House conservatives passed a bill last week that combined a minimum wage hike with a dramatic cut to the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax).

By my calculations, the minimum wage hike will increase the incomes of full-time, minimum wage workers by $84 a week, or about $4,368 a year. This would bring their income up to just over $15,000 a year (assuming 40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year.)

By contrast, the heirs of multimillionaires would receive substantially more by way of benefits. Consider the heirs who stand to receive a $10 million fortune through married parents. Under the new proposed law they would receive a tax break of as much as $2.76 million (compared with the 2006 estate tax law.)

Put another way, the heirs of the $10 million estate would get a tax break worth as much as 183 years of the income of a full-time minimum wage earner.

– John Irons, Director of Tax and Budget Policy

Cross-posted at BudgetBlog. Check out BudgetBlog every day for real-time analysis and commentary on the federal budget.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “supported an effort last year to block Mr. Bolton’s nomination from gaining a full Senate vote, but he confirmed that he is considering changing his position,” the New York Sun reports.

The right-wing blogosphere is up in arms over a Rolling Stone article about prominent neo-conservative Michael Ledeen. The article, written by James Bamford, argues that Ledeen was using unreliable intelligence to push the Bush administration into military action against Iran. The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin claim that the premise of Bramford’s article is flawed because Ledeen opposes military action against Iran:

Yet, anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael’s work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran “” notwithstanding that he was years ahead of most experts in accurately portraying Iran’s role as the terror master at the center of the jihadist network.

Ledeen makes a similar argument is his own response to Bramford, claiming “I’ve openly and consistently opposed military invasion.”

Actually, writing for the National Review on July 11, Ledeen said the United States should attack Iran:

But one thing I do know: I would insist that my soldiers have the right of “hot pursuit” into Iran and Syria, and I would order my armed forces to attack the terrorist training camps in those countries.

The National Review has every right to defend Ledeen. But they should at least make a modest effort to get their facts straight.

The Israeli army says its air force has struck southern Lebanon despite an agreement to halt air raids for 48 hours, the AP reports.