Who’s Afraid of Social Security?

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Ezra Klein, after noting that Steny Hoyer is trying to push ahead with Social Security reform, notes that congressional leaders are resisting the idea of naming a special commission to work on a proposal:

What liberals fear on Social Security reform is something like the proposed Conrad-Gregg Commission. A bipartisan commission that creates a set of recommendations and then fast tracks them through Congress. In general, the idea behind these proposals is that Congress can’t change the commission’s recommendation: It just votes up-or-down.

Well, I don’t fear this, and I don’t think Pelosi and Reid should fear it either.  It’s true that my first choice is to do nothing for now and wait a decade or so to see how our finances shape up.  Trying to project 50 years in the future is dimwitted and we shouldn’t pretend we can do it.

But the politics is a little bit different.  Even Republicans agree that privatization is off the table right now, which means that a bipartisan commission might very well come up with an acceptable set of tweaks that would balance Social Security’s books.  And there’s a genuine upside to this: at a fairly low cost it would take Social Security off the table for good.  No more endless whining from Pete Peterson and the Washington Post editorial board.  No more Republican kvetching about Social Security bankrupting America.  No worrying about yet another privatization plan rearing its zombie head the next time a Republican is in the Oval Office.  No more polls showing that more kids believe in UFOs than believe they’ll get a Social Security check when they retire.  And Barack Obama would get a very nice post-partisan fiscal responsibility feather in his cap.

(Look: I don’t care about postpartisanship very much, but obviously Obama does.  And he’s a pretty smart guy.  I’m willing to let him play the game his way.)

So I say, give it a try.  If the commission proposal is no good, vote it down.  If it’s OK, pass it.  And then we can spend the next eight years working on real long-term issues like healthcare and climate change.  What’s the harm in letting Steny give it a try?

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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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