By Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen
As soon as President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour in his State of the Union address last week, you could see Speaker John Boehner, seated behind the president, uttering his religious mantra: “Job killer.” And even if you couldn’t read his lips, you could read his mind: “Campaign contributions.” He and his Republican colleagues could expect huge donations from business lobby groups — especially those that depend on low-wage workers, like the hotel industry, restaurants and fast-food chains, nursing homes and hospitals and big-box retailers — to keep Congress from embracing Obama’s modest proposal.