we have a bunch to talk about today about what the president has been doing and he s got an executive order coming up so i want to try toet through it all. this morning the president welcomed the president and mrs. macri of argentina for an official visit. the president and first lady just left so we will have a read out for you shortly on that. we ve got a 2:00 p.m. the president will be signing a memorandum on aluminum imports and threats to national security and we ll try to keep this briefing on time. i know secretary ross spoke about the memo that the president signed a bit yesterday, but i want to reiterate that the american aluminum industry is in trouble having declined down to the lowest levels of aluminum that we produced since 1952. it is a critical for our national defenses. the army ground vehicles and air force jets and navy warships but american companies are producing less aluminum than before especially in the high priority aluminum used to build the f-35, f-18 and the
23 days, and as spicer has said himself, had a range of discussions on a daily basis with foreign officials where the documents related to those conversations and communications. that was a question left unanswered. i anticipate he ll have to address some of those very thorny issues the next time he appears at this briefing. you heard reporters shout out questions to him as he left the briefing room. this was a remarkably short briefing and spicer was fairly late getting here. fair to say we have a lot of follow-up questions that i think we ll be asking tomorrow, craig. ben, real quickly, we also heard a few questions about the president s tax plan. our colleague ayman javis from cnbc asking whether interest could be written off your taxes, and he simply said, charitable
sean spicer wrapping up his daily brpress briefing. he spent some time talking about the president s tax proposal that was unveiled yesterday. he also spent some time talking about the health care plan, saying that president trump wanted to see a vote at some point but also didn t want to didn t seem to want to rush the process. but the biggest news coming out of that press briefing, undoubtedly sean spicer essentially blaming the obama administration for general michael flynn s security clearance being renewed. i want to bring back the panel here. i believe we still have navid. there you are. kristen welker just got up as well. navid, i know you have some experience as it relates to this clearance stuff that we heard talked about there. break it down for us and help us understand what sean spicer was saying and the reality that exists inside the white house as it pertains to security clearances.
it s like a balloon you push on one side the other end comes out. that s the dynamic you re facing right now. moderates are not on board. i listened to the interview the reason he doesn t know when the bill will come up or wouldn t say because he doesn t know neither does paul ryan or kevin mccarthy. this bill is right now in neutral while they round up votes by moderates. i was talking to a senior house republican a couple minutes ago who said i hope we delay this a couple weeks so it doesn t affect government funding, doesn t affect some of the critical things we need to do. now, if you think that this is difficult, wait for tax reform where republicans are all over the place and the idea that this is going to be quick and ben white and i have talked about this a lot, is kind of it s a fantasy. and washington and everybody needs to wrap their minds around a slow and arduous process when it comes to obamacare and tax reform. ben, let me come to you here because one of the things w
the government know about that. let the u.s. government know about that, to disclose that critical information. now, the broader question here for sean spicer today, continues to be, can the administration, will the administration, give over the documents that are related to michael flynn. sean spicer was asked about this earlier this week during a very feis feisty briefing and his reaction was look, most of the documents reside within the former obama administration and they say they do not have a lot of the documents being requested. they also say the request is broad in nature and that mike flynn, as the former national security adviser is someone who had a number of conversations, discussions, with foreign officials throughout every day that he was here and so they say it s tougho pick through all of those communications to hand over to lawmakers exactly what they re looking for. but you heard congressman