According to Congressional Quarterly ($), Senate Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA) has dropped his earlier insistence on pre-conferencing the differences between the House ($1.3 billion) and the Senate ($8.3 billion) minimum wage bill small business tax cuts. Grassley and Committee chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) apparently plan to offer an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill on the Senate floor that would pull the Senate-passed wage measure from the supplemental and push it into a conference with the House. (Robert Novak missed this one, by the way.)