April 25, 2013

Finally, Congress Finds Something to Agree About

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Congress is finally being roused to do something about the sequester. Part of it, anyway:

Complaints about air-travel delays in recent days have prompted Democrats in Congress to reconsider their strategy for dealing with across-the-board spending cuts.

….”We have to admit that some things are very problematic,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), who on Wednesday introduced a bipartisan bill with Sen. John Hoeven (R., N.D.) designed to give the Department of Transportation more flexibility to manage the cuts with the goal of reducing furloughs at the FAA….Another Democrat, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, on Wednesday announced legislation that would reinstate air-traffic controllers using funds generated by ending a tax break for corporate jets. Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware said he would prefer to generate additional user fees to keep the travel system running at full capacity for the next five months.

“The public’s going to be furious when they find out that this could have been prevented,” said Sen. Dan Coats (R., Ind.), who supports the bipartisan proposal to give the Department of Transportation more flexibility in dealing with the FAA cuts. The aviation agency has said it can’t avoid furloughs in the course of complying with the mandated budget cuts.

The tediously obvious point to make about this is that Congress can’t do much more than yawn about cuts to services for the poor, but a few days of air traffic delays and they’re practically tripping over themselves to offer up solutions. Why is this? Here are a few possibilities:

  • Flight delays affect lawmakers themselves, and they’re not happy about being personally inconvenienced.
  • Flight delays affect the rich and the upper middle class, and as Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens have taught us, these are the only voters that legislators actually care about.
  • Flight delays affect the media, so they write about it relentlessly.
  • Flight delays are an annoyance for everyone who flies. Other cutbacks are parceled out differently: most beneficiaries continue to get full benefits, while a small percentage lose access completely.
  • Flight delays are random, which adds to their annoyance.
  • Airport havoc is just generally more visible than most things.

You will be unsurprised to learn that I mostly chalk this up to items 1-3, especially item 2. Feel free to argue in comments.

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

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“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.

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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.

payment methods

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