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OK, it’s not really a chart.  It’s a table.  But it comes from CBPP and it takes a closer look at the recent headlines screaming that deficit projections have risen from $7 trillion to $9 trillion.  Long story short, it’s not true.

Here’s why.  The lower number is from the CBO and relies on its “baseline” budget calculation.  This is an estimate of what would happen if current law remains unchanged forever, and as such it bears little resemblance to reality.  In reality, the Bush tax cuts aren’t going to disappear in 2011, Medicare reimbursements aren’t going to be suddenly slashed, and the Alternative Minimum Tax won’t be left alone to gobble up ever more income.  As usual, the law will be changed to take care of all these things, just like it is every year.

So if you take a look at what the deficit would be under current real-life policies, and compare it to estimates under Obama’s proposed policies, what do you get?  As the table below shows, the real-life deficit isn’t $7 trillion, it’s more like $11 trillion.  And the Obama deficit isn’t $9 trillion, it’s about $10.5 trillion once adjustments are made so that it can be compared to CBO estimates on an apples-to-apples basis.  So the bottom line is simple: properly accounted for, the deficit actually goes down when you compare Obama’s budget proposals to current policy, not up.

All the grisly details are here.  Warning: not for the faint of heart.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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