monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

When asked during the daily White House briefing on Tuesday whether the White House would embrace the House GOP plan as “Trumpcare,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price demurred.

“I prefer to call it patient care,” Price said.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was pressed on the same issue. “We're less concerned with labels right now and more in terms of action and results,” he said.

On Wednesday morning, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway was also reluctant to commit to any particular nickname for the legislation.

"I'll call it Trumpcare if you want to, but I didn't hear President Trump say to any of us, ‘Hey I want my name on that,’” Conway told Fox News. “We're happy it is the American Healthcare Act. This is serious stuff. This isn't about branding according to someone's name.”

More than half of those who responded to a new Quinnipiac poll released this week said Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearings when he said he “did not have communications with the Russians” and should resign because of it.

A majority of voters support appointing a special prosecutor to investigate alleged ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign staff and the Russian government, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted in the immediate wake of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from any related investigations.

They rarely agree on much, but health care experts on the left, right and center of the political spectrum have found consensus on the House GOP's Obamacare replacement: It won't work.

While their objections vary depending on their ideological goals, the newly introduced American Health Care Act (AHCA) is facing an unrelenting wave of criticism. Some experts warn that the bill is flawed in ways that could unravel the individual insurance market.

The bill, experts said, falls far short of the goals President Donald Trump laid out: Affordable coverage for everyone; lower deductibles and health care costs; better care; and zero cuts to Medicaid. Instead, the bill is almost certain to reduce overall coverage, result in deductibles increasing, and will phase out Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.

The Trump administration, searching for money to build the president’s planned multibillion-dollar border wall and crack down on illegal immigration, is weighing significant cuts to the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies focused on national security threats, according to a draft plan.

The proposal, drawn up by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), also would slash the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief after hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. The Coast Guard’s $9.1 billion budget in 2017 would be cut 14 percent to about $7.8 billion, while the TSA and FEMA budgets would be reduced about 11 percent each to $4.5 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively.

The cuts are proposed even as the planned budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees all of them, grows 6.4 percent to $43.8 billion

Millions of people who get private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act would be at risk of losing it under the replacement legislation proposed by House Republicans, analysts said Tuesday, with Americans in their 50s and 60s especially likely to find coverage unaffordable.

E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics

...In the days since, Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built a career out of suing the agency he now leads, has moved to stock the top offices of the agency with like-minded conservatives — many of them skeptics of climate change and all of them intent on rolling back environmental regulations that they see as overly intrusive and harmful to business.

Mr. Pruitt has drawn heavily from the staff of his friend and fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James Inhofe, long known as Congress’s most prominent skeptic of climate science. A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff. Another former Inhofe staff member, Byron Brown, will serve as Mr. Jackson’s deputy. Andrew Wheeler, a fossil fuel lobbyist and a former Inhofe chief of staff, is a finalist to be Mr. Pruitt’s deputy, although he requires confirmation to the position by the Senate.

I see impeachment in the air.

Looking up what the acronym CBO means, I just ran across that Obamacare is costing 1/3 less to the government than expected.

Huh, I thought he's tax Mexican imports and exports and possibly have a tariff added in somewhere until Mexico just decided to say "screw it" and fork over some money. This is an interesting choice.