Republicans To Fed: Don’t Help The Economy—Or Else!

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other top House Republicans give a press conference.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakerboehner/5514859939/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Speaker Boehner</a>/Flickr

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The Republican leadership is warning Federal Reserve officials meeting this week not to do anything to stimulate the economy, despite persistent high unemployment and grim forecasts for economic growth. A letter sent by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and Senate Majority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) states, “Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.”

You might remember that Texas Governor Rick Perry made a similar case against monetary stimulus, somewhat less respectively and more honestly back in August. Perry said of Republican Appointed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”

The letter from the Republican Congressional leadership has everything but the ugly and the frank admission of concern that further stimulus from the Fed might alter their chances for retaking the White House next year. The International Monetary Fund recently downgraded its economic forecast for the U.S. next year, saying growth will be just under two percent. To give you a sense of how that affects Obama’s chances, political economist Douglass Hibbs told me in early August that “If the economy catches hold, and we catch those 4 or 5 percent growth rates in a row, Obama will be okay. But he’s not going to win big. It’s not going to be anything like the McCain defeat.”

Republicans have successfully pursued contractionary fiscal policies that will harm the economy in the short term, successfully leveraging the threat of a government shutdown and economic armageddon over the debt ceiling to push the Obama administration to acquiesce to some pretty unfavorable terms. Since the GOP has control of the House, they can block just about any legislative solutions the president might propose. The only thing they can’t really control is what the Fed does—which is why they’re trying so hard to intimidate them out of doing anything at all.

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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.

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