9 AM:
Romney told Gregory he “likes parts of” Obamacare, and that he would leave in place the prohibition against excluding people with pre-existing conditions and the policy that lets young adults stay on their parents’ insurance policies “up to whatever age they might like,” Romney said, rather unbelievably. “I say we’re going to replace Obamacare. And I’m replacing it with my own plan. And even in Massachusetts when I was governor, our plan there deals with pre-existing conditions and with young people.”

11 AM:
The preexisting coverage plan would prevent re-rating of patients or exclusion of coverage if they go from an individually purchased plan to an employer plan or the reverse. (ERISA already protects those who move from one group plan to another.) For those first entering the insurance market, states will have the latitude to develop mechanisms such as high-risk pools for those hard-to-insure individuals.

4:55 PM
In reference to how Romney would deal with those with young adults who want to remain on their parents’ plans, a Romney aide responded that there had been no change in Romney’s position and that “in a competitive environment, the marketplace will make available plans that include coverage for what there is demand for. He was not proposing a federal mandate to require insurance plans to offer those particular features.”

9:45 PM
“Gov. Romney will ensure that discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage is prohibited,” the aide said.

Mitt Romney promised to fight marijuana legalization “tooth and nail,” and he lost his cool with a Colorado reporter who asked him about the medical cannabis issue last May. So Ryan was forced to backtrack on Saturday, when a Ryan spokesperson claimed that Ryan “agrees with Mitt Romney that marijuana should never be legalized.”

In other words, Ryan woke up on Friday as a congressman with a firmly anti-marijuana voting record. He abandoned that view during a trip to a swing state where the marijuana issue is hot, and then backtracked the very next day. And he did this all in the very same weekend when he proclaimed that he did not vote for the defense cuts he recently voted for.

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I want to maintain defense spending at the current level of the GDP. I don’t want to keep bringing it down as the president’s doing. This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation in the wrong direction.

DAVID GREGORY: Republican leaders agreed to that deal to the extend the debt ceiling.

MITT ROMNEY: And that’s a big mistake. I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it.

O’DONNELL: Now you’re criticizing the President for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory.

RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government. … We can get into this nomenclature; I voted for the Budget Control Act. But the Obama Administration proposed $478 billion in defense cuts. We don’t agree with that, our budget rejected that, and then on top of that is another $500 billion in defense cuts in the sequester.

O’DONNELL: Right. A trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!

RYAN: No, Norah. I voted for the Budget Control Act.

O’DONNELL: That included defense spending!

RYAN: Norah, you’re mistaken.

Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction The Budget Control Act establishes the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to identify $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the period of fiscal years (FYs) 2012-2021. The joint committee is simply charged with achieving deficit reduction with no restrictions on how they accomplish the net reductions in the deficit. (snip)

Sequestration If the joint committee is unable to achieve$1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, then two things will happen. First, the amount of additional borrowing will be limited to $1.2 trillion rather than $1.5 trillion. Also, a sequestration process is triggered to cut spending cuts of $1.2 trillion if no deficit reduction is achieved by the joint committee or of the amount of the difference between the amount of deficit reduction achieved and $1.2 trillion.