No, It’s Not Spending That’s the Problem

We should shortly be getting the CBO’s latest budget outlook, which includes the effects of the Trump tax cut. To prepare ourselves, here’s the projection from last year’s long-term budget outlook:

Over the next 30 years, net spending increases from 19.3 percent of GDP to 23.2 percent. That’s about one percentage point per decade, mostly due to rising health care costs. In other words, it’s not a lot. What’s more, if technological advances slow down health care spending—something I find likely even if it seems hard to believe right now—spending won’t go up even that much.

But if you add interest on the national debt, spending goes up nearly 9 percentage points. That’s the killer, and there’s no technological advance that can change this. In the 2018 version of the CBO report, this will get even worse thanks to last year’s tax bill.

Despite what conservatives say endlessly, spending is not the problem. We can easily manage an increase of 1 percent per decade for the next few decades. It’s only if we refuse to pay for it that the national debt explodes.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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