No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Biden notches first major win of his presidency

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

Democrats pass the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package while failing to include a $15 minimum wage, while Republicans confront their own priority of complaining about Dr. Seuss. Brian interviews Congressman Ro Khanna about the $15 minimum wage and eliminating the filibuster.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the failure to pass a $15 minimum wage, the success of passing the COVID relief package, and Republicans' very, very important priority of Dr. Seuss. I also interview Congressman Roe Kana about the $15 minimum wage and eliminating the filibuster. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we had two major pieces of news this week, one really good and one pretty awful. So we'll start with a bad and end on a high note. and that is that the $15 minimum wage didn't make it into the final COVID relief package. The Senate parliamentarian had ruled that the minimum wage hike didn't comply with budget reconciliation,

which only requires a simple majority to pass, and so instead it would need to pass as a regular bill and to reach a 60-vote threshold. But the issue is that the parliamentarian's ruling here isn't binding. It's an advisory opinion, and the vice president has the power to overrule her if she wanted to, which has already happened before. It happened in 1975 when then-Vice president Nelson Rockefeller, the advice of the parliamentarian as the Senate debated the filibuster rules.

It happened in 2013 when Democrats eliminated the filibuster to approve presidential nominees that were being blocked by Republicans. And it happened in 2017, when Republicans further eroded the filibuster to approve Supreme Court nominees. Parliamentarians have even been outright removed before. In 2001, the Senate was also split 50-50. Republicans were trying to pass what else but tax cuts through Congress using budget reconciliation.

The parliamentarian ruled that the bill couldn't be considered using reconciliation. and so what did Republicans do? They replaced him and they got their tax cut. But that's not what happened here with the issue being that the White House said almost immediately that they wouldn't try to overrule the parliamentarian. And so it felt a lot like they were just rolling over without much of a fight. But in fairness, two things. First, there were a number of Democratic senators who said outright that they wouldn't vote to overrule the parliamentarian, including Joe Manchin. So without those votes, any effort to circumvent the process was DOA anyway. And the other reason is that unemployment benefits expire on March 14th. So this bill needed to be passed before

then. So if the $15 minimum wage was going to hold the entire process up and endanger and otherwise absolutely necessary package from passing, then the White House probably made the calculation to move forward without it. Now, that's not to say that failing to pass a minimum wage hike right now wasn't a huge missed opportunity because it is. It's a missed opportunity both morally and politically. Morally, we're talking about people who, you know, even if they work 40 hours a week are still living in poverty. No one in the richest country in the world should have to be impoverished working full time. And if a company can't afford to pay the $15, then that's the company's problem, not the workers. Like, part of running a business is paying

the cost of goods, cost of services, whatever it is. You shouldn't be able to underpay human beings just because a few wealthy senators making almost $200,000 a year decided that it wasn't important enough. But even politically it makes sense. Raising the minimum wage is popular, massively popular. Raising the minimum wage pass was 61% of the vote in Florida, 10 points ahead of Trump, who actually won the state, and 13 points ahead of Biden. If you're able to give 27 million workers a raise with the stroke of a pen, if you're able to deliver that kind of a tangible change to someone's life, you do it. And when it comes time to show up at the polls, and you have to choose between the party who spent the last few years whining about

Dr. Seuss and the party that more than doubled the minimum wage, guess which party is coming out on top. So with that said, we should continue to push every Democratic senator to support this minimum wage increase. If not because it's the right thing to do, then at a bare minimum because it's political suicide not to. Like, we don't get to criticize Republicans for passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut if we're not then willing to help regular people. Those are the rules. Like, you can, you can be a moderate Democrat and still acknowledge that a person working full time and making $15,000 a year is not okay. It's not okay. in California, and it's not okay in West Virginia.

But aside from the issue of a $15 minimum wage, moving over to the good news, after a marathon voting session, Senate Democrats ultimately passed the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package on a strictly party-line vote, 50 to 49. And so now, thanks solely to Democrats, Americans are going to receive another $1,400 in addition to the $600 that was already issued. There will be $300 a week in jobless benefits, a child allowance up to $3,600. dollars. There's $350 billion in state and local aid, money for the ACA, for Cobra, and of course, for vaccine distribution. These are real, tangible benefits for a country that so desperately

needs it after years of Republican incompetence, followed by Republican austerity measures. And by the way, while Republicans will offer, you know, bad faith arguments like the fact that this bill wasn't bipartisan, the only place that it wasn't bipartisan was in Congress. Otherwise, the American people overwhelmingly supported this legislation. And that was a point that Biden was quick to point out. And, you know, it may sound strange, but a lot of senators and congressmen, I want to thank. But I really want to thank the American people for making all this possible. You said, well, how did they make it possible?

Well, quite frankly, without the overwhelming bipartisan support of the American people, this would not have happened. Your elected officials heard you. overwhelming public support. Every public opinion poll shows overwhelming support for this plan. And for the last weeks it's shown that. Every public opinion poll shows that people want this. They believe it's needed and they believe it's urgent.

And the fact that this bill was passed with only Democratic support is only underscored by what Republicans spent their time doing while this relief bill was making its way through Congress. And that is that Republicans have been wailing about Dr. Seuss for the last week. you can't make this up. I've seen more references to Dr. Seuss in the last seven days than I did during the entirety of my childhood. So just to quickly sum up the issue at hand here, after reviewing its collection, Dr. Seuss

Enterprises decided to stop publishing six books because they, quote, portray people in a way that are hurtful and wrong. And that was in reference to depictions of Asians and black people. That's it. Pretty simple. Some of these books were published in the 1930s, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that not all of them withstood the test of time. but Republicans decided to seize on these Dr. Seuss books like the American flag itself was being outlawed, like the liberals were taking away hamburgers and fireworks, even though, A, this was a business decision by the publisher after a review that occurred a year ago, and B, who actually cares?

Like, we're in the middle of a pandemic and a jobs crisis and an economic recession, and you have a political party that is trying desperately to brand itself the party of working people. And when working people need help, their elected officials can't stop fucking talking about Dr. Seuss. Like, here's Kevin McCarthy, the most powerful Republican in the House, reading green eggs and ham. I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am. Sam I am. That's Sam I am. That's Sam I am. I do not like that Sam I am. Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam, I am. I do not like green eggs and ham.

And green eggs and ham wasn't even one of the books that was canceled. Like, if you really want to make a big show of defending these books, show the images of the Asian characters with two lines for eyes. Show the black characters who are shirtless, shoeless, and wearing grass skirts. Defend that. But of course, they can't, and they won't. And so instead, they'll defend a straw man and do some performance art defending a book that's not even involved in this so-called scandal in any way.

And if it's not Dr. Seuss, then it's Mr. Potato Head. Whatever the subject, the fact that Republicans are so hellbent on trying to train our attention on these bullshit culture war wedge issues is a testament to the fact that they're getting killed on the issues that matter. Like, if all you're doing right now is trying to get people to care about cancel culture, while you have 10 million Americans who've lost their jobs, then that doesn't exactly reflect well on your legislative priorities. But that is how backwards that party is. That instead of helping pass this bill and delivering some relief to people,

after their own party mangled the response to this virus, they'd rather not only unanimously block it, but then have the audacity to tell you that the issue you should be focusing on is Dr. Seuss. And just one more note on that. You know, while Trump was president, every Democrat voted for the $2 trillion CARES Act, even though doing so helped Trump

because it was more important to help people who needed it than to worry about sticking it to the party in power. And yet now, while Biden's president, zero Republicans voted for the one point. $1.9 trillion American relief plan, because hurting Biden is more important than helping Americans. Time and time again, Republicans have made it clear that their only priority, their only one, is to make Democrats fail, even if doing so means the country will fail. Now, one final thought on the whole $15 minimum wage versus the whole COVID relief package.

And that is that, while I think the $15 minimum wage is a huge missed opportunity and deserves criticism, I think it's just as important to make sure we acknowledge and celebrate our successes. and passing this $1.9 trillion relief package is a huge success. And no, it's not perfect, but it will have a very, very real impact for millions of Americans. So we can strive to be better and more progressive, and that is our job on the left. But we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of letting the disappointments overshadowed the accomplishments. Because remember, Obama passed the Recovery Act and then the ACA with relatively little fanfare, and it opened up a huge vacuum that Republicans filled with bad faith attacks,

even though the Relief Act saved the auto industry and our economy and the ACA was the most important piece of health care legislation in modern American history. Meanwhile, like, Trump could wipe his ass on his own and he'd call for a military parade and we'd hear Judge Deneen applauding him

for it for the next six months on Fox News. So I get that not everyone is 100% satisfied with this package, but I have zero intention of letting the right dictate the terms of the conversation here or, you know, spinning this to their benefit. Because while this bill might not be perfect, It is a hell of a lot better than what we'd have if Republicans were in office, so let's not forget that. Next up is my interview with Congressman Rokana.

Okay, today we have a congressman from California, Rokana. Thanks so much for coming on. Brian, thanks for having me. So I want to dive into something that I think we can all agree is having the most impact on Americans. So this entire episode is dedicated to Dr. Seuss. So have that. I do want to talk about an issue that I actually think is the most important issue facing us right now. And that's the issue of the $15 minimum wage. So as of this recording, the Senate

just failed to reach the 60 vote threshold that's required to overrule the parliamentarian and include a $15 minimum wage in the COVID relief package. So in your opinion, as we move forward, what's the likelihood that we'll see the passage of a $15 minimum wage? it's less today. I think that the Senate parliamentarian should have been overruled so that the minimum wage could have been part of the COVID package. That would have had the best chance of getting people to a yes. Even if we hadn't gotten $15, it would have forced a compromise at $12 or $13 had that been included. Now the challenge is you're going to need 60 votes. You're not going to be able to get it through 50 votes. And Romney, people say, well, what about Romney?

Well, he's got 10 bucks, which is wholly inadequate, but it's got a poison. pill with it. He has a provision that you have to have e-verify on small businesses. Well, the Democrats aren't going to go for that kind of a policy. We voted against it all the time. But here's the irony e-verify. It's not going to mean that undocumented suddenly leave America. It's going to push them in the shadows. What does that mean? They're going to have less bargaining power. What does that mean? It's going to depress wages. So there's no way we can do that. So the question that, I guess, for the administration is how what's their path of getting an increase yeah and what a lot of people myself included don't seem to understand is how democrats are so willing to allow themselves to be

hamstrung by a procedural issue like the parliamentarian which by the way is only an advisory opinion like we have a thousand miles of road in front of us but we get to a perfectly passable speed bump and kind of give up exactly and then they say well the votes aren't there well you have to create the momentum for the votes. The votes won't be there if you don't lead. Let me give you an example. I mean, the votes in the Senate early on were for less than a trillion dollar bill, right? And they had all these bipartisan groups. And then President Biden, to his credit, showed leadership. He said, no, we need to do $1.9 trillion. And that's where the conversation shifted. So my view is, if the White House had overturned the parliamentarian, it said, no, we have to deliver

a wage. In candor, we may not have gotten the $15 that we need. but we would have at least gotten $12, $13. And that's what's unfortunate. Now even to get $12, $13, I think is going to be a huge lift. Yeah. Well, that's a good segue into the reporting that I've seen that you were part of a group chat that formed to pressure Biden on this issue. So what was the outcome and what strategy do you intend to take here?

Well, we were, some of us were chatting late into the night, Rashida Talib, Jamal Bowman, myself, Mondair Jones, Marie Newman. And we said we've got to do a letter to the White House to President Biden and Vice President Harris saying don't let this parliamentarian ruling stand because reconciliation is actually our best bet to increase the wage. And unfortunately, they didn't take the advice, but I actually think they'll be pleased that we put that letter on the record because it at least sets the precedent that you can do a minimum wage increase in a future reconciliation. They don't have to just defer to a parliamentarian. And I don't see many ways that they're going to get a significant wage increase if they don't do it through reconciliation. Unless, of course, the other option is nuking the filibuster. So that's a good segue into that issue.

And I spoke about this issue last week in my interview with Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, I enjoyed it. That was a great interview. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, I didn't intend, and I don't intend for that to be a one-time subject because I do think that the elimination of the filibuster is the single most important issue that we're facing right now. That will fundamentally change the future of this country. Couldn't agree more.

So I know that it's easy for certain moderate Democrats to say that they won't eliminate the filibuster in the abstract. But in your opinion, once it becomes a choice between protecting this obscure procedural tool in the Senate and allowing yourself to literally get legislated out of government or passing legislation that just delivers fairness, do you think that we'll see a reversal from the Joe Mansions and Kirsten Cinemas out there? I don't know. I can't predict their votes, but I can tell you what gives us the best chance to be able to do it. First, we have to help educate the country on the history of the filibuster. I mean, President Obama has called it a relic of Jim Crow. Adam Jettleson has a brilliant book out where he explains that it was not Madison or Jefferson who came up with a filibuster. It was Calhoun to protect the interests of slave states. And what has been the biggest use of the filibuster to protect states who were fighting against civil rights reforms?

So the history of the filibuster is tied with race. And I don't think many Americans, I didn't appreciate that until I read Jettelson's book. And we have to do that public education. Second, I think we have to link votes on minimum wage increase, on voting rights, have that vote, and right away have a vote on, do you want to eliminate the filibuster? So people see the link. Okay, they're not voting for minimum wage. And the reason I'm not getting it, even though 52 people are for it, is because of the filibuster. And I think we have to get people to realize it's not just procedural. But you're absolutely right that this is the biggest institutional reform. Just to hammer the point again about, why we asked the White House to overturn the parliamentarian. If we're not willing to overturn the filibuster, which is the right reform and the heaviest lift, and we're not even willing to overturn the bird rule, which is an easier lift, but something that we should do, it's actually the least path of resistance to say, well, we're not going to accept the parliamentarian's

interpretation of the bird rule. And the administration isn't even willing to do that. So the point is at some point we have to have institutional reform. Yeah. And by the way, this isn't just, for example, tying the $15 minimum wage to the filibuster, this isn't just smart economics. It's also going into a midterm where history tells us there's going to be a swing to the right and needing something to show voters. And I can promise you that a $15 minimum wage or passage of HR1 is going to work a hell of a lot better than telling voters that you preserve the integrity of the Senate filibuster. Absolutely right. Now, look, there are a lot of good things in the COVID relief. We're going to get checks to people. We're going to help fight the child poverty with child tax credits. We're going to help fund vaccinations. But I think what is missing is the type of structural reform that minimum wage increases would have been. It wouldn't have just been a one-time check. It would have said we understand economic inequality is a huge deal. We understand you can't be paid $2.13 as a tipped worker where there are about 5 million tipped workers. who make less than five bucks an hour,

and we understand that's the reason you came to the polls, and we're going to change your life forever by taking the action we did. That is what's going to get turned out, because you're obviously right. The Republican base is going to turn out in 2022. A lot of the folks who have the crazy conspiracy theories who think that the country is being taken over, they're all going to turn out.

And our challenges is our base going to turn out? They're not going to go vote for Republicans, but they may say, is it worth it to get out, and we have to give them that motivation? right right and i think that there would be uh there'd be no more nothing more tangible than a wage increase that's so popular that it ran like what 15 points ahead of uh ahead of joe biden in florida um it's passing in in red states and so uh so i think this would be something that would be really easy and really popular to pass so uh so hopefully they stay on it and uh hopefully

the pressure stays on so that we can actually uh see some movement on this issue absolutely well we're not going to back down, and neither are the advocacy groups. And Reverend Barber from the Poor People's Campaign has just been such an eloquent voice. He said, this is a racial justice issue. This is an economic justice issue. This is the moment. And I talked to him on the phone a couple, about a week ago, and he said that Dr. King in 1963, when you had the march on Washington, it wasn't just about racial justice. It was about a $2 minimum wage. It turns out that $2 back then would be equivalent to $17 today. And so we have. been fighting for this as a nation for 50 years. And it's 2021. And we still haven't implemented

what Dr. King was calling for in 1963. So I think that the profound consequences of a dignified wage are not understood yet in Washington. Yeah. And by the way, do you know of any lobbying efforts that are being done behind the scenes for the more moderate Democrats who currently stand in opposition to both the issue of the $15 amendment wage or the filibuster more broadly? I think it's generally just the chambers of commerce and the economic thinking that somehow this is going to be anti-business. This is going to hurt small business and this perpetual fear that the Democrats shouldn't be repainted as an anti-business party. And we're not, but this is not going to hurt business. Let me give you a very concrete example. When Senator Sanders

and I introduced the Stop Bezos Act, and we said that Amazon should be taxed if they aren't paying their workers of $15 wage because basically they're footing taxpayers with the bill on all the public benefits. People said, this is terrible economics. What are you doing? You can't force Amazon to do that. Three weeks later, Amazon raises their wage. The economists cried, oh, this is going to lead to mass automation. This is going to hurt for profits. Guess what? They've added 100,000 jobs since they went to $15. They have become more profitable. They're a trillion dollar market cap. So at some point, evidence needs to matter. And there's these tired thinking, the same thinking that this is something I'm going to hurt business, which isn't true. And I tell people it's not just

the special interest. It's actually more pernicious. I wish it was just the special interest in the lobbyist. What's more pernicious is it's an economic worldview that has seeped into conventional thinking of staff members, of think tanks that basically have defined wage increases is anti-business. And we have to take on more than special interests. We have to take on this entire ideology that is actually divorced from reality. Right. And by the way, all you have to do

quite simply is look at places where there already is a $15 minimum wage and how the cost of their goods is the same exact cost as in places where there isn't a $15 minimum wage. I know there was something going around on Twitter a few months back where someone was saying, oh, we'll wait and see

the cost of a taco at Taco Bell, it's going to be, everyone's going to be paying $38 per taco once you raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And you look in a place like Washington, D.C., where there's already a $15 minimum wage, and the cost of a taco at Taco Bell is the exact same as a cost of a taco anywhere else in this country. Brian, you're right. And the other thing I don't understand the people say, well, do it regionally. Are you really telling me that someone, if they're working in my district in California for Taco Bell or in Washington, D.C. for Taco Bell, they should be getting 15 bucks, but if they're working in another part of the country in a red state and doing the same exact job, they should be getting 10 bucks. How is that fair? How is that

evil? How is that honoring the dignity of people in red states or rural communities? People should be getting paid the same amount for the same job, regardless of where they are. And so we can have a $15 floor. Now, some places which are higher cost of living like mine can have a higher threshold, but there should be a floor at $15, which is 80%, less than 80% of the median wage. And at that level, that's what's considered reasonable by the economists. So I do want to move over. And I know we touched on this at the beginning. But, you know, we started the interview kind of joking around about Dr. Seuss. But in all honesty, does the cancel culture grievance on the right work? Like, is it effective? Because my channel, my podcast are largely predicated on countering

right wing disinformation. Right. I watch a lot of Fox News. Too much, too much. Any amount of Fox News is too much Fox News. But I watch a lot of Fox News. And even I can't wrap my head around how a family of four in West Virginia trying to make ends meet is going to turn on the TV and see Jim Jordan complaining about cancel culture and be like, that's my guy. He speaks for me. We can't let the radical liberal silence us on Twitter. You know, like I'm being flipping about this, but honestly, does that resonate with people on the right? Well, I think what concerns people across the country is the sense that we're all speaking in echo chambers and we're not speaking to each other. And this goes both ways, right?

I mean, the right was perfectly willing to, quote unquote, cancel Colin Kepernick. I mean, they didn't have a problem saying that he shouldn't be allowed to have his expression. So the question is, how do we get beyond this? Now, I got some criticism, but I actually, I went on Ben Shapiro's podcast, and we had a civil exchange on that issue of a bit of a wage. And I guess what I would say is that all of us need to have not stray from our convictions, not stray for what we believe. But we do need to try to reach out to other platforms and make our case so that we are engaged in some kind of reasonable exchange. And that, to me, if we don't do that, I think we're going to continue to polarize this country. Yeah, that's a great point.

I think that's a good place to stop. So, Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brian. I appreciate your podcast. I will say this. I was a little hesitant. I never follow Elizabeth Warren anywhere because she's so eloquent.

So I appreciate you're having me on right after. Thanks again to Rokana. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.