kennedy proposed raising the wage from $5.15 to $6.25 over the course of a year. Kennedy noted that a single parent with two children working a minimum wage job would earn less than $11,000 a year, $4,500 below the poverty line.