Interesting

From the Left Coaster:

Over the coming months Democrats will make raising the minimum wage a priority of their fall election agenda, and failing that, will make it a priority of the new Democratic congress in 2007. Republicans will carry water for their business masters once again and claim that an increase in the minimum wage will only hurt small businesses and lead to a loss of jobs.

Wrong. A new Gallup poll of small business owners done for Wells Fargo finds that well over 8 in 10 small businesses say that the minimum wage is largely irrelevant to them, and almost half would support increasing the wage, which hasn’t been increased since 1997.

And here are some particulars from the Wells Fargo-Gallup Small Business poll:

Eight in 10 small-business owners say they hire their new employees at a wage level that exceeds the current minimum wage. Of the 14% of small businesses who do hire employees at the minimum wage, two in three say they do not expect to keep their new employees at that wage for more than a year. One in three of these new minimum wage employees are also hired on only a temporary basis.

[...]

[T]hree in four small-business owners say a 10% increase in the minimum wage would have no effect on their companies.

[...]

Forty-six percent of small-business owners say they believe the minimum wage should be increased while only 34% believe it should remain where it is now.

This is going to be a big election year debate, and Democrats are going to need all the ammo like this if we're going to succeed.