The behind-the-scenes struggle over the shape and size of the minimum wage tax package (covered here, here, with an outside critque here) is intensifying, with the White House weighing in heavily and a group of GOP senators raising new objections. The Admin's Feb. 13 Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 976 endorses the $8.3 billion small business tax cut adopted by the Senate in S. 2. It is not surprising the president favors more tax cuts, but the timing of this release throws more fuel on the fire heading into a conference negotiation between the two chambers. Making things even worse for the minimum wage, 10 conservative GOP Senators sent Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) and ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) a letter ($) last week opposing S. 2's retroactive shutdowns of tax shelters in the sale-in, lease-out (SILO) and corporate inversion provisions. What does this inside-tax-baseball all mean? If nothing else, it means more delays for the minimum wage bill and may reinforce the public's view that Congress and the President are far more pre-occupied with corporate tax policy than with updating a wage floor that has gone untouched over the last decade. Over that decade, the minimum wage has lost more than a quarter or its purchasing power as politicians have squabbled - it seems some in Congress have already forgotten the mandates from last November's elections. POSTSCRIPT: Today's New York Times editiorial, Minimum Wage, Minimum Tax Cuts, makes a point worth noting: if the cuts in the S.2 package were not just extended but renewed for 10 years, the cost would be $47.5 billion.