Now Even Conservatives Are Calling Them “Tax Cuts For the Rich”

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National Review editor Rich Lowry thinks that although Donald Trump’s fans love his populist blather, they might start to lose patience with some of the big programs that Congress tries to pass. For example:

Obamacare “repeal” without a replacement, a deficit-increasing traditional Republican “tax cut for the rich,” and even — although this is much less likely — Medicare reform. Trump may find his political capital depleting rapidly in the cause of passing conventional Republican legislation that isn’t as important to him as his populist calling cards.

I don’t want to make too much of this, but when was the last time you heard a conservative, let alone the editor of NR, refer to tax reform as a “traditional Republican” “tax cut for the rich”? That’s the way liberals jeer at supply-side voodoo. Conservatives insist that tax cuts like Trump’s (or Paul Ryan’s) are “broad based,” “capital deepening,” and “job creating.” They are most definitely not “tax cuts for the rich.”

But now they are. What does this mean?

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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.

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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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