Taxes, Cost Controls, and Medicare

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Speaking of fiscal reality, Austin Frakt reminds us that the federal budget, including Medicare, is actually in pretty good shape if we follow current law. Here’s the CBO’s projection of the primary budget (i.e., excluding interest payments):

Are Democrats willing to raise taxes in order to fund Medicare? Austin: “I do recall quite a vociferous debate over just this issue. Did Americans fail to notice that the health reform law spends a lot of money and includes a lot of tax increases? If so, that’s not just a Democratic messaging problem, but a Republican one too, and a general media failure. What more would it take to communicate this?”

Now, this CBO projection is one that assumes we follow current law. That is, we let the Bush tax cuts expire, we stop passing the doc fix, estate taxes revert to their 2009 levels, and we actually allow both the cost control mechanisms and tax increases of PPACA to take effect. As it happens, the estate tax has already been changed to rates slightly below the 2009 levels, but that has a pretty minor effect on things. The only one of these items that’s both significant and hard to imagine staying in place is the end of the doc fix. This means the budget isn’t quite as balanced as this chart suggests.

Still, even if we modify physician payments, we’re in decent shape as long as we have the discipline to let current law take its course, including both its tax increases and its cost controls. Toss in a compromise Social Security fix and we’d be in better long-term shape yet. So what’s wrong with this picture?

More detail here from Ezra Klein in word form rather than chart form.

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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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