Min. Wage Bill Passes Senate

After Dems agreed to GOP's demands for attached tax breaks:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to increase the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade, but added small-business tax breaks that are unacceptable to House leaders, preventing Democrats from claiming a quick victory on one of their top legislative priorities.

The Senate voted 94 to 3 in favor of the measure, which would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years.

To attract Republican support, Senate leaders agreed to extend tax credits and expand deductions for businesses that would be hit hardest by the minimum-wage increase. Those tax breaks, worth $8.3 billion over 10 years, are coupled with a proposal to raise taxes by a similar amount on corporations, their chief executives and other highly paid workers.

A proposal that will probably never go anywhere.

So what do you think? Should the Dems have refused to pass the bill with the tax cuts attached? Should they have made a big stink about how the GOP was holding the bill hostage until the GOP caved, even if that necessitated making minimum wage workers wait even longer for a raise? Or since they've waited since 1998 already, should the Dems have spent another couple of weeks exposing and undermining the GOP's tactics until they could have passed the bill without another corporate giveaway?