Responding to skyrocketing energy prices, Senate Republicans voted Saturday to deny increased assistance for heating and cooling bills for low-income families. Instead, they would prefer to deliver help 10 years from now, the soonest ANWR or outer continental shelf oil could possibly be delivered to the market.

The law that created the Medicare drug benefit, or Medicare Part D, mandates that Medicaid beneficiaries who were also eligible for Medicare ("dual eligibles") receive their drug coverage from the Medicare drug program rather than Medicaid. So, rather than be allowed dual eligibles to choose between two programs, when the new Medicare law went into effect, it shifted Medicare-eligible Medicaid beneficiaries into the new program. As it turns out, drug manufacturers benefited handsomely from the switch.

The federal minimum wage will increase to $6.55 per hour today, the second bump that is part of a law passed last year to increase the wage to $7.25 by next summer (see this story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). As the AJC correctly points out, the increase will have a significant impact in Georgia, but for more than half the states, it won't do much because the federal government is woefully behind the curve:

Appropriations Committee chair Robert Byrd (D-WV) stated yesterday that he is postponing markups of the Interior-Environment and Legislative Branch FY 2009 appropriations bill and a second supplemental bill. The announcement to push off the supplemental comes a week after Bryd announced July 10 that he planned to markup the measure July 24. His reluctance to move Interior-Environment is similar to that of House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey's (D-WI) -- uncertainty about their ability to block Republican-backed oil and gas drilling provisions that would be tacked on to the bill.