Trumpcare Politics Update

I am expecting my first child at any point in the next 16 days, so I'm a bit on edge as I type.  Nonetheless I would be remiss if I didn't try to bring you fine folks some kind of insightful commentary.  Today's is more political football than anything else, I hate to say.

It looks as though Trump is really leaning hard on the GOP to get Trumpcare / GOPcare care passed.  He is showing the kind of Executive Branch weight-throwing that Obama rarely pulled, publicly at least.  I'm all for that, in theory, except that the President in this case is using his heft on behalf of a bill that is very, very flawed and will likely result in millions losing their health insurance.

It would be nice if the President would use his swagger to deliver on a campaign promise - bringing the cost of prescription medication down.  But it looks as though he doesn't even know how to do that, if, in fact, he is sincere about doing so.  The insightful Trumponomics Daily newsletter by Tory Newmer, which is sadly coming to a close, lays it on the line (emphases added mine):

But the president appeared to make news on that front Monday night. At a campaign-style rally in Louisville, Ky., aimed at boosting intraparty support for the Obamacare replacement plan, Trump called drug costs “outrageous” and said he wants to attack them in the bill that the House is set to take up Thursday.

...

Alas, hours later, House Republican leaders unveiled a package of changes to the bill, and the drug industry once again is escaping untouched. Trump did leave himself some wiggle room Monday night by noting if he can’t get his tough-medicine edits in the legislation moving this week, “we’re going to do it right after” in a follow-up bill. But that one will require 60 votes to clear the Senate, a fact that’s prompted conservative hardliners like Ted Cruz of Texas to dismiss it as stillborn. The bigger point, perhaps, is that Trump just demonstrated his apparent ignorance about a basic fact of a bill that will go a long way toward determining his domestic agenda’s fate. He’ll presumably need a working knowledge of the measure — what it actually does and does not do — in order to convince Republican lawmakers facing a potentially career-ending vote to keep faith with him. He's meeting with House GOPers this morning to press his case. The next 72 hours will tell the tale.

It's possible that Donald Trump is just irritated by the whole healthcare thing, and that he wants to get to tax cuts so he can do his infrastructure bill.  Why he wouldn't just open with an "emergency" infrastructure bill (as Obama did with the stimulus bill), if he's so big on it, is beyond me.  Instead he's opening on a bill that will cost millions of people their health insurance.  It seems, in political terms, insane, but he just won a big election.

If, in fact, stocks are more overvalued than they've been since Y2K, President Trump is going to need that infrastructure bill bad, as bubbles tend to lead to big ol' recessions.

In other news, the Jets, of whom I am a fan for some reason, signed Josh McCown for $6 billion, which just makes me want to drink bleach.  Can't they do anything right?!?!  UPDATE: Ooops, I meant $6 million.  But really, would I put it past the Jets to give a QB with a 2-20 W/L a multi-billion dollar contract? I would not.