Republicans Should Choose a Different Hostage

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Suzy Khimm writes about a way for Republicans to shut down the government that doesn’t involve refusing to raise the debt ceiling:

Congress will have to pass another short-term budget before late March because it’s been unable to pass a full budget through the regular process. In fact, the continuing resolution was the very first budget fight that Republicans used to extract spending cuts in the last Congress, threatening to shut down the government until a last-minute deal was struck in April 2011….Congressional Republicans now say that the year-to-year, discretionary budget must be part of the next fiscal deal’s spending cuts, not just entitlements. “The pinch points will be the sequester, debt ceiling and the CR—all three coming up in the next three months,” Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) told me. “The CR—it’s one of the areas where there is indeed an absolute deadline. Washington and Congress respond to crises and deadlines, and we need to address the spending side of the equation.”

If Republicans really want to shut things down, this is the way to do it. Don’t get me wrong: I still think they’d be crazy to do it. Cutting spending while the economy is still weak is a recipe for disaster. But that’s a difference of opinion, and a perfectly legitimate one to solve via the political process. Refusing to pay bills you’ve already run up isn’t. Neither is risking the country’s credit rating and its historic position as the world’s most reliable lender.

There’s another reason to do this via the normal budget process too: it’s entirely feasible. When John Boehner says that he wants a 1:1 ratio of spending cuts to debt ceiling increases, he’s using a ten-year baseline. In other words, a $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling requires a $100 billion cut in annual spending. This is an amount that Obama and congressional Democrats have already agreed to in the past, and finding cuts of that magnitude can probably be done via the ordinary give and take of the legislative process.

Maybe not, of course. Maybe Republicans will end up shutting down the government. That would be terrible public policy, but it wouldn’t be a complete breakdown of America’s commitment to pay its bills. It’s the right road for Republicans to take if they insist on holding hostages yet again.

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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