And they did so with the votes of all three members from Utah.

Appeasing factions that cut across party lines, Republican House leaders combined two long-delayed bills into one and called it a grand compromise. Attached to the latest measure that would preserve and expand tax cuts for the wealthy, particularly the estate tax, was the first increase in the federal minimum wage in 10 years.

Democrats called it politics at its worst. Democrats other than Utah's Jim Matheson, that is, who joined 33 others of his party to pass the measure, 230-180. But then, Matheson was already on board in support of reducing or eliminating the estate tax, so he didn't even need the minimum-wage fig leaf to disguise his unwise vote.

Utah Republicans Chris Cannon and Rob Bishop voted for it, too.

What's so disingenuous about the whole thing is that, while many members of the House will now be able to claim friendship with both the idle rich and the working poor, the bill they passed is all but certain to be killed in the Senate. In fact, it is likely that the measure passed only because those voting for it knew they'd never have to face the reality of what they claim to have supported.

The bill would increase the federal minimum wage from the $5.15 an hour it has been since 1996 to $7.25 in annual 70-cent steps over three years, starting in January. While that's little better than a cost-of-living adustment, it would help many working families support themselves through their wages, rather than allow businesses to off-load the costs of their employees' survival onto pubic assistance programs.

It would, that is, if the Senate were to swallow the bitter pill of the totally unwise cut in the estate tax rate that comes as part of the package. That's a cut that would cost the Treasury more than $300 billion, as it allowed the wealthy to get wealthier at the expense of, among other things, the aforementioned public assistance programs.

But the Senate, reportedly, won't bite. So nothing has really changed.

Except, perhaps, that the public's perception of Congress will dip even lower than it was before.