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House GOP: Memories of the way we were

By Marilyn Geewax | Friday, August 8, 2008, 02:19 PM

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House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced Friday that Republicans would continue the protest they began Aug. 1. They have been demanding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., end the August recess to allow a vote on oil drilling.

Although the microphones are off, GOP members plan to continue speaking next week from the House floor to call attention to their cause. “All we’re asking for is an opportunity to have a debate and a vote on our plan,” Boehner told reporters.

Earlier in this decade, when Republicans ruled the House, Democrats pleaded many times for a vote on raising the minimum wage. Republicans blocked such votes until 2006, when they finally allowed a wage vote, but only as part of a package that would have repealed the estate tax, a deal-killer for Democrats. “That was not a straight vote,” recalled Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank.

Asked about the Republican leadership’s long wage-vote prohibition, Boehner said the leaders did allow a vote on the package with the estate-tax cut. “Eventually they did,” he said. “And that’s the beauty of the American system of government.”

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