How Do You Pay For All This Stuff? How Do You Pay For All This Stuff? How Do You Pay For All This Stuff?

Joel Marklund/Bildbyran via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A conversation:

Q: How do you pay for all these programs?

A: Well, that’s going to be a big negotiation with a lot of people in Congress. We have more than a trillion dollars worth of what are called “tax expenditures” that both liberals and conservatives think have gotten out of hand.1 More than two-thirds of these expenditures are effectively handouts to the affluent.2 We also pay enormous subsidies to multinational corporations every year,3 including the appalling $20 billion we pay year after year to the oil and coal industries.4

There’s spending on defense that could be rationalized: even lots of Republicans agree that there’s billions in wasted earmark spending in the latest Pentagon budget.5 Kirsten Gillibrand represents Wall Street, and she thinks a tiny financial transaction fee—tenths of a cent per trade—could be a win-win by raising money and reducing the chance of another financial meltdown.6 Bernie Sanders suggests we should crack down on offshore tax havens7 and reduce the capital gains breaks that millionaires enjoy.8 Top marginal rates on the super rich have been cut in half since the Reagan era9 and Elizabeth Warren has pointed out that America was a pretty prosperous place under the higher rates of the 50s and 60s.10 There are lots of creative ideas for carbon charges that would reduce wasteful energy use and raise money for research into solar and wind and other renewable resources.11

But that’s what negotiations are all about. The press fixates on adding up a bunch of numbers in Column A and then “fact checking” whether they match another bunch in Column B. That’s pointless. Every committee in Congress is going to have its own ideas about revenue and spending, and so does the president. But elections aren’t about spreadsheets. They’re about telling people what we believe in. The hundred-page white papers and blue-pencil markups come later, after you’ve won an election. Right now, people just want to know what we’re going to fight for once we get there.

That’s it. That’s really all you need. Just repeat some version of “it’s a negotiation” until everyone finally gets tired and decides to move on.

1Congressional Budget Office: “Tax Expenditures”
2Tax Policy Center: “Who Benefits From Tax Expenditures?”
3New York Times: “Why Are Your State Tax Dollars Subsidizing Corporations?”
4Vox: “Friendly policies keep US oil and coal afloat far more than we thought”
5Citizens Against Government Waste: “2018 Congressional Pig Book Summary”
6Rolling Stone: “We Need a Financial Transactions Tax Before It’s Too Late”
7The Guardian: “Bernie Sanders warns of ‘international oligarchy’ after Paradise Papers leak”
8berniesanders.com: “Making the Wealthy, Wall Street, and Large Corporations Pay their Fair Share”
9Tax Policy Center: “Top Individual Income Tax Rate: 1946-2017”
10CNBC: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to roll back the GOP tax cuts”
11Motherboard: “Majority of US Supports a Carbon Tax and Wants to Spend the Money on Renewable Energy”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate