Consider This from NPR - As Biden Transition Picks Up Pace, Trump Lays Government Speedbumps

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

After an unusually dramatic meeting of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, the state voted to certify its election results, slamming the door on yet another effort by President Trump to overturn the results of the election. Hours later, Emily Murphy of the General Services Administration officially authorized the use of federal transition funds by President-elect Biden. But while the Biden transition picks up speed, Trump is using his remaining time in office to push through last-minute policy changes and staffing appointments that may complicate things once the President-elect takes office. NPR has a team of reporters following that story: health policy reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, and Pentagon reporter Tom Bowman. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid reported on what role President-elect Biden may play in negotiations over a coronavirus relief package. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

For a few surreal hours this week, the political world was riveted by a windowless conference room in Lansing, Michigan. Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone. It was a meeting of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers. They were gathered for what's normally a low-key post-election formality, certifying the state's election results. We have a list of people ready to speak today. But this year... Your job is to certify the state's election results. We have a list of people ready to speak today. But this year? Your job is to certify the vote. Hundreds of people were waiting on Zoom.

Your job today is not a political exercise. It's a democratic one. To make public comments. It seems the buck does stop with you. Okay, just to set the stage a little more, this came days after President Trump met with Republican lawmakers from Michigan at the White House. Soon after that, another Republican on the state's four-person canvassing board announced he would not vote to certify the results.

That alone was pretty unprecedented, since the board is basically required by law to certify. Is there any further discussion? And so, in that windowless conference room in Lansing, if a second board member also voted not to certify, experts feared the deadlock would trigger a series of long legal fights. Finally, after hours of public comment, it was time to vote. Chair Bradshaw. Yes. Vice Chair Van Langeveld. Yes. Ms. Matuszak. Yes. Mr. Schenkel. Yes. Vice Chair Van Langeveld. Yes. Ms. Matuszak. Yes. Mr. Schenkel. Abstain.

Madam Chair, you have three aye votes, one abstention. Three votes to certify, one abstention. The motion does move. Madam Chair. Yes. That vote slammed yet another door in the face of President Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. The dam is broken. It's coming together. It's a little bit late, but it's coming together. That's Michigan Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who spoke to NPR on Tuesday.

Hours after his state certified the results, a federal agency in Washington called the General Services Administration officially authorized the use of federal transition funds by President-elect Biden. The election's over. Here in Michigan, the voters spoke. 154,000 vote difference. You know, it's time. Consider this. It's time for a Biden transition. But as his team digs in to do that work,

President Trump is pushing through policy changes and last-minute staffing appointments that could complicate things for the incoming administration. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, November 24th. Since the 1980s, hip-hop and America's prisons have grown side by side. And we're going to investigate this connection to see how it lifts us up and holds us down. Hip-hop is talking about what we live, trying to live the American dream, failing at the American dream. I'm Sydney Madden.

I'm Rodney Carmichael. Listen now to the Louder Than a Riot podcast from NPR Music. Where we trace the collision of rhyme and punishment in America. It's Consider This from NPR. The official in charge of authorizing use of transition funds is named Emily Murphy. She's a Trump appointee, head of the General Services Administration. And on Monday night, the president tweeted, I'm recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols and have told my team to do the same. That same evening, Murphy's official letter to the Biden

campaign came out, and she said no one had directed her to release any transition funds, that she had come to that decision independently. Well, in any case, now the president-elect has access to transition funding. That's some $7 million to start hiring staff along with office space in Washington. But really, very importantly, every single agency of the federal government can now meet with the transition team and share information that will allow the president-elect to make decisions that will enable him to be an effective president. That's Valerie Jarrett, who ran President-elect Obama's transition team in 2008.

Now, President-elect Biden can get classified intelligence briefings and communicate with federal agencies about things like the pandemic response. Particularly given the crisis that we're in, it is so important that he be able to hit the ground running. And Biden's doing something else that Democrats hope will help him hit the ground running. Many people he is choosing for his cabinet have served in top government positions before. So while the Republican-controlled Senate still has to confirm them, this is a test many of Biden's picks have already passed in other administrations. And I'm hoping, because of the relationship that the president-elect has with many members

in the Republican Party and the Senate, but also more importantly, because I hope that we can appeal to them to do what's right for our country, that the confirmations will move forward swiftly and with the support of both sides of the aisle. President-elect Biden needs congressional support for more than just confirming his cabinet. Negotiations over a coronavirus relief package have been stalled for months. Democrats want a package worth about $2 trillion. Republicans want something closer to $500 billion. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a debate within Biden world of $500 billion sort of sucks,

but we may not be able to do better. That was Jason Furman, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama administration. So yeah, Biden might push Democrats in Congress to cut a deal with Republicans for a smaller aid package. But probably not anytime soon. I think it will be very difficult to get a meaningful release bill done before January 20th. Harry Reid knows these dynamics better than anyone. He's a Democrat who represented Nevada for 30 years in the Senate, including as majority leader. He told NPR the dynamics may shift in Biden's favor once Trump is no longer in office.

And the current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will face more pressure than from the public. I think we'll put some wind under the wings of McConnell not to be the grim reaper. Harry Reid and Jason Furman spoke with NPR's Asma Khalid. While the Biden transition picks up speed, the current president is in office for eight more weeks. And he's been using that time to put into place a series of last-minute policy changes and personnel appointments that could complicate things for the incoming Biden administration. A team of NPR reporters has been looking into this. Selena Simmons Duffin reports on health policy.

Scott Horsley is our chief economics correspondent. And Tom Bowman covers the Pentagon. They are all here with me now. Hey, y'all. Hi, Ari. Good to be with you. Hey, Ari. OK, Scott, let's start with you.

The economy is still only partially recovered from the deep recession caused by the pandemic. Democrats want more federal relief measures. But another piece of economic scaffolding, the Federal Reserve, is losing some of its tools. Tell us about what's happening. Yeah, early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty in financial markets. Money was hard to come by. And the Fed stepped in quickly to set up these emergency lending programs and sort of shore things up. Congress then supercharged that effort by allocating more than $450 billion for those emergency loan programs. Most of that money was never actually used. And the Fed didn't have to make that many emergency loans. But the action helped to calm things down.

And credit markets are working a lot more smoothly now. Last week, the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, said, in effect, mission accomplished, and he's moving to now discontinue these programs at the end of the year. He's asked the Fed to give most of the money back so Congress can redirect it to other things. Here's Mnuchin on CNBC. We could do $500 billion of fiscal response immediately that won't cost taxpayers any more money. There are a lot of people who are still struggling, although parts of the economy are roaring back. Parts of the economy, small businesses, restaurants, travel and other need more help. And that's where we want to put this money. Mnuchin says he's just following the instructions that Congress gave him last spring.

There is some disagreement about that and the Fed itself would have liked to keep the economic fire extinguisher handy just in case trouble flares up in the credit markets again. Okay, turning from the economy to national security, Tom Bowman, the administration has been very busy changing things at the Pentagon, both staffing changes and troop levels.

Tell us about it. Well, big changes in the Pentagon leadership, Ari. Trump, of course, terminated Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet, mostly because Esper was reluctant to cut troops in Afghanistan. And Trump installed an acting leader, Chris Miller, a counterterror official who has virtually no experience in the Pentagon, and a couple of other top leaders who are in lockstep with Trump on cutting forces. So the current troop level is around 4,500 in Afghanistan, and the new order is to cut that figure to 2,500 by January 15th, just five days before Biden's inaugurated. Now, the military already wanted to stay at about 4,500 until the Taliban agreed to certain conditions under the agreement with the U.S. from earlier this year, such as not attacking cities, breaking with al-Qaeda. But they've not done that.

Trump simply campaigned on getting troops out of Afghanistan, and that's what he's doing. There was little or no talk of strategy. Now, the military will close some bases in Afghanistan, continue to go after Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. But there is a concern from people I talk with that by thinning the force, American troops could be at a greater risk of attack. All right. Now to pivot to health policy.

The president announced a flurry of new rules on Friday at the White House, and some of those had to do with drug prices. Selena, what's happening there? Well, here is a rundown of what the Trump administration announced on Friday. There was a rule that would tie the prices of certain drugs in Medicare to prices paid in other countries. That's the most favored nation drug pricing rule. Another on how drug rebates work in Medicare. And then also on Friday, there were two rules about the financial relationships between health care providers and another on organ donations. But part of your

question was what's going on here. And it's kind of hard to say there's not clearly a policy vision tying these together, except for the sense that they're trying to finalize as many rules as possible so that they can go into effect before inauguration. So those are some of the last minute changes the Trump administration has made. Now let's look at what that could mean for the incoming Biden administration. Selena, to stay with you for a moment, could the moves that you just described interfere with the new administration's health policy goals? The short answer is yes.

This is not what the legislative team wants to be walking into. They'd rather be pursuing their own policy ideas. And you'll remember those include creating a federal public health insurance option, lowering the Medicare age from 65 to 60. Since these rules go into effect before inauguration, unless the Senate flips into Democratic control, the Biden administration can't just wipe them away. They'll be on the books and they'll need to implement them and enforce them. Now, I should say the Biden team might actually not want to wipe all of these rules away. They're not all hyper-partisan, conservative policy ideas. So, for example, the rule aimed at lowering some drug prices in Medicare by basing the price on what those drugs cost in other countries. A version of that idea was part

of Biden's platform, too. And in the drug pricing bill, Democrats passed to the House last year. And in fact, there's speculation that the rush on that rule has less to do with Biden than it has to do with putting a thumb in the eye of pharma for, as Trump sees it, withholding positive vaccine news

until after the election. But now in rushing, the Trump administration skipped some steps, and that makes this rule legally vulnerable. It's limited to some drugs and Medicare. So simply put, this is not some magic bullet that's going to solve the real

and complicated problem of high drug prices in the U.S. Scott, on the economic front, what if the Biden administration says it needs those tools that the Trump administration is taking away on its way out the door? If that were to happen, the new Treasury Secretary could break the glass and relaunch these emergency programs. Treasury still has about $40 billion set aside in the fund. It could use for that if it became necessary. But that's a far cry from the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Fed had access to until last week. And Tom, the troop levels could be one area where Biden and Trump may not actually be that far apart. Is it likely that we're going to see a Biden Defense Department try to change the drawdowns that the Trump administration is implementing? You know, probably not by that much. Biden has said he'd like to keep just several thousand troops in Afghanistan to go after ISIS and al-Qaeda,

make sure the country is no longer used as a training ground for those threatening the U.S. And Biden's been pushing for such a mission for many years, as opposed to nation building with a large presence. A bigger challenge for the Biden administration will be to push forward on the Afghan Taliban peace talks, which really are going nowhere. So you could see Biden maybe put more political pressure on the Taliban, along with countries in the region, because a military action is really not having the desired effect. And what the Taliban really want is international recognition and continued international aid. That's NPR's Tom Bowman, Scott Horsley, and Selina Simmons-Duffin. Thank you all.

You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.