Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A couple of days ago the New York Times reported that House Democrats were considering a VAT (a tax similar to a national sales tax) as a partial funding source for national healthcare.  Today AP reports this again.  Jon Cohn is pleased.  Ezra Klein isn’t.

I continue to think this isn’t a serious possibility.  The VAT is just one of half a dozen potential revenue sources that Ways & Means is considering, and in the end my guess is that the others are far more likely to be approved than a VAT.  But I’m happy to see this on the table anyway.  One of these days I think we’re going to need a VAT as a funding source for healthcare, but it’s not going to happen until the ground has been prepared and it morphs from being viewed as an outré piece of European socialism to being just an ordinary and familiar option to argue over.  It’s an Overton window kind of thing, and the sooner it gets started the better.

Bruce Bartlett has more on the VAT here and here.  I’ve written about it here. Properly constructed, it’s transparent, reasonably progressive, able to raise significant sums, and economically efficient.  It’s worth trying to give it a higher profile.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate