Has Reid been Reading Us? It may be impatience, or posturing, or good policy (in our view), but for whatever reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) threatened last night to scotch the minimum wage tax package negotiations and schedule a(nother) vote on a "clean" minimum wage hike. House and Senate taxwriters remain far apart in efforts to get the $1.3 billion House and $8.3 billion Senate "small business" tax packages into conference. Reid ironically favors the smaller House version, saying "I don't know how much more [Republicans] want." Senate Republican Conference chair Jon Kyl (R-AZ) meanwhile is calling for a "more robust" package than the House version, saying "it would be very difficult to send that bill to conference." The prospect of the GOP blocking the conference has prompted Reid to threaten a clean wage hike vote: "They're going to have to make a decision on whether they wage to kill the minimum wage." But on January 24, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on precisely that measure, falling six votes short, 54-43. And most of the outside agitation has come from business groups wrangle over the two tax packages.