Treasury Department Wins Award For Nation’s Ugliest Chart

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The actual news today, such as it is, concerns the federal deficit. A few weeks ago President Trump tweeted this:

The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo.

ZOMG! Trump is a fiscal genius! But today the Treasury released its deficit report for February:

Sad news. January’s modest surplus has been wiped out. The deficit in February was $192 billion. Just like last year. I don’t suppose Trump will be tweeting about that, will he? But he still could: His February deficit is $0.74 billion less than Obama’s in his first February. Is that worth a tweet?

But who cares about all this? It’s just money. The real motivation for this post is to mock the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for the op-art inspired bit of visual ugliness they use to report the deficit over time. Seriously, guys? What possible piece of software could they be using to produce this? Every time I look at it the world starts spinning.

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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.

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