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What happens if Republicans win control of one or both houses of Congress in November? Ezra Klein says he’ll put money on a bigger tax cut getting passed but thinks the odds of big deficit reduction are tiny. Matt Yglesias thinks the odds of a big deficit reduction are even tinier, since Republicans don’t actually care about deficit reduction.

And me? I don’t know, because I don’t really feel like I understand President Obama’s position in all this. It’s pretty obvious what House Republicans will do: extend all the Bush tax cuts and possibly try to make a few modest cuts in spending. It’s less obvious what the Senate will do, but even if Democrats retain control there are going to be several members of their caucus willing to compromise on the kind of program House Republicans want to pass. So that means big tax cuts and small spending cuts, and therefore an increase in the deficit.

But what about Obama? Would he veto such a program and risk shutting down the government? Or is he still dedicated to looking postpartisan? Will he become a born-again deficit fighter after the elections? That’s the wild card, and I honestly have no idea where he stands on this. To make it even worse, he’s going through a lot of staff changes, and there’s no telling what kind of advice he’ll be getting compared to the past couple of years.

So Obama is the central mystery here, I think. If I could figure out what he’s going to do, I’d be a lot more willing to make a prediction. But I can’t.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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