House Ways and Means chair Charles Rangel and Senate Finance chief Max Baucus have indeed worked out a compromise minimum wage tax deal providing $4.84 bn. in tax relief for small business over 10 years, offset by an equal amount of tax increases. The compromise extends the work opportunity tax credit for three and a half years at a 10-year cost of $2.6 bn., and increases Section 179 expensing limits to $125,000 through 2008 for businesses in the Gulf Opportunity Zone, costing $3.5 bn. over five years. Among the offsets are provisions removing a limitation that requires the IRS to suspend interest on some tax delinquencies after 12 months (raising $2.4 bn. over ten years), and raising the age that dependent children can benefit from preferential tax rates on capital gains ($1.4 billion over ten). Gone are offsets from the $12.6 bn. Senate version with business tax breaks, including extended accelerated depreciation for restaurants and certain leased property changes. Also omitted is a cap on deductions for executives' deferred compensation, which the business community lobbied hard against. Why would Democrats not seek to move the minimum wage, with tax package, as stand-alone legislation, given the likelihood of passage with both Rangel and Baucus supporting it? It's sheer speculation, but maybe they want to want the president pay the political price of vetoing a minumum wage increase, which he will presumably do, since it is attached to a supplemental war funding bill he has already promised to veto.