No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Jen Psaki on GOP attempts to take credit for the American Rescue Plan

Episode Date: March 14, 2021

The American Rescue Plan has been signed into law and Republicans pulled a ridiculous stunt in response to it. Brian interviews White House press secretary Jen Psaki about when money is going out the door, Republican efforts to take credit for the bill's passage, whether Biden not signing stimulus checks was a missed opportunity, and how the White House plans on getting other legislation passed over the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate.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 passage of the American relief plan into law and the stunt that Republicans are pulling in response to it. I also interview White House Press Secretary Jen Saki about when the money is going out the door, Republican efforts to take credit for its passage, whether Biden not signing stimulus checks was a missed opportunity, and how the White House plans on getting other legislation passed over the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Less than 50 days into Biden's administration, and he's officially signed into law the American Rescue Plan. People are already seeing $1,400 relief checks. There's money for child tax credits, up to $3,600 bucks, an extension of jobless benefits at $300 a week, money for vaccine distribution, which is ramped up tremendously. It's even got a provision that makes eligible future cancellations of student loan debt tax-free. So normally, if the government was to eliminate $10,000 in student loan debt, let's say,

that $10,000 would be treated as income, and you'd be taxed on it. But thanks to this legislation, any future student loan debt cancellation won't be taxed. So that's a really good sign of things to come. All said, it's a bill that's so good that Republicans, zero of whom voted for it, are now starting to take credit for it. You want to talk about shameless. Roger Wicker, the Republican Senator from Mississippi, tweeted, quote, independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief.

This funding will ensure small businesses can, survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll. You would think if these guys are so hell-bent on trying to take credit for the American Rescue Plan that they would have, oh, I don't know, voted for the thing, even a single Republican? Instead, they decided to Hill they would unilaterally die on was opposing a bill so popular that they immediately signed on the Twitter to start praising it. Like, not only did Republicans preclude themselves from being able to take credit for any of the obvious impending benefits that it'll deliver, but they did so unanimously.

They handed Democrats that extra talking point for no reason. And because of that, I don't know, misguided sense of unity that Republicans achieved by banding together to oppose a bill that 75% of Americans support, now Democrats get to say, the Democrats did this. The Democrats cut you those $1,400 checks. The Democrats gave you up to $3,600 in child tax credits. The Democrats gave you $300 a week in unemployment benefits. The Democrats gave state and local aid so that your firefighters and teachers and police officers and first responders could get paid.

The Democrats funded vaccine distribution so that you can go get that shot and return to normal. Like, we practically begged Republicans to sign on to this legislation. We begged for them to be able to take credit. But it was them who made sure that they wouldn't be able to take an ounce of credit for this bill or its effects. And just a side note here, you want to know why the Republicans didn't vote for this thing? because the tax policy center analyzed the American Rescue Plan and found that the poorest 20% of Americans are estimated to see roughly 20% boost in income from the plan,

while the richest 1% will receive an income boost of 0%. That is why Republicans didn't support it, because it doesn't help rich people. Contrast that with Trump's 2017 tax cut for corporations in the ultra-rich. In that plan, the top 20% of households reaped 65% of the benefits, while the bottom 20% got only 1% of the benefit. Every Republican voted for the bill that cut taxes for rich people.

Zero Republicans voted for the bill that gave relief to regular people. The proof is right there in the votes. And by the way, the ARP isn't the only thing that Republicans are trying to take credit for. Their latest desperate move now is trying to take credit for the vaccine rollout. Here's Hannity demanding that Biden thank Trump. Joe Biden, he needs to pick up the phone. I suggest call Mara Lago and, yeah, bring unity to the country as he says he's so desperately once and thank President Donald Trump.

Okay, now, few things here. First, Trump had no actual plan for the vaccine rollout. His quote-unquote plan was to let the states figure it out. And to do so without funding, Trump officials actively lobbied to deny states' money for the vaccine rollout. Even by their own projections, their rollout was a bust. In October, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar estimated that the Trump administration would vaccinate 100 million people by the end of 2020.

You know what that number ended up being? $2.8 million. That's it. So whether he was just, you know, juicing the numbers because of the November election was coming up, or they fell woefully short out of sheer incompetence, either way you cut it, their rollout was an abject failure. I mean, hell, Trump himself hid the fact that he got it. You think a president who's committed to the successful rollout and widespread use of a vaccine is going to get his vaccination in secret,

especially when it's his own supporters who have the highest rate of vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. give me a break. All the while, it's been Biden's administration that's ramped up vaccinations to a high of 2.9 million in a day, three and a half times as many as were given when Joe took office. And he just announced that by the end of May, we'd have enough vaccine doses to cover every adult in America. Now, because all the work we've done, we'll have enough vaccine supply for all adults in America by the end of May. That's months ahead of schedule. So please, let's not pretend that there's any equivalent.

between these two administrations in terms of efficiency of vaccinations. But beyond all of that, here's the last point. You do not get credit when you were responsible for overseeing the deaths of 400,000 Americans. Like, that's it, sorry. You don't get to take any victory lap whatsoever when you presided over the third biggest mass casualty event in U.S. history behind only the 1918 pandemic and the Civil War. Let's just be honest here.

If the Trump administration was really looking for credit, they had months to take any of a litany of steps. And it's not like we were trying to rob Trump of the ability to take those steps. We were begging the guy to take him. He could have encouraged the use of masks. Instead, Trump politicized them. He could have backstay at home orders. Instead, Trump fomented protests against them.

He could have encouraged people to work and shop remotely. Instead, he demanded that businesses and restaurants and stores reopen. He could have trained a spotlight on scientists and public health experts. Instead, Trump attacked Dr. Fauci and touted any whack-job miracle cure he could find deep in the bowels of Reddit. his response was scientifically engineered to exacerbate this crisis as much as humanly possible. So as far as deserving credit for anything goes, I'm pretty sure that train left the station months ago. Any progress on getting this virus under control happened in spite of the Trump administration, not because of it. Here's the difference. During the Trump era, it was all about

who was to blame. During the Biden era, everyone's looking to take credit. And that's the whole ballgame right there. The very fact that Republicans are already trying to take credit is an acknowledgement of the fact that this White House is doing it right. And look, Republicans can try until they're blue in the face to pretend that this is the result of Donald Trump, but we all live through it. And we watched while the guy spouted off about, you know, hydroxychloroquine and injecting disinfectant. We are all well aware of how responsible he was for solving this problem. So from the relief package to the vaccine rollout, Republicans might be falling over themselves to take credit here, but the simple truth is that the reason it's working is because

Democrats are in charge, and that's not going to be lost on anyone. Next up is my interview with White House Press Secretary, Jen Saki. Today we've got the White House Press Secretary Jen Saki. Thanks so much for coming to talk. Great. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. So before even the 50-day mark of this administration, we have a major, major piece of transformative legislation in the American Rescue Plan. There is so much in this bill. So I just want to take this opportunity right now to give you the floor and tell you.

touch on what's in it. Sure. I'm sure I'm going to forget things, but I'm going to do my best here. There are direct checks to almost 160 million Americans of $1,400. President promised committed to meet the agreement he made to get it to $2,000, and this helps do that. So people should be getting those checks. Brian, I mean, as soon as this weekend, which is pretty exciting. There's also money in there to help make sure we get more vaccines out. Everybody wants to be vaccinated and return back to normal. We need a little extra money to do that. There's also money to help reopen schools, and that's something that people are really concerned about and focused on. But there's a lot of other little pieces, important pieces in the bill, like the

child tax credit, up to $3,600. A lot of families will benefit from that. And there's also an extension of unemployment insurance so that people who are still trying to make ends meet can get access to that. So lots of pieces that will help many, many Americans. Yeah. And I know, like, one of the most attractive elements for a lot of people are these $1,400 checks. Yeah. And I know that you just mentioned that people are going to start seeing them as early as this weekend. So as of as of this recording, by the time people hear this, there will already be people who have this $1,400 in their bank account. Well, some will, some will to set expectations. And you'll start to see, you know how it goes where you look in your bank account and something's processing.

It's kind of like that. But they're going to start to go out and the first wave will go out. But very quickly, people will start to see these benefits. It's almost like not slowing down the process to sign the memo. line of a check pays off for people. Literally. Literally it does. It turns out it makes it a little bit faster. So actually, with that said, I was being glib there, but there is a legitimate concern. And that's that the Biden administration might fall into the trap that the Obama administration fell into, which was not taking enough credit for victories. And I think

if most people think back to the rollout of the ACA, you know, that was a historic piece of legislation. Yeah. Republicans seized on the messaging vacuum. And it really just became about the issue of the health care.gov rollout, for example. So what's being done to make sure that that doesn't happen again? And I know that's kind of a meta question because you're literally here to talk about the American Rescue Plan. So no, it's okay. This interview aside. It's also a moment of therapy because I also lived through the communicating around the Affordable Care Act and also the recovery plan in the early days of the Imam administration. Look, there's a lot of lessons learned and you touched on one of the big ones, which is that you've got to take a breath

and explain to people what is in these big bills and how it's helping them, you know? And in the Obama administration, it really took us some time to figure out the best way to do that. And that's probably obvious to you and a lot of your viewers that the components of that bill, right, the fact that you could stay on your parents' health insurance if you were under 25, that you, you know, if you had a preexisting condition, you still had to get access to health care. It's pretty obvious. That's what we should have talked about in the beginning. And we didn't. So we're doing things pretty differently, including trying to explain the components and how it's actually impacting people and helping people's lives. But also we're going to take some time to go talk to the American people,

go spend some time on the trail. The president, I'm going to go travel with the president next Tuesday to Philly and he's going to go to Atlanta on Friday. And he'll do more trips after that about what's in there because we need to do more engagement and frankly sales of what's in there and how people are helped by it. So lots of lessons learned. I think that if we could take one thing, the only thing out of the Trump era, you know, that's the guy could wake up and tie his shoes in the morning and throw himself a military parade for it. So that's something that we could take out in terms of the last administration. Yeah, but you touch them kind of interesting because there's been some questions about why he didn't, you know, why he didn't sign the check because it would have delayed it. But also, did we make a mistake by not signing the check?

And the truth is, I mean, this won't surprise you, but 90% people will get direct deposit. So nobody told Donald Trump. But that was not, there weren't 100 million people getting checks with his name on them around the country. It's not how people get money. Yeah, yeah. That's a great, that's a great point. Well, following the passage of the American Rescue Plan, Republican Senator Roger Wicker tweeted out, independent restaurant owners have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief.

This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll. So you have this guy bragging about this bill that he quite literally voted against. So what's your message to these Republicans whose plan now is clearly to go out and take credit for a bill that not a single Republican in the federal government voted for? Don't underestimate the intelligence of the American people, including the people in your districts. I mean, it's public record who voted for this package. And, you know, I'm sure I don't know what the polling was in his district. But around the country, the majority of Republicans supported this package, which, of course they did. Because average Americans, people who are just living their lives, they want to get direct check. They want their schools to reopen.

They want to get vaccines. And so it was really just partisan politics in Washington in this one zip code that was really an outlier in this situation. Yeah. We also heard something similar from Mitch McConnell, who said, we're about to have a boom and it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion. So I guess why would a package that addresses economic problems have any impact on the economy, I guess, is my question?

I think most people who are sitting at home excited about getting their checks and their schools reopening probably disagree with that notion, as do most economists, I would guess. Yeah. Well, one element of the American Rescue Plan that didn't make it into the final bill was the $15 minimum wage. And I know that you've mentioned at press briefings that it's still a priority for the White House. Yeah. But what's the plan to get it passed right now over the higher threshold of 60 votes since it didn't qualify for budget reconciliation? Well, yeah, it didn't qualify.

which is a very Washington term and person who only people in this town know who they are decided it couldn't end up in the bill. But we're going to look for another vehicle to get it done. And the president has a lot more he wants to do in his agenda. He's talked about infrastructure. He's talked about making investing in caregiving, making health care care more affordable and accessible, addressing the unbalanced tax code. There are lots of ways that we can get this done and move it forward. And reconciliation can be used more than once. in a year by any, by Congress. It's really kind of up to them to determine when, but we're looking for a vehicle.

He's committed to raising it to $15. And so we're just, we're on the hunt. I know that the president had intended on going about pushing legislation in a bipartisan manner. He has in the sense that the American people in a bipartisan way support this legislation. But the ARP showed us that the GOP seems united in opposing even the most wildly popular bill. So, you know, just like the $15 minimum wage, what about Universal Background Checks Act? What about H.R. 1, the For the People Act? How does all of this get passed? I mean, that isn't legislation that we can push through budget reconciliation, even if we do get two bites at the

apple. Yeah. You know, so this stuff is going to need 60 votes. You're right. It will. And a number of those pieces you just talked about have only passed the House in the last week or two, right? And so now that we have the American Rescue Plan behind us, really going to work on and see what opportunities there are to help push a lot of these important pieces of legislation forward. You know, the president's an optimist by nature. I am as well. And he still feels as important as these issues are, there's opportunity to work with Republicans on them. But there's a lot of ideas floating around Capitol Hill of how to get things done and not be obstructed. And he's also watching that. So how does the filibuster play into this?

Well, you touched on what I was kind of alluded to there. Look, his preference is, is to work with Democrats and Republicans and to not make changes to the filibuster rules, but it's really up to Congress and up to, you know, the Senate to determine how they're going to get things moved forward. There's lots of ideas out there about how to do it. There's a traditional way, a more historic way that the filibuster was used, right, that Senator Manchin has proposed, including making people actually talk through the period of time. So there's lots of ideas out there. You know, he's happy to hear them and listen to him, even if his preference isn't, isn't to make changes at this point.

So for this next question, keep in mind that we have been strung along for a really, really long time. And I don't think we can handle much more of the teasing. So will we have an infrastructure week and how many weeks will it last? Because it's been infrastructure week since June of 2017. And that is the actual date. Yeah. I can promise you there will not be a week called Infrastructure Week. over my dead body. We will not call it that. But I can also promise you that, you know,

anybody who drives a car or takes a bike or goes across bridges when they commute or takes the metro knows things need to be, they're outdated and they need to be refurbished and things need to get better. And those are also job creators. So, you know, this is an area where the president wants to do some work and we'll look for ways to work with Republicans. I mean, aren't fixing road something everybody should be behind it's you know including republicans in congress so that certainly is our help yeah and it'll be telling to see who supported the uh years long infrastructure week the first go around and uh who suddenly decides you know on the right that uh that it's no longer an issue that they uh that they support given the given the occupants of the white house so right

exactly exactly so i i do want to touch on something that's a bit off topic uh from the ARP, but it's an issue that I focus heavily on. And that's the administration's relationship with right-wing media. So in the press briefing room, when you have these bad faith questions, questions where the reporters are trying to gin up some fake scandal or catch you in some obvious gotcha moment that you can, you know, see from a mile down the road, I'm just curious what the best avenue to deal with bad faith actors is. Like, you've been phenomenal at shutting down that kind of BS. But is there any concern that even humoring bad faith actors, gives them legitimacy?

Such a good question. You know, I will say, one, I was pretty lucky to come to this job, having worked at the State Department for a couple of years. And, you know, the bad faith actors in there were actual members of the Russian and Chinese governments whose questions were certainly from an advocacy point of view. And I think what the president asked me to do, which is, you know, I work for him, is to, and I believe this too, is to treat everyone with respect and take their questions and use a tone of civility in the briefing room, right?

And, you know, well, the questions may come from an advocacy point of view, and some of them certainly do. The audience, really, of the briefing is the American people and people watching at home, right? And so when people are asking questions, I know when it's an advocacy question. Of course I do, right? You know, if somebody's, and it's pretty clear.

But my approach is to call it out and not tolerate people trying to use the briefing room as propaganda because I don't think anyone of any parties looking for that from the White House. So, no, that's been our approach to date. I don't think it's, I don't think it's more effective to feed into the fuel that we are not engaging with right-wing media because I think it just feeds into kind of a conspiracy that is not actually accurate. So that's been our judgment so far. Well, I think your ability to take these questions on, I think it gave rise to the term Saki bomb. So there's that.

It's a testament to your success in that realm. So anyway, with that said, Jen, thank you so much for taking the time. My pleasure. Congratulations on the American Rescue Plan. And hopefully we can do this again soon. Thanks so much. It was great talking to you. Thanks again to Jen Saki.

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 Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.