TrumpCare's coming! What kind of garbage in a gold box awaits us?

The Washington Post's Robert Costa published the gist of an interview with Trump last night in which Trump claimed that his administration is putting the finishing touches on a health reform plan that would provide universal access to affordable, low deductible coverage. This is so apparently out of keeping with existing Republican ACA replacement plans that it's hard to know what to make of it. Here are three possibilities:

1) Trump's plan will depend heavily on "mini-med" plans for low income people -- that is plans with low up-front costs but tight caps on how much the plan will pay (annual caps, lifetime caps or both).  An ACA replacement plan put forward by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) features such plans for the poor.

2) Trump will offer a plan that proposes something very like Medicaid for people higher up the income chain than the ACA does with something very like Tom Price's plan for people with somewhat higher incomes -- that is, relatively small tax credits, unadjusted for income, to be spent in a deregulated insurance market. I've proposed this myself, and I think it's too good to be Trump.

Apocalypse now?

Robert Costa, perhaps the best-sourced reporter on Republican thinking, indicates that warnings in the wake of the 2011 debt ceiling deal that Obama had enabled debt ceiling terrorism for the foreseeable future were true:

Most of the conference is well aware of the consequences of default. In fact, over the past few years, the House GOP leadership has actually hosted private meetings for members about what default means and why it shouldn't happen. But, at the same time, Republicans are very eager to get some kind of 2011-esque concession from the White House and Senate Democrats on the budget, when they were able to pass legislation that led to sequestration. Of course, the political climate then was different, due to the GOP having recently won the House, but the GOP is hoping for a similar outcome this time, and you have leaders like Paul Ryan publicly talking about a larger agreement being possible. I'm still skeptical though, since most Republicans are unwilling, at all, to bend on taxes, and Democrats aren't exactly scrambling to cut a big deal with Boehner, who they think is in a weakened position.

Costa suggests that the current standoff over a short-term continuing resolution is likely to bleed into debt ceiling negotiations -- which Obama has stated categorically and repeatedly that he won't engage in. He also seems to think that Democrats are likely to waver in their resolve to negotiate neither the CR -- for which there's already agreement (on GOP terms) as to spending levels -- nor the debt ceiling. Here's Obama yesterday on the latter:

Boehner's not retreating, he's doubling down

Robert Costa has a funny little narrative today in which John Boehner and Eric Cantor, moderate old hands who know how Washington works, talk the GOP's young Turks off the ledge of a government shutdown when this year's funding runs out at the end of September.  We don't have the votes, we'll be blamed, etc. etc.  But then there's this kicker, which gave me hot flashbacks:

Members were also buzzing about the leadership’s emerging strategy for the autumn talks. Sources tell me the House GOP will probably avoid using a shutdown as leverage and instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades. Negotiations over increasing the debt limit have frequently been used to wring concessions out of the administration, so there may be movement in that direction: Delay Obamacare in exchange for an increased debt limit. As members huddled and talked through scenarios, leadership aides reminded them that since the House GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Va., earlier this year, the plan has been to end the year with a debt-limit chess game, and not a messy continuing-resolution impasse (my emphasis).

What this flashed me back to was not debt ceiling summer 2011, but early this year, when Boehner made rather a big show of not forcing a debt ceiling showdown, instead suggesting that his caucus would take its stand at the end of March, when the sequester kicked in. Progressive observers reacted with some incredulity that Boehner would let the sequestration cuts, which include massive defense cuts, happen. At the time, McConnell and Boehner's victory at the fiscal cliff  (Obama forced to settle for just half of his reduced December revenue demand, sequester set to spring in two months) was being viewed as a defeat. But it was Obama and the Democrats who folded when it came time to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year, quietly acceding to full uncut sequestration.