Gambling on Armageddon: Final Results

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The Senate just approved the debt ceiling deal and President Obama will sign it later today. That means it’s time to declare a winner from last month’s pool. The three items you had to guess were:

  • When will an agreement be reached?
  • How much will the debt ceiling be increased?
  • Will there be any revenue increases in the deal? How much?

My guesses were August 7, $1.7 trillion, and $200 billion. Not too bad! The correct answer is slightly variable, but assuming that (a) Congress fails to approve a balanced budget amendment and (b) Obama asks for the maximum increase he’s allowed to, the deal raises the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. So the winning combination is August 2, $2.1 trillion, and zero.

So who won? Here are the closest guesses:

  • shooter242: August 2, $1 trillion, zero.
  • Model62: August 2, $2 trillion, a little bit via COLA adjustments to tax brackets
  • cld: August 2, “a lot,” zero.
  • Austin_Will: August 1, $1.5 trillion, zero.

In the original post, I defined “a lot” as “the full $2 trillion or so,” so I think that makes cld the winner. Congratulations! And good work from the runners up too. Your non-prizes will not be mailed out to you shortly.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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