White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer spun and spun and spun, badly, in the briefing room Tuesday, facing the media to defend the indefensible Trumpcare after the disastrous Congressional Budget Office report. First thing’s first: Don't call it Trumpcare because Trump doesn't want it called that even though he's "proud of it."
Spicer also completely abandoned Trump's promise made January 15, when he said "We're going to have insurance for everybody." Today's message: "Insurance for everybody who wants to get it." That's a new way of saying everyone will have "access" to health insurance, as long as they're willing to not pay rent or their mortgage, or eat, or own things.
This part was also good:
The CBO report was bad because it didn’t take into account all three “prongs” of what we’re not calling Trumpcare and there are no other two prongs right now for the CBO to analyze—but they’ll be great. Like selling insurance across state lines, which is something insurance companies can already do, but don’t because it’s too expensive and complicated. But also, too: "This is it. If we don't get this through, the goal of repealing Obamacare is ... going to be unbelievably difficult." Except that there’s going to be so much support for prong three (which does not exist yet) and the Democrats agree with us.
There were one or two useful things to come out of the briefing, the most significant being that the White House is working on a manager’s amendment, a package of amendments that is agreed to in advance of a bill going to the floor. Politico reported earlier that the White House was working on this package to sweeten the legislation for the extremists who want to cut more people out of Medicaid faster. It appears that this is indeed the case.