A TARP Counterfactual

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Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House majority leader, gave a speech at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday arguing that the GOP’s determination to simply obstruct whatever President Obama tries to do is damaging democracy and the institution of Congress.  Much of Hoyer’s speech was devoted to listing examples of “times when the minority party has tied its success not to Congress’s failure, but to the shared work of governing—when it has helped to create legislation that still marks our lives” and “the great accomplishments of loyal oppositions that controlled Congress but were willing to work with, instead of block, a president of the other party.” One of those “great accomplishments” really stuck out to me:

[E]ven though Speaker Gingrich began his climb to leadership on the strength of obstructionism, at the end of his career in the House he had strong words for Republicans in what he called the “perfectionist caucus”: “my fine friends who are perfectionists, each in their own world where they are petty dictators could write a perfect bill.… But that is not the way life works in a free society.” I’ve tried to live by that principle myself: under President Bush, I worked long and hard on intelligence reform with my friend Roy Blunt. And when the global economy faced collapse, it was Democrats who provided the votes for a painful financial rescue that I believe averted disaster.

This brings to mind a fascinating counterfactual. If a Democratic president had been running the country when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the Republicans had held the reins of power in Congress, would something like TARP have been possible?

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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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