Minimum wage increase dosen't make it through

This was a couple of weeks ago, but still worth talking about. The dems tried twice to pass one of their favorite priorities, an increase in the national minimum wage, currently at $5.15/hour.
Sen. Kennedy was pushing a version that would raise the minimum wage to $7.25, it failed of course, that was a case I think of just being too greedy. A version pushed by some Republicans with a smaller increase also fell short. You can read about it at the link below from Yahoo. I personally think it should be increased and then indexed to inflation, but realistically from my experience in the retail world is that if you are only paying minimum wage you are going to get only the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. I cannot remember working at a store in the past 10 years where we paid only the minimum wage. You cannot do that if you want good people.

Here is the story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2270&ncid=2270&e=1&u=/krwashbureau/20050308/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_minimumwage_wa_1