Abramoff’s Island Client To Finally Get Wage HikeA moment of silence, if you please — one year ago today, Jack Abramoff pled guilty.
A lot of things have changed since then. We’ve said goodbye to Reps. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Bob Ney (R-OH), Richard Pombo (R-CA), Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), and the Republican congressional majority. And now, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), once Abramoff’s nemesis in Congress, is set to make another change, finally closing an egregious loophole Abramoff successfully protected for nearly a decade.
For most of his career, Abramoff’s prime client was the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), an American territory largely controlled by a garment industry dependent on its sweatshop labor. You see, for nine years Abramoff defended a status quo where clothing could be made in CNMI with the “Made in the U.S.A.” label, despite the fact that it was all made by immigrants laboring at far below the federal minimum wage.
Led by Miller, Republicans and Democrats pushed to force CNMI plants to pay American minimum wages, but (with DeLay’s help) Abramoff successfully fought them off.
But with Abramoff and DeLay gone now, Miller says that the Dems’ miminum wage bill will also extend the wage hike to the Marianas.