The House is unexpectedly expected to vote on a minimum wage bill today. House GOP members are trying to tie the $2.10 minimum wage hike to a health insurance provision affecting small businesses. There is also speculation that Republicans are going to attempt attaching a permanent estate tax cut to the bill. BNA (subscription required): House Republicans July 27 appeared close to a deal on a legislative package that would link a minimum wage increase to wage-related sweeteners for business and a plan to allow small businesses to provide health insurance to their workers via association health plans (AHPs), according to lawmakers close to the negotiations. The package, which would raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over two years, also would allow restaurants to use "tip credits" when calculating wage rates for employees and would permit employers to offer a "training wage" for younger workers, the lawmakers said. A vote on the package could occur as early as July 28, according to several moderate Republicans who have been pressing House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) for a vote on the minimum wage before the House adjourns for an August recess. [...] Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) said lawmakers involved in crafting the package are making a concerted effort to avoid including tax provisions. "Democrats are daring us to put a package up that has tax cuts so that we dare them to vote against the minimum wage. That's the game," he said. "I think that anybody who's expecting poison pills and tax cuts is going to be sadly mistaken." [...] Democrats wasted no time in responding to rumors of a minimum wage deal, calling for an up-or-down vote on the wage hike. "Before Congress goes home for August recess, we must have a vote on the House floor to raise the minimum wage to $7.25. But that means a clean bill--a straight up-or-down vote on increasing the minimum wage, without the usual Republican poison pills of attaching tax cuts for the wealthy or other so-called sweeteners for the Republican special interests," House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. (Recall that Boehner is blocking the Labor-H approps bill from seeing the floor because of the minimum wage amendment that is attached to it. A vote on a standalone minimum wage bill would obviate that amendment, so the House could conceivably be done with its funding work before the end of the fiscal year.)