The Republican Base Doesn’t Want to Hear About Reconciliation

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Wesley Smith has a question about the Republican health care plan:

I am wondering why opponents haven’t conceded a big point Speaker Ryan has asserted in defending his three-stage approach: A full repeal would require 60 votes in the Senate because it would be subject to the filibuster…Hence, understanding that the contents of the first phase can be debated, if Obamacare is going to be defanged, doesn’t Ryan’s three-stage approach make complete sense?

Of course Ryan is right. Everyone should concede that. So why haven’t they?

Answer: Because for seven years Republicans have been telling everyone who will listen that if they get into power they’ll repeal Obamacare, full stop. They never said “most of it” or “just the parts we can repeal via reconciliation.” Just the opposite: They used the most thunderous, uncompromising language possible. Obamacare was a cancer that needed to be fully excised. And they’d do it.

Something on the order of 1 percent of voters understand filibusters and reconciliation, and Republicans were very careful never to mention those things. So that means 99 percent of Republican voters think Obamacare can be fully repealed if only the GOP leadership has the guts to do it. This is now causing problems for Ryan, but he has only himself to blame. He said he’d repeal Obamacare, and now the Republican base wants him to do it. All this yakking about reconciliation and three-phase plans sounds like nothing more than yet another sellout.

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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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