The Lawyer Who Could Kill Obamacare Tells a Revealing Joke

The Wall Street Journal's profile of Michael Carvin, the attorney who argued for the plaintiffs today in King v. Burwell, is a fine example of how an empathetic news source can get better answers than a hostile one. The WSJ, after all, has been a publishing mill for conservatives who want the plaintiffs to win; just this week, it published an op-ed by key Republicans promising that a favorable ruling will allow Congress to create an "off-ramp" for the majority of states that would lose their ACA subsidies. In talking to the WSJ, Carvin told a joke.

TPM's Daniel Strauss gave this the full gaffe treatment. Headline: "Lawyer Arguing Against Obamacare: Statute Written By 'White Women And Minorities.'" The irony is that Carvin's joke demonstrates one of the defendants' best arguments: The people who wrote the law are still with us, and can explain what they thought. Whenever they've been asked, the Democrats (and it was all Democrats) who passed the ACA explained that the language in the bill that reserves subsidies for plans purchased "exchange established by the state" was never meant to deny subsidies. The federal exchange was always intended as a stopgap.