“It’s going to be a very busy March and April for us,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer at his Wednesday briefing. That’s when the Trump administration expects to start moving forward on its legislative agenda—and at the top of that list is the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.
The White House is being coy on what, exactly, their preferred Obamacare replacement looks like. The method of replacing it, through budget resolutions and reconciliation, is complicated and esoteric, so they don’t have much to say on that, either. And President Trump’s joint address to Congress next Tuesday likely won’t touch on specifics, as Spicer suggested in Wednesday’s briefing.
The administration is much more comfortable reminding Americans why the country wants to get rid of the law. “Carriers are pulling out, premiums are going up, and access is going down,” as Spicer put it Wednesday. But pay attention to what he said next: “The president’s plan is actually going to do exactly what they were promised eight years ago and didn’t get.” It was a high standard Barack Obama and the Democrats set eight years ago—expanding insurance coverage, bending the cost curve, making care more affordable—and the Democrats couldn’t reach it. Can Trump and the Republicans?
Pence Pays a Visit to a Vandalized Jewish Cemetery
Vice President Mike Pence spoke with Missouri governor Eric Greitens on the phone Tuesday afternoon. Pence was preparing to visit Greitens’s state the next day to visit a construction equipment dealer in Fenton, outside of St. Louis.
But Greitens, a Republican and the state’s first Jewish governor, asked Pence if he wanted to make a second stop before flying back to Washington: to Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery in St. Louis, which had been vandalized over the weekend. The vandalism was the most egregious of a string of anti-Semitic incidents across the country in recent weeks, including bomb threats on several Jewish community centers. At Chesed Shel Emeth, volunteers organized by Greitens were restoring the toppled headstones and cleaning up the destruction. The governor was going there Wednesday to help and wanted the vice president to join him.
At their weekly dinner Tuesday night, Pence mentioned the invitation to President Trump, who “strongly encouraged” Pence to visit the cemetery, according to a White House source. The next morning, as Air Force Two prepared to take off for St. Louis, the vice president’s staff began making plans for Pence to go. The stop at the cemetery wasn’t on Pence’s public schedule (for security reasons, the source explains).
At the cemetery, Pence spoke through a bullhorn to the gathered volunteers. “There is no place in America for hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism,” he said. “You just make us all proud.”
More on Pence as Trump’s Evangelist
My colleague Chris Deaton has a good review of the vice president’s expanding role as a top surrogate for Trump, looking in particular at Pence’s first stop in Missouri Wednesday. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing:
Are We Still Alone in the Universe?
The folks at NASA got quite a bit of buzz Wednesday with a blog post about the space agency’s discovery of “seven Earth-size planets around a single star” that could be habitable. The finding grabbed the attention of a few White House staffers, who tweetedabout how “cool” the news was. Maybe they’re hoping NASA will be able to send the most annoying members of the White House press corps off the one of the distant, habitable planets?
Song of the Day
“Someday,” the Strokes
