Gefilte Fish

Graham-Cassidy Stinks:  Benjamin Franklin famously said that guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.  You could say the same thing about the Graham-Cassidy healthcare plan.  The more it’s exposed to light, the more it stinks.  It’s so bad that New Jersey Governor Christie, usually a Trump fan boy, announced on Wednesday that he opposes Graham-Cassidy because it is “too injurious to the people of New Jersey…. I’m certainly not going to support a bill that takes nearly $4 billion from people in the state.”  Senator Cassidy promised that the plan meets the Jimmy Kimmel test because he alleges that it provides insurance to people with preexisting conditions.  Kimmel whose baby son has a heart condition challenged Cassidy’s claim because states can opt out of covering people with preexisting conditions and will be incented to do so as funding cuts go into effect.  Kimmel asked Cassidy to stop using his name to promote the crappy plan.  It turns out that Kimmel has a better understanding of how Graham-Cassidy works than either of its namesakes.  It’s quite possible that a person with a preexisting condition would be able to get affordable health insurance under Graham-Cassidy but they would only be able to get insurance that didn’t cover their condition so, for example, a cancer patient could get coverage but not for chemotherapy, radiation or any other cancer treatment.  Virtually every patient focused medical organization opposes the bill.  Avalere Health, a respected consulting firm projects that ultimately health care cuts could reach $4 trillion and that thirty-four states plus Washington D.C. would be net losers as soon as 2020, the year the cuts start taking effect.   West Virginia, Alaska, and Ohio are among the big losers.  Alaska’s Murkowski, who voted against the last Obamacare repeal attempt, says that she is in the process of evaluating the bill, no word yet from Ohio’s Portman or West Virginia’s Caputo where they stand but they are facing mounting pressures from big donors to support the plan regardless of the dire impact on their constituents.  Senators Rand and Collins remain in the no column and McCain was last heard shouting he wants a return to regular order, whatever he thinks that means.  In support of the plan Health Secretary Price has been flying around the country, racking up big bills for private charters, including for flights between Washington DC and Philadelphia because he is too important to fly commercial or take the Acela train with the ordinary folks.  Trump, who hasn’t bothered to read the plan, weighed in last night, he wants in passed and says that if Senators Graham and Cassidy say it covers essential services than they must be right even if they are lying.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell says a vote on the Graham-Cassidy plan will take place next week.    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  The Washington Post reports that less than two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Paul Manafort, then his campaign chairman, offered to provide private election briefings to Oleg Deripaska, a wealthy Russian oligarch and friend of Putin.  We know this because he sent the offer to a consulting firm colleague in Russia via his campaign email and those emails have been turned over to the intelligence committees and Special Counsel Mueller. Another email reveals that he was trying to figure out how to “monetize” Trump’s success, although it’s not clear if he was trying to get clients to pay him money owed or if he was trying to use his role with Trump to pay off earlier debts.   Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, acknowledged this saying it was not a bigly deal, everybody sells government access to Russians. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post report that Mueller has requested that the White House provide so many records, that Ty Cobb, Trump’s lawyer for all things Russian, has organized the requests into thirteen categories.  Among other things Mueller appears to be looking at the conversations and emails about the Flynn and Comey dismissals, the meeting in the Oval Office with former Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the one where Trump called Comey a nut job, the process for crafting the letter that attempted to whitewash the Don Jr organized meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Vesilnitskaya and anything and everything that references Manafort.  Mueller’s requests suggest that he is focusing on both Russian collusion and obstruction of justice.  The case against Manafort is damning, the one against Trump is building, but remains harder to prove. Manafort must be really desperate to raise cash, despite his impending indictment, he recently accepted an assignment representing Iraq’s Kurds who are pushing for passage of a resolution calling for their independence, a referendum that the US opposes.   Mueller has also notified the White House that he plans to interview Sean Spicer, who apparently wrote everything down in stacks of notebooks, perhaps in anticipation of writing a book.  Spicer hasn’t been able to negotiate a book deal yet, but he shouldn’t worry about that, Mueller will be happy to read his handwritten scrawl. It’s probably time for Spicer to lawyer up.

Persian War: Trump “coyly” told the press that he’s already made his decision about whether he plans to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal or not but he’s keeping it a secret, for now. It’s possible that he will refuse to recertify that Iran has been meeting the terms of the nuclear deal in October but it’s also possible that he is using the threat of withholding the recertification as a negotiating wedge to push the parties to alter the terms of the deal. Though it’s widely acknowledged that Iran is meeting the letter of the deal, they are continuing to develop missile technology and foster regional conflicts, neither of which were covered in the very limited nuclear deal. Trump is concerned that a failure to address these concerns now will lead to another “North Korea” type problem in 2025 when the limitations on Iran’s nuclear program are scheduled to be lifted.  He rejects what he calls Obama’s strategy of “kicking the ball down the road.”    French President Macron agrees that the nuclear deal doesn’t do enough to rein in Iran’s ambitions but doesn’t want another North Korea problem right now.  He’s pressing Trump to leave the agreement intact but is also pressing Iran to enter into discussions about another agreement intended to curb their ballistic missile testing, an outcome that is likely to meet the concerns of Israel, who is not a party to the Iran agreement but who feels most threatened by Iran’s ambitions.  For his part Iran’s President Rouhani, whose twitter skills and bombastic language matches Trump’s, called Trump a “rogue newcomer to the world of politics” and said that his UN speech was “ignorant and absurd.” Yesterday, Secretary of State Tillerson met with the seven parties to the Iran nuclear deal, including Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif. The game is on.