The Senate debate on S.2, the Minimum Wage bill, is all over but the shouting. Doing most of the shouting at this point is Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), who is merely delaying the inevitable by insisting on floor votes -- expected today -- on up to six amendments, most relating to small business expensing and depreciation treatment of leasehold, restaurant, and retail space improvements. Last week, a Kyl amendment to extend this depreciation through 2008, with an offset that would have taxed free tuition provided to children of employees at educational institutions, was tabled 50-42. One of Kyl's six amendments simply calls for this extension, but omits the offset provision. The remaining five, none of which has offsets, call for permanent extensions of the:

• Section 179 small business expensing limits (cost: $19 billion/10 years)
• 15-year depreciation for leasehold and restaurant improvements ($15.1 billion)
• 15-year depreciation for new restaurant property ($4 billion)
• 15-year depreciation for improvements to owned retail space ($4 billion)
• work opportunity tax credit, at a cost of more than $3 billion

Because these amendments are not fully offset, they are subject to a budget point of order, which requires 60 votes to overcome. Frustration with what some in the Senate have called "filibuster by amendment" provoked this response by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA): We have now had amendments that have been worth over 200 billion dollars… Amendments that have been offered. We've had amendments on education of 35 billion dollars. We've had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000… We've had those kinds of amendments and we're looking at the Kyl amendment[s]. But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents -- over two years. This is filibuster by delay and amendments. I've been around here long enough to know it when I see it and smell it, and that's what it looks like, that's what it is, make no mistake about it....