Consider This from NPR - Electors Seal Biden's Win, Sanders Pushes For Direct Cash Payments

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Electors in every state officially sealed Joe Biden's presidential victory this week, and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., congratulated the president-elect on Tuesday. Biden is now 36 days away from inauguration, waiting to face a public health and economic crisis that is growing by the day.NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid reports on the economic experts close to Biden's team who are advising the next president on how he can offer economic relief to Americans without Congress. And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tells NPR why he's urging Democrats to reject an emerging pandemic relief package if it does not include direct cash payments to individual Americans. Sanders spoke to NPR's Ailsa Chang.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

A little after 5 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, California put Joe Biden over the top. Eyes 55, nose zero. California's 55 electoral college votes officially cast sealed Biden's presidential victory, taking him over the 270-vote threshold. He eventually wound up with 306. Electors from every state voted Monday, and as that was happening, there was applause in some of those states for a very different reason. The first coronavirus vaccinations were given to frontline health care workers in New York,

Florida, California, and other states. The votes and the vaccinations, two historic events that took place on the same day, both of which gave America a clearer picture of the future and the challenges ahead. There's urgent work in front of us. Joe Biden spoke in Delaware on Monday night. Getting this pandemic under control and getting the nation vaccinated against this virus. Delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today. Consider this.

Immediate economic help is being negotiated in Congress. And if they can't make a deal, President Biden will have other options. Coming up, what those options are. And Senator Bernie Sanders tells NPR why he's pushing Democrats to demand more in an emerging coronavirus aid package. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Tuesday, December 15th. Support for NPR and the following message come from Crown, publisher of Barack Obama's A Promised Land, the first volume of his presidential memoirs.

Obama reflects on his life, campaigns, and early years in office. A Promised Land is available wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Visit obamabook.com slash NPR for more information. This message comes from AT&T, committed to keeping students and teachers connected. AT&T has connected over 200 million students with tools and technology for distance learning. More at att.com slash remote learning. Today, some people argue that the Supreme Court

has more power than all other branches of government. But when and how did the Supreme Court end up getting the final say? How the court became more powerful than anything the framers could have imagined. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. President-elect Joe Biden hadn't spent a lot of time talking about President Trump until Monday night. In America, politicians don't take power. People grant power to them.

Hours after the Electoral College made his victory official, Biden pointed out that his 306 electoral votes are the same number won by Trump himself in 2016. At the time, President Trump called the Electoral College tally a landslide. By his own standards, these numbers represented a clear victory then, and I respectfully suggest they do so now. In his most direct comments yet on the issue, Biden painstakingly addressed each avenue Trump has taken to contest the election. With Republican secretaries of state, Republican-appointed judges, and Republican-controlled state legislatures all rejecting Trump's efforts to overturn the results.

Biden notably called those efforts, quote, an abuse of power. The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame. Even if the president has still not accepted the results, the Electoral College vote seemed to shift the rhetoric from other Republicans. Yesterday, electors met in all 50 states. Including Mitch McConnell. So as of this morning, our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect. The Senate majority leader, and the man who on January 20th could be the most powerful

Republican in Washington, D.C., spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. The President-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He's devoted himself to public service for many years. I also want to congratulate the Vice President-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris. Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female Vice President president elect for the very first time.

I look forward to finishing out the next 36 days strong with President Trump. Just 36 days from Tuesday until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in at noon Eastern time on January 20th. But with each of those days, the crisis waiting for them is growing. And yet Congress has still not reached a deal on a new COVID relief package. The current bipartisan version, which is actually two bills, would deliver enhanced unemployment benefits, protection from eviction and small business support. A second bill would offer liability protections for firms and aid for state and local governments, both of which have been tough issues for Democrats and Republicans to agree on. What's not on the table in either bill is direct payments to individuals.

We have right now probably the worst set of crises in this country since the Great Depression. Today, Senator Bernie Sanders told NPR why he's trying to get direct cash payments included in any coronavirus relief package, and why he's calling on Democrats to reject a deal without those payments. He spoke to Elsa Chang. We have millions and millions of people who cannot afford to pay their rent. We have people who cannot afford to go to a doctor in the midst of a pandemic. And we have millions of families who are finding it increasingly difficult to feed their kids. They need help. And Congress must provide help. And I do not believe that it is appropriate for members of Congress to go back to their families for the Christmas holidays, while so many millions of families in this country are struggling just to stay alive.

Well, just as you say it, people are struggling. Congress has been debating this for seven months. I do have to push you on this. People are losing their homes now. They don't have enough to eat now. Democrats do not have the majority in the Senate. So isn't passing some aid now better than passing no aid at this point? Well, it's that's Democrats do not have the majority in the Senate. That is correct. They do have the majority in the House. And it gets a question. Two chambers to pass legislation. And you have a president of

the United States, you know, Trump, who I agree with on absolutely nothing. You know what? Donald Trump says we should have direct payments. Joe Biden says we should have direct payments. Why is direct payments not in the bill right now? That's the question we should be asking. This is what I do have to ask again. I mean, it is good to stand on principle. But what do you say to people who are going to be evicted at the end of the month or people who are visiting food banks right now? How do you explain to them why Congress has not been able to pass any legislation, why they just have to sit tight?

Unfortunately, what you say is this bill is not going to do what has to be done to protect those people. You talk about hunger. You're right. You want to address hunger. Then you provide the help that people need for our kids. There's nothing in here for senior citizens who are trying to get by on $13,000, $14,000. Nothing in here for workers who are putting their lives on the line every day in grocery stores, in public transportation, workers who are doing the critical work that keeps this country going, nothing for them. But how optimistic are you that a compromise will be reached that you are happy with? I mean,

President-elect Biden is saying that he believes Democrats and Republicans can work together. He has even put someone in charge of conservative outreach, Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond. Do you share Biden's optimism that Republicans and Democrats can really work together going forward? Well, on this issue, what I will tell you is Democrats and Republicans, they know something about politics by definition. And if they look at the polling, they will find out that over 70 percent of Democrats, over 70 percent of Republicans understand that we need direct payments. So I think no matter what your moral vision may be for the world, if you're a good politician and you look at polls, you know what you have to do. And I believe we can get this done. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Cash payments or not, lawmakers don't have much time left to get any deal done. The plan right now is to attach coronavirus relief to an annual government funding bill, which has to be passed by this Friday to avoid a government shutdown. If Congress can't agree to a relief package this year, there will be even more urgency for Joe Biden to act as soon as he's sworn in on January 20th. But there's no guarantee he'll be able to work quickly with Congress. Even if Democrats win both seats in Georgia's upcoming Senate runoff elections, they would control the Senate by a very small margin. Some economic experts close to Biden's team have advice for what the next president can do on his own. Here's NPR's Asma Khalid. One thing most economists agree on is that the best way the president can stimulate the economy

is by tackling the public health crisis. The number one rule of virus economics, I always say, is that if you want to help the economy, you need to get control of the spread of the virus. Austin Goolsbee was a top economic advisor to former President Barack Obama. He also informally advised Biden's campaign. He says congressional spending would be the best solution right now, but if that's not going to happen. There are many areas where the federal government might get some relief out the door. One of the more obvious spaces being that of student loans. The Trump administration has deferred student loan payments until the end of January. Senate Minor Leader Chuck Schumer is urging Biden to go further. It is my belief that the new president, President Biden,

within the first few weeks of becoming president, can simply sign an executive order and eliminate, end, $50,000 of student debt from every student. Felicia Wong agrees. She's a member of Biden's transition advisory board, but spoke to me, she said, wearing her other hat. She's also president of the Roosevelt Institute. 95% of all student debt is actually held by the government. And so the secretary of education would have it within her or his authority to cancel a lot of that debt. She says there's

another thing the president could do to move money into the pockets of people right away. Federal government's a really big employer and Joe Biden had promised on the campaign trail a $15 an hour federal minimum wage. Well, that would require Congress, but his administration could take an executive action that says that all federal contractors have to pay their employees at least $15 an hour. Biden could try to tackle parts of his economic agenda on his own. He could modify Trump's trade tariffs, for example, or change regulations around the Affordable Care Act. These ideas might be helpful in the long run, says Heidi Sheerholz with the

Economic Policy Institute, but they don't tackle the financial problems people are facing right now. The economy needs a stimulus and the president just doesn't have those tools. The tools, for example, to offer more money to state and local governments so they can keep firefighters on the job. And so the biggest economic test for Biden isn't how much he can do on his own, but how good he is at cutting deals. The thing you'll have to resort to is trying to lean on his nearly 50 years of experience in Washington. That is what it will come down to. Can President Biden convince Mitch McConnell to move on some of this stuff? Because that is what it will take to get the stimulus that is

needed. Sheerholt says there's this assumption that a new president can waltz into the Oval Office and immediately change the course of the economy. But really, she says, the most viable path for economic recovery requires buy-in from Congress. NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.