Reihan Salam Distills the Emerging Conventional Wisdom on the Center-Right

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Reihan Salam writes today about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s “remarkable” appearance on Fox News this Sunday opposite an “impressively pragmatic” Bob Corker. What’s remarkable, says Salam, is that Schumer insisted on seeing a Republican proposal for entitlement cuts:

[Chris Wallace] pointed out that Schumer is insisting that Republicans make concessions on taxes — that is, that Republicans should “negotiate against themselves” — yet that it is unacceptable for Democrats to do so. Once we get our revenues, we will start “negotiating.” The trouble, of course, is that congressional Republicans will have conceded most of what they can concede, short of waging another battle over the debt limit, to nudge congressional Democrats toward embracing structural entitlement reform. And were congressional Republicans to wage another battle over the debt limit, one assumes that congressional Democrats would characterize Republicans as extremists in need of being taught yet another lesson. It’s all very neat.

I guess that would be neat, if it were true. But no one is suggesting that Republicans have to preemptively cave in on taxes and only then will we begin discussing spending cuts. It’s a negotiation. President Obama has produced a detailed opening offer that includes about $1.6 trillion in tax increases and $400 billion in spending cuts beyond the $1.5 trillion agreed to last year. Republicans didn’t like it. That’s no surprise. The next step, then, is to hear the Republican counteroffer. So far, though, we’ve heard only crickets.

I’m stumped about what conservatives expect here. Now that Republicans have rejected Obama’s proposal, do they think he should simply come up with another one? And when they say no again, yet another one? Then another. And another. Until, finally, they say yes? That doesn’t even make sense.

If Republicans want to cut structurally reform Medicare and Social Security, they should put a proposal on the table and let CBO score each of its elements. Ditto for the president’s proposal. Then they can start horsetrading. But what kind of trade can Democrats make if they don’t even know what Republicans want?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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