Very sad.
Holy Cow! We have 64 reps in office who don't understand basic economics?
The problem is that the public has very little understanding making it difficult for politicians to say no. (not that I'm comfortable defending these guys)
About 520k people make the minimum wage. There are close 74 million hourly workers and there are 151m total workers. Therefore, the minimum wage effects 0.3% of workers and 3% of hourly workers. The key stat I saw was 94% of minimum wage earners do not have a college degree while 39% of mimimum wage earners don't have a high school degree.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2004tbls.htm
Ditto.