An Inconvenient Truth for the GOP

Republicans trying to block climate change legislation are abandoned by their once faithful corporate allies.

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Republican lawmakers who decry climate change legislation as catastrophic for American businesses were left in the lurch on Wednesday afternoon—by reps of American businesses. The split came at a hearing conducted by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the powerful House energy and commerce committee, who has promised to deliver comprehensive climate change by Memorial Day. In March, he released a sweeping draft bill that received accolades from the environmental community and the Obama administration. Since January, he has held 41 days of hearings with 61 witnesses. This week, in a set of marathon hearings, Waxman will hear from 67 more.
 
Corporate America certainly sees the train coming down the tracks.
 
After top Obama administration officials appeared before Waxman’s committee on Wednesday morning, voicing strong support for a bill that would boost renewable energy development, create green jobs, and reduce global warming emissions, a panel of corporate leaders were nearly as enthusiastic—even as committee Republicans blasted the legislation as a prescription for economic disaster.

While Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, assailed the bill as “an assault on the middle class,” Meg McDonald, director of global issues for Alcoa, expressed her company’s “support for comprehensive climate change legislation this year.” Climate change, she said, requires “immediate action” from “every sector of society.”
 
McDonald was echoed by Charles Holliday, chairman and one-time CEO of DuPont. “I firmly believe this is an opportunity for American industry to reinvent itself,” he said. “We are fundamentally behind this approach.”
 
Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, said, “I recognize that we are part of the problem.” Later, under questioning, he added, “We believe now is the time to act.” David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, said that his company has a “moral imperative” to reduce its emissions “substantially.”
 
With Waxman fast-tracking the climate change bill, these executives recognized that they cannot denounce the legislation and still hope to have any influence in shaping it. Instead, they have chosen to get on board, offering suggestions and mild criticisms. In his testimony, Holliday said he hoped that Congress would keep the cost of its final product “manageable.” McDonald said he’d like to see a cap-and-trade program that is engineered to “minimize the impact on the competitiveness of American business.” Crane argued for a commitment to clean coal.
 
The willingness of corporate America to engage with the Democrats left the Republicans without an expected ally. The Republicans’ doom-and-gloom rhetoric did not match the sentiments of corporate America, which once largely stood with the GOP in opposition to congressional action on global warming.
 
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of Waxman’s committee, suggested that if anyone wants to experience what life in America would be like after the proposed bill reduces US greenhouse gas emissions to 83 percent below 2005 levels—Waxman’s stated goal—they should go live in a low-emissions Nigeria. “I don’t believe that mankind is the primary cause of climate change,” he said. “I do accept that CO2 levels are rising—I think it’s debatable if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
 
Republicans pushed for clean coal and nuclear power. They insisted that America cannot green itself without China and India committing to do the same, lest those countries poach business from the US. They warned that a cap-and-trade program would increase energy bills, impoverishing the middle class and harming American industry.
 
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) repeatedly called cap-and-trade “cap and tax.” As in, “Cap and tax will essentially kick working families while they’re down” and “cap and tax will devastate [the] US economy.” (That second Upton quote was the inch-high headline of a press release handed out by Upton’s staff at the hearing.) In his opening statement, Upton encapsulated the Republican opposition, and highlighted how far his party’s position has diverged from that of the business community. “If the objective is to send manufacturing jobs overseas, destroy the Midwest, mortgage our future, and hand over the keys to our superpower status,” he said, “then I say job well done.”

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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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