President Obama gives behind the scenes on his talks with the Speaker.

Trump tops GOP field in latest poll — leads next candidate by 9 points.

I’ve alluded to this issue several times. But it’s critical to understanding the economics and seriousness of the Republican proposal for shutter Medicare and have seniors buy private insurance with the (not that much) help of vouchers. Basically, no one wants to provide that insurance. And frankly, why would they? How much money do you think there is in insuring 75 year olds? How many headaches? If you go back into the history of Medicare, one of the factors — in addition to the politics and ideological and social push — was that the private insurers wanted the senior portion of the population taken off their hands. And they still want it off their hands. The private insurance industry is based on getting steady premiums for as healthy as possible of population of people. That’s why ‘pre-existing conditions’ have become such a big issue. And every person over 65 has at least one pre-existing condition: they’re old. Benjy Sarlin explains more about why the private insurers may end up being the biggest opponents of Rep. Ryan’s (R-WI) to phase out Medicare.

Chaos erupted just now on the floor of the House of Representatives as the minority Democrats almost succeeded in buffaloing the majority Republicans into voting for a long-term budget plan that is even more to the right than Rep. Paul Ryan’s “official” GOP budget and would have supplanted it.

When the vote on the Republican Study Committee’s uber-conservative budget came to a floor vote a short time ago, Dems voted present and the result was that the RSC’s budget was about to pass with a simple majority of only Republicans. That would have put GOPers on the record for some really fringe budget ideas that would have made for great campaign ads against them, but it would also have supplanted the Ryan budget as the official budget template for the GOP.

As the chaos ensued, Republicans were able to scramble and reverse their yes votes to no votes, and the far-right budget ultimately failed, but just barely. Brian Beutler reports.

House Republicans pass budget resolution to phase out Medicare.

All but six Republicans vote in favor of Ryan Plan — four nos and two abstentions.

We’ve now got the audio of President Obama’s frank comments about what he told Speaker Boehner about repealing health care reform.

With today’s passage of Rep. Ryan’s budget resolution, it’s worth looking back at the arc of the last nine months. The Ryan plan didn’t first see the light of day this year. Ryan himself released the same plan last year (the one significant difference is that the 2011 version doesn’t include Social Security privatization). It was pretty clear that it was going to be the official GOP budget plan if Republicans took over the House. The key point is that very few House Republicans in anything remotely like a competitive district was willing to embrace the thing.

In fact, there was a big effort to claim that it was false to identify it as the Republican “shadow budget.” Anyway, now it’s the official GOP budget plan and now all but six House Republicans have voted for it. That’s going to be a key element of next year’s election.

TPM Reader JZ shares his thoughts … Read More

Our Evan McMorris-Santoro is barreling toward his rendezvous with Tea Party destiny in Boca Raton this morning. Follow his progress here.

Late Update: Our reporter has now arrived at the Boca Tea Party rally, preparing for promised one-on-one interview with Donald Trump. This is Trump’s first official Tea Party appearance. Along with Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty speaks at a romping Tea Party rally in Boston Friday. Citing failed New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan (“The rent is too damn high”), he declares: “The message for us should be this: The government is too damn big.”

Our reporter Jon Terbush reports from the scene.

In an interview with TPM just before going on stage at the big Tea Party rally in Boca early this afternoon, Donald Trump ripped into House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for calling him an unserious candidate and mocking his new crusade over the president’s birth certificate. We’ll have our report for you shortly.