Pod Save America - "Who pays for the wall? The elderly!"

Episode Date: March 16, 2017

Trump runs into trouble with his ban, his budget, and his health care bill. Then, Barack Obama’s former Deputy Chief of Staff and Health Care Czar Nancy-Ann DeParle joins Jon and Dan to talk about the fight to pass and now save the Affordable Care Act.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On the pod today, we have Barack Obama's former Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, the point person on the Affordable Care Act, friend of the pod, Nancy Ann DeParle. I'm excited to have Nancy on. Healthcare czar, Nancy Ann DeParle. Healthcare czar. Yes, she was. Healthcare czar, Nancy Ann DeParle. Healthcare czar.

Yeah, she was our healthcare czar. Few housekeeping items. This week on Pod Save the World, Tommy interviews Glenn Greenwald. It's already getting tons of listens. Retweeted by Edward Snowden. Uh-oh. It's a great episode, though. It's a great conversation with Greenwald. So listen to that.

With friends like these, this Friday, Ana's out, so Jameel Smith from MTV News is hosting. That should be exciting. We have a Friday bonus episode coming out, which is the interview that me and Tommy Vitor and John Lovett did with Kara Swisher at South by Southwest in Austin. A very enjoyable interview.

I think Lovett and Kara are fast new friends. And speaking of John Lovett. Guys, I'm here. I've been here the whole time. Oh, he's here. I'm not, listen, you don't mess with success, all right? I'm not going to interfere with the Thursday John Dan dynamic. That needs to live.

It needs to breathe. But I am here to talk about a new show. Dan, I'm hosting a new show. It's called Love It or Leave It. Thoughts? That's a great name. That is really clever. We're going to record it live in front of an audience every Friday night.

It's going to go out Saturday morning. I'm producing it with my friend and friend of the pod, Lee Eisenberg, former head writer of The Office. You know, you'll see some of your friends from Pod Save America. We're going to have writers, comedians, actors, any celebrity who is willing to come. I believe senators will join us because I won't endorse a candidate. Is that the dream? Senators? Well, I'm not going to get presidents. We already had him on the other

show, so I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Secretaries of State. Basically, I'm not going to support anybody unless they come on the podcast. So, Love It or Leave It is coming. Dan, careful about coming to LA on Friday nights because that will have to be your plan. Warning to friends of the pod, if you're in LA on Friday,

you will be on Love It or Leave It. We'll run through the week's news. And then after that, we're going to play some games. We're going to do contests. We're going to rant at the screen. We're going to do dramatic readings. We're just going to have a great time. And then much like Jeb Bush,

Love It's going to ask people to apply. As much as humanly possible. Listen, Crooked Media is America. Every other podcast company is the Soviet Union in Rocky IV. Get us to number one. We're the underdog. people to apply as much as humanly possible listen cricket media is america every other podcast company is the soviet union in rocky four get us to number one we're the underdog i don't want to see this thing languishing beneath the daily all right i'd like to see this thing i'd like to see this thing i stayed up so late making sure that podcast art jesse and i working on that podcast art making sure it was awesome because i want to see it in that number one spot all right

if you let me down i don't know what i'll down, I don't know what I'll do. Frankly, I don't know what I'll do. I'll probably be needy. Can I ask Lovett some questions about his new podcast? Sure. Please Dan. What kind of games are you going to play? Okay.

So we have a bunch of ideas. One of them is we're going to have a rant wheel where you spin the wheel and you have to rant at the topic at hand, whether it's about Kellyanne Conway or like the entourage movie. We're going to, we're going to have, we're going to play clips and pause as we go we're gonna break down trump moments like to get really into the the nitty-gritty

of what's going on here uh we're a little like mystery science theater a little bit of that a little bit that you know obviously we're not gonna infringe on that trademark and they never do that and uh we're gonna do things like we're gonna put up a bunch of tweets and try to figure out which ones are the real trump tweets and which are the fake trump tweets. We're going to play quizzes called Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity, which will put an audience member against one of our famous friends at the pod. So it's going to be an all around good time. But we're also going to run through the week's news too. So you get kind of a you get a digest of what happened that week. So it's like the daily in that sense, only funnier.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Dan. That's what it is. Thanks for listening closely to that nuanced take. And how many people can fit in John and Emily's kitchen for the taping of this? Listen, the first episode. Oh, that's a really important point, Dan. That's a really important point. If you're in LA, you can buy tickets right now. We're going to be recording the first episode at the Hollywood Improv. There's not that many seats, so it's going to sell out pretty fast.

Probably already happened by the time I got to the end of this sentence. But still, check it out. It's going to sell out pretty fast. Probably already happened by the time I got to the end of this sentence. But still check it out. And remember to go subscribe to Love It or Leave It when it hits iTunes. It's there now. Because this is when it's out.

So go subscribe right now. Now I'm going to go. Because look, there's a tiny subset of people who do say they only listen to Thursday because I'm not here. And I don't want to mess with those people. I respect you. I don't like you. But I respect you. But before I go, because you guys are going to get to the news, I just want to say that Dianne Feinstein looking chilled to the fucking core,

talking about what you heard from Comey, will haunt me for some time. And with that, I'm going to leave the room. I'm going to leave the studio because I only read the news when it helps my business. Okay, bye. Can't miss you if you don't say goodbye. Bye, love it. This is the leave it part. This is the leave it part of love it or leave it. This is the leave it part. This is the leave it part of love it or leave it.

This is the leave it part. Yeah, welcome to leave it. Wait, am I here? I don't even have the mic, Dan. I can't hear you. You can say whatever you want. I can't even hear it. Hey, Bill, shut his mic up.

All right, Dan. That was a surprise. You didn't even know that was going to happen. I thought it was. Never. There's a lot of news today. A lot of news today news today we had an outline we sort of like changed it last night i mean we heard i think part of this is we heard from the president a few times yesterday in the morning he was tweeting about snoop dogg by yes by the evening he had a he had a rally in nashville

and an interview with tucker carlson so a lotson. So a lot happened. One thing that also broke last night that we should start with probably is a federal judge in Hawaii issued a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration's revised travel ban. They basically rejected the argument that it's not a Muslim ban. What did you think of that? Good. Yay Hawaii? Yay Hawaii, yeah. that good yay hawaii yay hawaii yeah um it is interesting why they're continuing to reject this and it's basically because like the trump administration themselves has not made a very they're basically using the trump administration's own words basically saying that it is a muslim

ban so the judge pointed to the trump campaign press release with the headline, you know, I'm calling for a total shutdown of all Muslims coming into the United States. They brought up the Giuliani comments on Fox and Giuliani said Trump called and said and asked me, how do you make the Muslim ban legal? And then, of course, boy wonder Stephen Miller saying on air on television a couple of weeks ago,, basically we're just making some, we're trying to make some tweaks. So it's going to be the same as the original Muslim ban or the original travel ban.

So it's pretty bad. Yeah, or good, depending on how you look at it. Right, pretty bad. You don't really, this is like a low bar of success for a White House spokesperson is, do not have your quote cited by a federal judge in overturning your boss's laws and orders. Right. Like that's not good. That is awkward at the White House the next day. Again, we're always on the, you know, malevolence versus incompetence watch in the Trump administration. incompetence watch in the Trump administration. And it seems in the case of the travel ban that incompetence is winning out over malevolence, thankfully for those of us who disagree with the

ban. Yes. I also noticed that when I logged on to that boutique social media site, twitter.com this morning, that hashtag boycott Hawaii was trending. Yeah, you mentioned that to me this morning. I hadn't seen that. That's amazing. So someone with MAGA. What does boycott Hawaii mean? Like don't travel to Hawaii? Yeah.

There was an argument going around from Trump people last night, like Deplorable Someone or MAGA someone or Pepe the Frog avatar people that this that Hawaii is 5,000 miles from where 9-11 happened. So this judge must be completely insensitive to the dangers we face

from ISIS. Yes, yes. So therefore, Hawaii has never been attacked, right? There's no big moment, say, that may live in infamy that happened in Hawaii. I can't think of it right now. here, I think we've said this once before, is, you know, this will obviously, the Trump administration will take this to the Supreme Court. And it's, I mean, the president does have very broad powers over immigration and can do what he wants, right? Which is, in Trump's case, we think, fairly scary, right? But, as David Frum tweeted this last night, holding, president has broad power over immigration unless he personally takes to Twitter and boasts of intentional religious discrimination.

Which is what's happened. His very broad powers over immigration are running into the fact that they are trying to, you know, that it seems obvious that they're trying to discriminate against Muslims. It seems obvious that they're trying to violate people's First Amendment rights, which is what the court found last night. So, you know, we don't know what the Supreme Court will do with this. Like, they could still win this in the end. We should all realize that. But, you know, the paper trail of all the times they basically promised this was a Muslim ban, intentionally discriminating against a specific religion religion are out there. And they've also said many times that this really doesn't have to do with national security. You know, they try to say it, but then people like Bannon and Miller, you know, they like to say that it's

about, you know, assimilation or it's about culture, right? And, you know, they had a press release that said Muslim ban. So they really are screwing themselves on this thing. It's always so funny when like Miller or Bannon talks about this is involving, you know, protecting American workers. And it's like, yes, because all those factory drops in Michigan are being taken by Syrian refugees. Like that is who was building America's cars. The couple that like trickle through our vetting process every year.

I mean, it's quite insane. And then so the judge issues the ruling. Trump has the rally in Nashville. And you can tell he's, first of all, watch that rally just for a real, definitely a presidential moment for Trump. You know, he's definitely keeping in the spirit of that joint session address when he was so presidential at this rally last night. It's just like back to his greatest hits. Did you watch that rally, Dan? Did you see clips of it?

No, I saw clips of it. Where did you watch it? Because I read somewhere the cables didn't cover it. Were you on Fox News? Good for cable. There was somewhere they took it live streaming. I was working on this outline last night, and I happened to catch it. This is what I do.

I make sure I watch every Trump rally. You are so digitally savvy. You know, I'm just doing cutting cords left and right. I'm doing this for the listeners, Dan. You know, people expect us to be up to date here. Um, so I watched this, I watched this rally and he, you can tell that, that the white house staff and the lawyers are probably telling him like, do not attack judges like you did last time. Don't say anything bad, which of course then Trump is reading the prompter and he's like, now I'm not supposed to attack the judges because that will make people very upset.

But let me just tell you. And then he continues to hurt his own legal argument in the speech after the ruling comes. He's like, look, what we did the second, this revised ban, it's just a watered down version of the first one.

It's the same thing. But I'll tell you, I'd like to go back to the original and then um and then he said and then he started attacking the judges he said that the rule the ruling was basically uh political that the ninth circuit is horrible and then he goes you know some people in the crowd are saying that we should disband the ninth circuit who is saying that who is saying that? Who is saying let's disband the Ninth Circuit? It's sort of difficult to hear the chant

disband the Ninth Circuit. He then started, he was like, now the law says that the president, he has the power, he or she, I guess it could be she,

as long as it's not Hillary Clinton, right? And then they all start chanting lock her up and he does not say anything. So we are now doing lock her up chants and Trump just letting it happen four months after the election. You bring this up a lot, and I just want to tell you now, he's never going to tell them to stop. No, he will be leading lock her up chants at the opening of the Trump Presidential Library.

That's right. There will be an entire section of the Trump Presidential Library that will just be like animatronic Hillary Clinton in jail. It's just, it's just what he knows because he knows it's an applause line. You can tell he's doing it when he's feeling like his agenda might be a little unpopular and he wants to go back to the greatest hits. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's more great show coming your way so tucker carlson interviewed him last night which is the other thing that happened uh in addition to the rally and i have to say dan like

tucker is still he's a fox news personality i'm not a huge huge fan of Tucker Carlson, but he did not give quite the sycophantic interview that, say, a Sean Hannity would. I realize that is a very low bar. Yeah, low bar. But he asked him about a few things. We probably should just quickly talk about the taxes. He asked about the big Rachel Maddow tax reveal. Did you witness that whole thing happen?

Because I was in Austin, and it was a great, for South by Southwest, and it was a great example of, like, I was not following the news super closely, but I looked at Twitter, and I was like, what is everyone so uptight about right now? It's like the buildup to the thing, and then they were so upset that she wasn't doing, like, no one could wait 20 minutes into her show for her to talk about the tax thing and then after she brings up the story and it wasn't like the thing that ended the trump presidency suddenly like there were like pitchforks outside matto's studio i just like couldn't understand what was happening there

the whole the whole thing was crazy it was like everything that you and I and most of America hate about media, Twitter. Like the Maddow Twitter account dramatically oversold what they had. It was like we have the taxes. Well, I saw the tweet. People are like, holy fuck. We have the taxes. Right. And it was like seriously whatever.

And then everyone freaked out about that. And then people started treating Maddow. It was like, like she was a politician that had to deliver. Like I saw fucking like Dylan Byers tweeted, like, you know, Maddow better deliver.

She sure built it up. I'm like, or else what? She's going to like lose the primary. Like, what are you, what are we talking about here? Better deliver.

Like she sent out a tweet. I don't know. Um, anyway, it turns out that it was, it was what it was one set of tax releases from 2005 that um the summary page from 2005 got it that former new york times journalist uh david k johnson got somehow it was mailed to his house in palm beach or

somewhere in florida wherever he lives in florida just his daughter found it in the mail and what it just turned out that he didn't pay, you know, that he, he, he paid his taxes. He made a lot of money, but the rate, the effective rate was fairly low though. It wasn't like, it wasn't like Mitt Romney low. Um, but you know, it shows us that really, really rich people get to take advantage of tax laws, uh, that let them pay not that much money in taxes when wage earners have to pay a lot more. Isn't that the lesson? Yeah. I think the other, I'd say two things about this. One, the media was super annoying. Because I guess she was doing an Elizabeth, there was an Elizabeth

Warren interview with Chris Hayes and people were pissed that they didn't break into Chris Hayes' show to do this. And then Maddow had some wind up and the press were like let's go we need our answer we need our info now it's just like chill the fuck out people um but then the other problem for like us as Democrats is our expectation is basically anything other than Trump paying zero taxes is a dramatic fail on our part the media is, this is a win for Trump. Right. I don't know that it's a win. It's not a major loss.

Did we think that the tax return was going to be like, and in 2013, he received $10,000 from Vladimir Putin? Yes. Like with a little post-it note that says, for services to be rendered 2017 to 2021. That's my thing. I just didn't have super high expectations when I saw that we have the tax returns. Because I never, I mean, I think they would have been an issue in the campaign in some way, right?

If you didn't pay any taxes. But like thinking about how things turned out and knowing where we are now and how far down the road of crazy we are, Trump not paying a lot of taxes never seemed to me like it was going to be the thing that brought him down. One interesting note is, under Trump's own tax plan, if Trump's tax plan was in place in 2005 it would have cut his tax bill by

90 i read so what was the reaction i was going for um and so i think that that is a that is like the the argument going forward is about the tax cut that trump would give himself and his friends and now we have we can we now have a tax return to apply that to since we there are no censor before really. But the other question that everyone is like has decided that

because this was not, these tax returns were fine for Trump I think is the general consensus from the press that he must have released them himself because there's a client copy stamp i saw that yeah and this is a theory being propagated aggressively by joe scarborough i think since i'm sort of twitter fight with michael say who uh cohen right now i wonderful that's i better catch up on that that seems like something that's exciting

i just like the whole like trump did X to distract us from Y. Like, I don't think Trump knows what the fuck he's doing. You know, like, you know, more often than not, again, this is like the incompetence versus malevolence thing. I think incompetence is winning out in this White House. Right. It's a lot of sort of stupid people. Like, I'm not saying they aren't malicious. I'm not saying they don't do things that have malicious intent or they some of their actions happen to distract us.

But whether the intention is there, I don't really know if we can. I don't know. We can say that that seems like a lot for Trump to throw that out there. You know? Yeah. Two things. One, Trump, in the entire time we have been watching him on the political stage, he has never successfully executed a very simple communications play. So the idea that they had some three-dimensional chess strategy to mail his tax

cuts to a tax reporter in Florida so it would be released is insane. They can't even get through the day without tripping over their own two feet think I was listening to our old buddy Bill Simmons on his podcast, and he was interviewing, he was talking to Jacko, his buddy from college, who was a never-first Republican. And Jacko, so they had this conversation about like, Trump's plan to distract, and Jacko basically said, if a monkey throws his feces at you and then gets a banana,

he didn't throw, maybe it's not that he had a brilliant plan to throw his feces to distract at you and then gets a banana, you know, he didn't throw, maybe it's not that he had a brilliant plan to throw his feces to distract you so he could eat a banana. It may be that he just likes throwing his feces and likes bananas at the same time. You know what? That's my thing about Trump. He's the monkey. Okay.

The tax returns, the feces or what? We won't. I think in this case, the tax returns are the feces. And the banana is health care. The banana is health care. Great. All right. So Tucker also asked him about, speaking of conspiracy theories, the old Barack Obama wiretap Trump Tower story, which has really taken a beating, just fallen apart all over the place.

But it was the first time that Trump has actually responded to this in an interview because he's tried to hide from anyone for the last couple of weeks in terms of answering press questions about this. It was, first of all, everyone should go read the transcript of this part of the Tucker Carlson interview or go watch it because it is some of the most incoherent I've heard Trump in a long time. And that's saying a lot. And so he did not, he did not want to admit in this interview that he heard it, that he heard the, about the wiretapping stuff from the Breitbart interview or Mark Levin's radio show. But he said he learned about it from a New York Times story from January 20th, which

is an odd thing to say when you, you know, wake up four months later and start tweeting about it. And he also heard it from the Brett Baer, as he said. The Brett Baer? Yeah, the Brett Baer. And then he also tried to say, well, you know, I put the word wiretap in quotes because that's an old time thing. You know, like it could just be surveillance of all kinds. Well, he didn't actually put the word wiretap in quotes because that's an old time thing you know like it could just be surveillance of all kinds well he didn't actually put the word wiretap in quotes um at least in some of the tweets so that's my favorite that's my favorite thing and of all the things trump has said recently is the media doesn't mention this but i put wiretapping in

quotes so which is just like oh we were not supposed to take you literally we did not understand your grammatical tricks i mean so do you i mean we also had like devin nunez who's the uh republican head of the uh house intel committee yesterday saying no we haven't had any evidence of this he's like a trump ally and he's saying no basically the guy's crazy um and also saying that you know we we should not have taken, we should not take his tweets literally. We should not take what the president, we should not take the president of the United States' statements literally anymore, Dan.

Okay, that makes sense. Good. I get that. And then Comey is supposed to, our friend James Comey, the head of the FBI, is supposed to testify on this all next week, right? Yeah, this is going to be... I thought he was supposed to come out yesterday and tell us whether there was an investigation of the Trump-Russia connections. Did that not happen? That did not happen.

No matter how many times I type Comey into the Twitter search function, I cannot find any statements from him. I think he met with Dianne Feinstein. Oh, right, as Lovett was mentioning. Yes. And then they did a statement afterwards, which basically said nothing, and they announced he would testify publicly next week. I think starting Monday, maybe? So do you have your hopes up, Dan, that Comey's going to drop a bombshell here?

No. I do not. Have you stopped hoping on the Russia stuff? I just don't want to put all my hopes and dreams into James Comey. That hasn't worked well in the past. I think that's probably wise. I want to learn some lessons from what happened in 2016. And the one I'm going to learn is don't bet on James Comey to help you out.

I did notice that the former acting CIA director, Mike Morrell, who was rumored to be in line to be CIA director if Hillary had won, said that he doesn't believe there's any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And he thinks this is sort of a little overblown. I just don't know. Right. Like, I do think what you said, like, I don't think that Democrats should be like resting all of our hopes and dreams on this Russia thing. I think we should push for a full investigation that Democrats in the House and the Senate should keep pushing, that they shouldn't let up, that if Republicans are stonewalling, if Trump is stonewalling, if they're not releasing information, they should be releasing, that we should keep pressing and pressing and pressing on sort of like a legislative investigative front or an oversight front, right?

But I think in terms of messaging, right, like, I don't think we should be out there, like, I don't think we need, there's other things we could be talking about that are probably more useful. Yeah, I think Congress and all the relevant law enforcement authorities should investigate this, that 100%. And there are some, you know, as I think, as you said, last week, or whatever, that there's never been more smoke with no fire in American history. So there is something here, right? Whether it is Trump functionaries like Roger Stone working with Russian hackers or just an array of inappropriate contacts that went on. There is something afoot here because there's a lot of people lying and getting caught lying. lying and getting caught lying um but i i just don't know that you know that this is like the silver bullet theory that there's going to be one thing that is going to just solve all of our trump

problems and i just think it's dumb to uh like place all our hopes and dreams on that like that is and i worry a little bit that we're becoming as a party a little conspiracy theory oriented around the russia stuff right well i mean the other thing too is like you said there's a lot of different possibilities here like collusion could be one of them there also could be financial uh malfeasance that we find in the in the trump team russia team connections right like it might not be the election interference collusion um so there's a there's a couple things that could be going wrong here. But like you said, it's just not something in terms of public pressure, right? And where ordinary people can make a difference and where, you know, you can win

over people who voted for Trump and or you can excite people who didn't go to the polls in 2016, who might be liberals, all the things we need to win back the House and to stop Trump's agenda that could really hurt people. I think, like, we do have to push our lawmakers to make sure there's a full investigation because there could be something there. But, like, running around and being like, Trump is a Russian stooge and he did all these things and there was collusion, like, we just don't know a lot, basically. We don't have a lot of answers right now and we should we need them and we should press for them but it shouldn't be the major message of the day like have you seen

all of these uh like these theories going around the internet about this russian oligarch who bought a house that trump owned like 15 years ago and then the planes were parked next to each other on the campaign and their yachts are often parked next to each other and oh i didn't get this part into it no oh yeah no i'm sorry the yacht the russian oligarch's yacht is parked next to the mercer's yacht uh you know the mercer's the who are trump's biggest financial supporters and yeah there's a bright part and that all of the, like when we're, I think that the Russians interfered in our election. I believe it seems very possible that Trump's campaign had inappropriate contacts with them. And I think it's very,

and lied about it and very possible that Trump has financial connections to Russia and has lied about them. But like, we're getting a little far down the path here on some of this other stuff. Also just another side question. I like Mike Morrell a a lot he's super impressive is he in any position to know he what no he basically made that judgment on um what clapper said on meet the press and he was like you know because clapper james clapper the former director of national intelligence um basically said you know i didn't

see any evidence of this at the time of when I left the White House. And he was like, that's a pretty strong statement. Now, the investigation could have been in its early stages when Clapper left. So we don't know. But I think he was basing a lot of his statement on Clapper. And he was also talking about the dossier, too. And he was, you know, he was trying to poke holes in that theory. But it wasn't like Morel had any inside info because he's been out of government for quite a while. the dossier too and um he was like you know he was trying to poke holes in that theory but it was it

wasn't like morel had any inside info because he's been out of government for quite a while so take that with a grain of salt um two things that that i do think will matter quite a bit um are the budget that trump just released and uh the continuing state of play on health care and the efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. We should probably take the budget first because then we can talk about health care. We can talk health care a lot more with Nancy Ann, who knows a lot about this when we get her on the phone. But first, let's do budget. So the Trump budget was released late last night, this morning.

And here are some of the cuts. leaked late last night, this morning. And here are some of the cuts. He wants to eliminate $5.8 billion from the National Institute of Health. This is after he said in his joint session that he wants to eliminate all disease. The proposal would eliminate a transportation department program that funds nearly $500 million in road projects. This is after he said he wants to invest in infrastructure um cuts uh heating for low-income families homelessness grants decimates clean energy research climate research um and then this is just one of the worst ones

that's going around um meals on wheels the program that brings hot meals to the elderly and the poor. So that's something. I mean, and now what does it increase? The budget increases, border security, more immigration judges, and of course, it builds the wall. Who's going to pay for the wall? Old hungry people. Old hungry Mexicans, John? No, old hungry Americans are going to pay for the wall

and donald trump's america this is it also eliminates like the national endowment for the arts national endowment for the humanities americorps uh all kinds of other programs are getting the acts too that you know i'm sure lie heap right which is a program that is the low income heating assistance program so quite a few things are getting a cut so that we can have oh and there's 54 billion dollars and more in defense spending too um the he does eliminate or uh massively cut funding he he really takes a big chunk out of the center of the corporation public broadcasting yes forgot about that i have mixed feelings on this one. I like NPR.

I think kids should see Sesame Street. A lot of those NPR podcasts are sort of rivals of ours on the chart. So I don't know if this helps or hurts us. We got to stand with all the podcast family, Dan. Oh, we do? Okay. Is this not a dog-eat-dog world of podcasts?

We have to be evangelists for all podcasts here at Crooked Media. I'll go along with that. I'm saying this after we all just said that we were going after Michael Barbaro at the beginning. But when it comes time to talking about the budget, we're serious here. But no, I don't think Trump has any idea what's in his budget do you is that a rhetorical question yes yes it was dan you can just you can you can just say no and we can move on um yeah no no he does not know what's in his budget i just like we're going to talk

about this more with health care but this is this budget to me and the health care right to me are an example of um trump's campaign promises right and everyone thought he's this he's this new kind of republican who's much more economically populist even as he's further to the right on issues like immigration um you know being nativist right that you get the immigration ban deportations, all this other kind of stuff. So even though he's further to the right of the Republican Party on those things, possibly into authoritarian land, he's more economically populous than most Republicans. The problem is he is hired in the White House and is dealing with in Congress a bunch of extreme free market conservatives who want to just

completely decimate any government spending whatsoever to give huge, huge tax breaks to rich people. And that's what he's bumping up against right now. Yeah. I mean, the budget is, I mean, I think it's worth noting it's dead on arrival like right this is never getting some of these cuts could some of the individual cuts could happen it is very hard to do the increases in defense spending he wants because of a budget process we put in place called the sequester you need 60 votes to lift the spend the caps on spending so that's hard. A lot of these budget cuts like Corporation of Public Broadcasting, National Amendment for the Arts, National Amendment for Humanities have been included in many

Republican budgets over the years and been rejected because they are very unpopular. But it is the it is very strange the basic war that the Republicans have declared on the people who put Trump in office, whether it's the health care plan, whether it's the budget. It's the people who most need this.

The people, it's like they have, they don't realize how their basis shifted to be old people. And so they used to be. And a lot of in a lot of working class and poor white people yeah it's very well oh this this brings me i can't believe i forgot to we should have started the show with this by the way tucker carlson in the interview with trump last night moving on to health care now he goes i just want to ask you about this healthcare plan mr president you know the counties that voted for you will do far worse under this plan than the counties that voted for hillary clinton trump's response oh i know it's an you got to check the it's an crazy clip yeah i watched i watched this last night it was uh yeah it's crazy and he's basically like

well you know and then he's like well nothing's final yet and we'll see what happens in the senate and blah blah blah blah right because you know he just like his budget he has no idea what's in his health care legislation either i don't so i don't think this is going too well for them the uh the health care the the health care repeal attempt no it's it doesn't seem it doesn't seem good for anyone the people who are trying to pass the bill people who would be hurt if the bill was passed trump it's very clear that trump didn't know what was in the health care bill doesn't feel a ton of loyalty Like there's a political story yesterday or so about how Trump's White House aides are blaming Ryan for how botched this thing is and how poorly it's

going. And the, you know, and like they have two messages, like Pence is on the Hill saying you have to pass this bill with a few changes. That is the only way to do this. And Trump's like,

eh, it's a negotiation. We'll figure it out. This is a starting point, you this. And Trump's like, eh, it's a negotiation. We'll figure it out. This is a starting point. So it's very, he's trying to give himself distance to blame Ryan if this goes down. Meanwhile, Ryan, this is sort of what he's always wanted. This whole plan is a Trojan horse

to pass a giant tax cut for rich people by taking away any effort to subsidize the purchase of health insurance for middle class, working class, poor Americans. We had the CBO score, the Congressional Budget Office, came out with an estimate of what this bill would do, the impact it would have, Of course, right after we recorded our podcast on Monday, 24 million people would lose their health insurance over the next couple of years. By next year, 14 million, 14 million by 2017. Premiums would go up in the short term and they would only start coming down

because old sick people would be priced out of the market. That's the only way we're getting premiums would go up in the short term and they would only start coming down because old sick people would be priced out of the market. That's the only way we're getting premiums down. It's, it's effective. I mean, it's, it's one way to think about it. Um,

so right now, Fox news, a fake Fox news came out and with a poll that said only 34% of voters support Trump care. You got Ted Cruz writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that said we should start from scratch. Trump ally Tom Cotton, Senator Tom Cotton, is saying that if House Republicans vote for this bill, they'll probably lose in 2018. And then you got Paul Ryan, who's now saying, now admitting that the bill needs some changes

after earlier saying there would be no changes to this bill. So now the House Republicans are going to tweak this bill to try to get it passed. What do you think the bill is going to look like that actually gets out of the House, Dan? I think it's going to be worse than the current bill. That's what I'm saying. The worry about the bill is not that it – I mean, among the House Freedom Caucus and the far right, the worry about the bill is that it's not conservative enough, that it doesn't cut subsidies enough, that it doesn't cut Medicaid enough. But the bill's not going to get more generous as it comes out of the House, right? No, this is the story of the Republican Party since they won power in 2010.

The House is so far right that Boehner or Ryan or someone comes up with a plan. They present it. Freedom Caucus freaks out. They adjust the bill to – because no Democrat will vote for anything they have. So they adjust the bill to get to 218, which makes it too far right to pass the Senate. And it goes nowhere. And you can tell Ryan now what he cares about is passing something out of the house.

Cause this is about his pride. And he's like, he, what he'd love to do is pass it and then blame the Senate for not passing. Like he was asked last night or today, like, well, this passes and he's like,

look, I'm just the leader of the house. I'm not the Senate majority leader. Like it, it's on you, Mitch McConnell. And so he's going, he's going for the, he's going for the house. He will pass on. They can't pass the Senate majority leader. It's on you, Mitch McConnell. And so he's going for the participation trophy now.

He will pass something he can't pass the Senate. Right. Well, we should talk more about this with Nancy Anderpaule, who was the point person, the healthcare czar back in 2009 and 10 when we were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act. So she'll have plenty of insight in this

onto this whole thing when we return. This is Pod Save America. Stick around. There's this great stuff coming. Lots of great stuff. On the pod today, we have Barack Obama's former deputy chief of staff and the woman who led the fight for the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010, Nancy Ann DeParle. Nancy Ann, welcome to the pod. Thanks. Glad to be with you. We're glad to have you on. You were my office mate back in the day, in 2009. We both shared an office.

Yes, I was, and we worked together closely because, as you'll recall, it seems so quaint and earnest now, as you'll recall, it seems so quaint and earnest now, but you were crafting speeches for the president and very diligent about making sure they were checked for not alternate facts, but the real facts about what we were trying to do. So we worked together closely. Yes. And I went to you because I needed to learn about health care. And you know everything about health care. First question, then.

Were you surprised by what Trumpcare ended up looking like, or Ryancare or whatever, or Wealthcare, as I like to sometimes call it? I was floored by it. You were floored, okay. You know, looking at tall buildings after the election, I kept hoping that President Trump would, his instincts at least at several points during the election and afterwards seemed to be either to stay away from this topic because it is so complicated or to do the right thing, to not destabilize it. And if anything, I thought maybe they'll – this isn't really their thing.

You know, they want to do tax reform, so they don't want to get drawn into health care. So maybe they'll just stabilize the markets and blame whatever they don't think is working well on President Obama and move on. But instead of that, they created something that is truly a Frankenstein. It's a disaster. And I was shocked. I read it on a plane from Dallas last week right after it came out, which didn't take much time because it's only 123 pages.

You know, it breaks every single promise President Trump has made about health care. It doesn't cover everyone. You know, famously, the Congressional Budget Office says 24 million people over the next 10 years lose coverage. It doesn't provide what President Trump called beautiful coverage. It doesn't do anything to make coverage less expensive unless you count shifting costs to consumers and the people who haven't been able to get insurance and need it.

You know, if you count that, I suppose it makes it less expensive, but it doesn't really do anything. It doesn't do anything to lower health care costs overall. There are seven pages in this bill. I'm not kidding. There are seven pages about how to make sure that no one who wins the lottery ever gets anything. about how to make sure that no one who wins the lottery ever gets anything. And really that's about the extent of the cost containment. Oh, well, unless you count cutting and capping Medicaid and ending Medicaid as we know it,

which they're saving $800 billion-plus from that. It makes coverage for older Americans more expensive, and for seniors who depend on Medicare, it's going to raise their premiums and raise their prescription drug costs. It makes access worse for women. You know, and this is what I don't really get at all, John and Dan. Defunding Planned Parenthood, where did that come from? Why is that in this bill? You know, that has nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act. They're denying, by doing that, they will be denying basic health care services to millions of women around this country.

And it's not only bad policy, it's just plain mean, because protecting women's right to choose is part of what I think has been successful in lowering the rate of unintended pregnancies, which is what we've seen over the last few years. It makes access and coverage far worse for the poorest Americans through, as I mentioned, the Medicaid, ending the Medicaid expansion and ending Medicaid's guarantee. It caps it and cuts it by almost $900 billion.

So what happens to disabled children? What happens to the elderly who depend on it for nursing home care? So, you know, I don't really take any pleasure in saying this, as they appeared to take pleasure for the last eight years in saying about the Affordable Care Act that it was a disaster. You know, that was like the big lie. Just say something enough times and people believe it. But as a policy analyst, I can't really think of anything worse they could have done. And so by our metrics, by our lights, by our president's lights, this

would be a terrible bill. But maybe if what you're trying to do is, if you don't believe in that everyone should be covered, if it's cynical in that way, you really don't believe that, you really don't believe that we should do things to bring down the cost of health care in this country. Maybe this is your thing, but it sure isn't ours. What was your reaction to all the Republicans saying that we jammed ACA through in the dark of night and that they were going to have a different process? You know, it's like a post-traumatic stress disorder with me now. And you guys know this, but we didn't talk a lot,

and I haven't talked a lot publicly about the hundreds of hours that I spent and the hundreds of hours probably that the president spent. And that story will be told when the records of the meetings he had and the time he spent with individual senators, Republicans, as well as Democrats, individual House members, Republicans, as well as Democrats, trying to find a bipartisan solution. If there was a secret plan to have this Affordable Care Act be enacted with only Democrats. It was secret from me and I think from the president, too. We didn't get the memo because he worked very hard.

We always knew that the bill would be stronger if we had bipartisan support, and that's why he worked so hard at it. bipartisan support, and that's why he worked so hard at it. And I teased him, perhaps I shouldn't have, but I teased him at several points after the bill passed that certain senators who I named got more in the bill than he did, because there were many of their ideas, good ideas, by the way, ideas that we sat and talked about, looked at the policy on and decided this is a good way to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse, or this is a good way to

improve the individual mandate or whatever it was. We worked from their ideas, and they still wouldn't support it. Now, as you all know, we found out later that there was a secret plan, and it was to try to derail President Obama by not giving him any bipartisan support for this law. But a lot of them did work with us up until the point of voting for it, and then they didn't. It wasn't exactly on the level as the president. It wasn't on the level. We didn't say that, didn't we, guys?

We used to. Yeah. It wasn't on the list. It was the president offensive. We didn't say that, didn't we, guys? We used it a lot. Yeah. And I was so pleased, actually, yesterday to see David Leonhardt's piece where he exposed that. And I just think that it's another big lie out there.

They've said it so many times that people believe it. I even see smart people on cable that I respect saying, well, they're going to do a better job than President Obama did about reaching out. I just really don't know how much more he could have done. We bent over backwards. He bent over backwards to include their ideas and include them in the discussions. Well, I mean, and to start with, it was a pretty middle-of-the-road legislation, right? I mean, how many ideas did we take from Mitt Romney's bill? Yeah, it was middle-of-the-road, and by the way, it kind of probably hewed to the right over time.

He didn't have a public plan in the end, although that was something the president had said he could support if it was a way of helping to keep all the players in the insurance markets honest and make sure there was choice. It certainly wasn't single-payer. It was basically building on the foundation of the existing employer-based system, encouraging employers to stay in the game, making sure that everybody else got covered,

which would bring down the cost for employers over time and those in that group market. The subsidies weren't as, and the tax credits, everyone acts like this law is tax credits and ours was just subsidies. They're modeling it on ours. We had tax credits. They weren't as generous as we thought they should be because we paid for the bill through the taxes on the higher income

and through the reductions in other spending in the health care sector. You know, we tried to be responsible, and we were able to bring down the long-term deficit. And, you know, I didn't even get to that in my list of the number of promises that are broken by this bill so far. But, you know, the Affordable Care Act, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we have more people covered than at any point in our nation's history. If you're uninsured, the lowest health care cost growth on record,

and it brings down the deficit over the first 10 years by more than a trillion, almost $2 trillion, I think. So really, you know, if that was the bar, I think we pretty much met it. Now, it's not perfect, and we've been eager since the law passed to sit down with the opponents and figure out ways to make it better. In fact, again, it's sort of quaint. Right after the law passed, we had a meeting of the team who had worked on it and the staff from other departments, Treasury and HHS, to go through our list of the technicals, because always with these

kinds of big bills, there's a technicals bill that comes forward a year or so later and corrects some of the unintended consequences or the drafting errors, et cetera. That went nowhere. and correct some of the unintended consequences of the drafting errors, et cetera. Um, that went nowhere. They were not interested in working with this man and it appears, you know, not now either. Well, what I was interested to get your ideas on this,

what would improve the, the affordable care act? So, you know, that there are weaknesses with the law that, you know, there are things that didn't go exactly as planned, right?

There's some insurers pulling out of some of these markets. Um, premiums went up last year. Um, not as much as they would have without the bill, but they still went up. exactly as planned, right? There's some insurers pulling out of some of these markets. Premiums went up last year, not as much as they would have without the bill, but they still went up. So probably needs more cost control. What are some of the things that would improve the affordable character that if we had a sane Congress that was interested in working in a bipartisan fashion would do? Well, you need look no further than out your windows, guys. Out your windows. Look at California.

I mean, California has done this the right way. And I have a microphone here. I want to give one Republican some credit, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor, who had the choice to make at the end of his term, literally the last couple of weeks, whether to sign legislation into law that would enable California to get started on its exchange and getting up and running

and be prepared for the Affordable Care Act's implementation in 2010. And he did that. He signed it, even though there were those in his party and other advisors who told him he shouldn't do that. But he had, of though there were those in his party and other advisors who told him he shouldn't do that. But he had, of course, tried to do health care reform and get everyone covered in California and hadn't been able to. And so he signed the law. California has an active exchange. It has choices. They've managed it well. They've done lots of advertising and marketing to get people into it

so that the risk pool is relatively stable and balanced. And that's what insurers want to see. And, you know, many of them are making money out there. They all, in fact, they all may be. I think they may all be. I don't have the exact numbers at my fingertips. But that's what needed to happen. So you need to make the risk adjustment mechanisms that were part of the law work.

And for reasons that escape me, when it was the Medicare Advantage or the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Republicans in Congress were only too happy to have these same mechanisms in play to help smooth out the market in the early years. But when it came to the Affordable Care Act, they relied on technicalities and brought a lawsuit to try to stop the administration from funding these early losses from the insurance companies that everyone knew would be there. This is how insurance works. Again, all we were trying to do is build a marketplace,

which I won't give the Republicans credit for originating the idea of a marketplace. But, you know, that is kind of one of their... Yeah, choice competition, right? Yeah, right. At least I believe that when listening to my Republican friends, they very much wanted it to be a market. That's what we were trying to make work. So if you did that, and if you did not have a constant drumbeat, you know, cacophony of negative messaging, starting from the spring of 2010, or maybe even earlier, August, Dan Pfeiffer, August of 2009, which will live in infamy with you and me. If we didn't have all that, I think probably the sign-ups

and the enrollment would have been better. Just this past December and January, the administration took action to cut back on the marketing in the last couple of weeks in enrollment. When they know that's when a lot of people, especially younger, healthier people, decide to sign up. Why would they do that? Again, it's not only bad policy if you really want a market to work, but it's just plain mean. So there's a whole list of things that could be done. The industry, the insurance industry and others have offered those things. Instead of doing those, they've done something that I think is going to be very destabilizing

and sends a message that we're ending it. We're ending it, guys. So don't sign up. I'm so glad you brought up August because August 2009 was, it was basically, Nancy Ann, it's when everyone, the president went on vacation. This is his first vacation since entering office. Everyone else went on vacation. And Rob made you, me, Phil Schillero, who was our legislative director, and a couple other people stay in the White House that whole time. And we just like padded around an empty White House watching the town halls on Fox News.

And then having Rahm Emanuel, our chief of staff, call us wherever he was every seven minutes. I would put that down as like not the best August of my life. That would definitely be probably not the best August of my life. That would definitely be probably not the best August of my life, either. And it was such a cognitive dissonance, because on the one hand, I was talking to Republican senators. I won't name them, but, you know, who were telling me, well, I'm trying to get there, and I'm working on it. And then I would be watching cable in my office and seeing them out there saying there are death panels in this law. Not helpful. Yeah, i'll name them do you mean i won't make you name them but we know who you're talking about and perhaps that maybe that's the one silver lining of this of this uh republican bill it does seem like people as they start to realize more what's

in the law which they never realized before that the health security that they have, you know, maybe they're not someone who is uninsured, and so they didn't really think, well, this helps me. But they start to realize, hey, you know, maybe it won't be so easy to get my kid covered after this. Maybe the health security that I now have is not going to be there, and I think the law is going to start to become more popular. Well, so you know the politics of the Senate quite well. Do you see any bill coming out of the House that could pass the House that more moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins, who I know you've dealt with a lot in the Affordable Care Act, could vote for? Do you think that there's a chance of this?

Or do you think these Republican senators could eventually cave and just vote for something even further to the right? Or do you think this gets stuck in the Senate? Well, I want to caveat anything I say with the enormous respect I have for the formidable discipline that the leader, Leader McConnell, has been able to enforce among his members. And the Senate has changed somewhat since I was there. But, you know, he's been very successful. He was certainly successful when we were there in the early days in enforcing a discipline around not helping us, not working with us to solve problems. And there were a lot of things that made me cynical during that time period, and that was one of them. cynical during that time period, and that was one of them. Because I think there were senators on their side of the aisle who sincerely wanted to, well, who not only wanted to, but did work to try to improve the law, to try to help us, but then when it came right down

to it, didn't feel like they could vote for it because of the retribution, the consequences for them and their party. So do I think that something could pass the House or this bill that they narrowly made it through the House Budget Committee today could also pass the Senate? You know, at this point, I don't think it could. People are all saying, I heard yesterday President Trump in Nashville explaining that we have to do it this way because this way we don't have to get 60 votes. Well, that's true. You don't have to get 60.

They're using reconciliation, an extraordinary budget technique, which, by the way, everyone says we used. We didn't use that to pass the underlying Affordable Care Act. We used it on the improvements to the subsidies and a narrow set of changes that we made in the end when the House passed it. But anyway, he said we only need 50. Fifty is not easy. You guys both worked in the Senate.

Fifty is not easy under these circumstances. When you're saying to a senator like Tom Cotton, there's hundreds of thousands of people, of Arkansans, who are benefiting from having coverage for the first time and being secure in that, being able to afford it, and you're going to take that away from them in two years. Or if the House continues to move to the right to satisfy their conservatives in one year.

I just don't see that happening. And the Planned Parenthood repeal or defunding, which, as I said before, has nothing to do with anything here, that's sort of a poison pill for people like Senator Collins. She's been courageous enough to say so and make it very clear. And there are others who are saying that too. So I think it's going to be very, very difficult for them to do it. Well, that's good news then.

Nancy-Ann, thank you so much for joining us. And also, say hello. I know your son, Nicky, is a friend of the pod and listens a bunch. So say hello to him and tell him thanks for listening, and we'll have to send him a t-shirt. Oh, wow. That shout out's going to get me mother of the year. Nancy Ann, it's John Lovett. I just wanted to say hi.

Lovett's here. Hey, John. And I just wanted to make sure we don't lose sight of one of the villains in all this. I was going to ask this question for you, Lovett, but I'm glad you're here to do it. I just want to remind everybody of what Joe Lieberman did to make this bill worse, personally. It's something that I carry around in my backpack at all times. Lovett has gone on a rant about this. I don't know

if you've listened for the last four pods in a row. Not only did he kill the public option, right? Look, the public option, we could talk about it, but I'll never forgive him for removing the Medicare buy-in. Are you with me on being mad about that once a week? Yeah, I mean, I've got to say, and on the public option,

there was a lot of work done on a fallback public option, not to get too wonky on you guys. Right, I remember that. At the end, but, you know, there are markets in which that would have been very useful this past couple of years. And, by the way, the people who were pushing that were Republicans. Right. There you go. And that Medicare buy, the people who were pushing that were Republicans. Right. There you go.

And that Medicare buy-in would have helped so many near seniors and it would have made everybody, insurance cheaper for everybody. I hate Joe Lieberman. Nancy, what do we do? Nancy Ann, what do we do about it? There's nothing to do.

Hob, Save America is going to be the right place to get something done on this, I think. There you go. There you go. Nancy Ann, thank you for joining us. Come back again soon. Thanks, guys. We'll talk to you later. Take care. Bye, Nancy think. There you go. There you go. Nancy Ann, thank you for joining us. Come back again soon. Thanks, guys.

We'll talk to you later. Take care. Bye, Nancy Ann. Bye. Thank you again to Nancy Ann DeParle for joining the pod today. And again,

subscribe to Love It or Leave It. Subscribe to Pod Save the World. Subscribe to Pod Save America. Subscribe to With Friends Like These. Did I get them all? The sun never sets on the Crooked Media Empire, guys. Bye, guys.