The Daily - Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018

Episode Date: February 13, 2018

The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, took to the floor for eight hours last week to protest a spending bill that did not include protections for the young immigrants known as Dreamers. Now, she says she wanted the bill to pass. What’s the risk for the Democratic Party? Guest: Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Last week, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi took the floor for eight hours to protest against a spending bill that she now says she wanted her Democratic colleagues to vote for.

What that tells us about the state of the Democratic Party. It's Tuesday, February 13th. I yield one minute to Leader Pelosi. one minute to Leader Pelosi. Last Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the House, walks onto the House floor. The general is recognized for one minute.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the general lady for yielding and congratulate her on her extraordinary leadership. And she's going to take advantage of a procedural rule they have called the Magic Minute. Cheryl Gay Stolberg covers Congress for The Times. Under the Magic Minute, there are only three people in the House.

The Speaker, the Republican leader, and the Democratic leader, who can speak for as long as they want. And Nancy Pelosi is now taking advantage of this rule. And she's up at the lectern and she starts talking about the Dreamers.

Mr. Speaker, this debate is another waste of time. Every day, courageous patriotic Dreamers lose their status. Every day, the American Dream slips further out of reach. Members of Congress are trustees of the people and of our nation. Why are we here if not to protect the patriotic young people who are determined to contribute and to strengthen America? So I'm going to go on as long as my leadership minute allows. But she doesn't just talk about them.

She's reading letters from them. I'm going to talk about Luis Galvin. Luis Galvin. Luis came to the United States when he was five years old and grew up in poverty. Itzel Verduzco Rojas is from Ponca City, Oklahoma. Itzel is working as a medical assistant for a pediatric dermatologist and in school full-time trying to pursue a career in nursing. Cesar Vargas was born in Mexico, holds a law degree,

and wants to become a military lawyer. She's reading one statement after another after another. Salia writes, We still don't know a lot about cancer. We still don't know about genetic diseases. My research at Texas Tech goes right to the heart of that. Proud to be from the South, and I love to give back to my community.

My last year at Southern Methodist University, I began working on an engaged learning fellowship. Because of that, I was selected to be the commencement speaker for my graduation. Nancy Pelosi is talking, and she's talking, and she's talking. You know, she's standing there in her four-inch heels and just going on and on and on for hours.

At about roughly the six-hour mark, she reads a note from the House historian. I just got word that the House historian confirms you have now set the record for the longest continuous speech in the House since at least 1909. She's passed the longest running speech on the House floor. I wonder what that was. Which was in 1909. It just really was a remarkable feat.

I mean, the one thing she could not do was say, I yield the floor. She did not sit down. She did not take a drink of water that I saw. She certainly didn't go to the restroom because she couldn't leave. And Cheryl, why did Nancy Pelosi decide to tell all these stories on the House floor last Wednesday? Nancy Pelosi decide to tell all these stories on the House floor last Wednesday? So Nancy Pelosi had made a commitment to these dreamers that their fate would be attached to a must-pass spending bill in the House. As Nancy Pelosi was speaking, the clock was ticking toward a midnight deadline when funding for the government was about to run out. when funding for the government was about to run out. She was basically trying to extract a promise from the House speaker that he would commit to a vote on these dreamers

in exchange for passage of the bill that was going to keep the government open. So what Pelosi is doing here is saying, I will not support this spending bill that will keep the government funded and open, and I will discourage my fellow Democrats from doing the same unless DACA is fixed, unless I'm assured that there will be a vote on it pretty much immediately. She's linking these two things. That's absolutely right. To lean on Paul Ryan, the speaker, to do what Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, has said he will do, which is schedule a free and open debate on DACA.

Honor the House of Representatives. Give us a chance to have it vote on the floor. The Republican leader in the Senate, The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has gone forward with the promise that he will give that opportunity to floor the Senate. The Senate will work its will. We'll see what they produce. And we'll work our will here and see what we produce. Perhaps unspoken is follow me. Go along with what she was doing to try to block this spending bill, to force the hand of Paul Ryan, the speaker, to give them the vote on the dreamers that they wanted. But most of all, let us thank and acknowledge the dreamers for their courage, their optimism, their hope,

their inspiration to make America more American. Thank you, my colleagues. Cheryl, had you ever seen anything like that before in the House? No, absolutely not. And I don't think anyone who works there has. I mean, the last time this happened was in 1909. So after all of this talking, eight hours worth of talking about Nancy Pelosi, what happens?

After all this, Paul Ryan doesn't give his commitment. And a majority of Republicans vote in favor of the spending bill, but not enough Republicans to pass it. So they need Democrats. And Nancy Pelosi had 73 defections. 73 Democrats voted in favor of this spending bill. So Cheryl, this looks like a pretty significant failure for Nancy Pelosi, especially after this epic speech on the floor. Yeah, it certainly looks like a failure.

But afterwards, I sat down with Nancy Pelosi and she told me quite the opposite, that she wanted this bill to pass. Of course I wanted it to pass. But I did want the Speaker to give us a commitment, which he still hasn't. Of course I wanted the bill to pass. We got everything we wanted. So would you call it a win for Democrats, what happened this week? I think the bill is a win for Democrats. Absolutely.

I think the Republicans gave away the store. I think it was a tremendous win for Democrats. I was kind of struck that she said, of course I wanted it to pass. So I wondered, 73 Democrats voted for the bill. Is that a loss for you? No, no. I don't think those people are not in support of the dreamers. I think they just, we made the bill too good. But I would do that again. In other

words, in making the bill as good as it was, and actually the Republicans yielded on everything and got everything. So when the bill is so good and it meets our priorities, they weigh the equities, go that route. But without any saying, I'm not voting for the dream. So we have a... The bill does contain money for Democratic priorities, for programs to address the opioid epidemic, and money for hurricane-ravaged areas like Texas and Puerto Rico. It contains a lot of money, $131 billion, much more than Democrats ever thought they would get. And if dozens of House Democrats are going to vote for it and get it passed, why is Pelosi spending eight hours on the House floor seemingly in protest of the bill? I think Nancy Pelosi at this moment is kind of caught in the middle of an identity crisis within the Democratic Party. It's a moment where Democrats are kind of searching their souls

for who they are and what does their party stand for. You've got one wing, the sort of traditional liberal Democratic base that's made up of women and people of color and immigrants saying, you know, we are the party of the dreamers. We're the party that is standing firm for the rights of these young undocumented immigrants to be productive members of American society. Members like Luis Gutierrez, who is from Illinois, who really is pushing Nancy Pelosi to go even harder and draw a tougher line against Paul Ryan and trying to get a fix for DACA. What do you think she accomplished? It's an eight-hour speech, an empty gesture.

Look, tomorrow you have to put the full weight, right, and power and influence of the Democratic caucus. And she's the leader, right? And if she gave that speech, I'm thankful for her for giving that speech. I applaud her for giving the speech. And now tomorrow, I want her to use the same kind of tenacity and muscle and perseverance to stop the Democrats from folding. So people on the left, people of color, are the future of the Democratic Party. This is the future.

This is the fastest growing segment of the Democratic Party. This is the future. This is the fastest growing segment of the voting population. And Democrats need to care what immigrants think and what they want. Everybody was like, oh no, we can't make this about the Dreamers. We've got to make it

about the CHIP program. We've got to make it about the opioid crisis. We've got to make it about infrastructure, right? Guess what? All those things are in the deal. Here's what I said. Watch. Everything we ask for will be included in the grand bargain, except immigration, because immigration is the glue that keeps the Republican

Party together. Luis Gutierrez said to me, everybody's on this bill except the Dreamers. Why is that? For Democrats, it's always mañana. But then you've got this other wing of the Democratic Party, people like Tim Ryan, who's a little bit more complicated. Tim Ryan told me, I'm for

the Dreamers. I want to protect the Dreamers. What do you think of what she did yesterday? Well, I think it was important for us to take a stand and at least try to get a vote. I mean, that's all we're asking for. But what I also want and what I need is for the leadership of the party to project that Democrats care about the working class voters, the kind of Trump Democrats, the white working class voters who Democrats lost to President Trump. That's the part of the party that the Tim Ryans of the world need to capture in order to survive. You know, if you're going into a budget battle, you can't go in with just,

you know, a million dreamers. It's not a big enough coalition. You needed the coal miners, the retired coal miners, the retired teamsters, saying everybody who's getting screwed right now, we're here for you. For members like that, every moment that Nancy Pelosi spends talking about immigration and making the Democratic identity about immigration is a moment that Democrats are not talking about the meat and potatoes economic issues that they believe they're going to have to talk about and the people around a cohesive message. That's her job, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, between the House and the Senate, you know, we're playing a lot of defense. By standing on the House floor and talking for eight hours about immigrants, Nancy Pelosi was in effect stripping that economic message out of the Democratic Party. That what she was doing was really eclipsing this broader economic message that Democrats need to have in order to win in 2018. I think that in his view, what Pelosi is doing is narrowing the party. And Ryan's view is she needs to be expanding it.

You know, but we have got to be very aggressive in communicating to people in areas that we haven't gone to in a while and make the case that we're representing those people's interests. We care about them. Cheryl, what are the risks for Pelosi and for Democrats in handling the budget situation and the Dreamers in this way, in trying to have it both ways? I think there is a risk. I think the risk is that you lose both sides, that she claimed to be for the Dreamers, but she didn't deliver for the Dreamers. Democrats claim to be for the Dreamers, but they haven't delivered. And on the other side, they spent all this political capital, all this time and energy bringing the plight of the Dreamers to light,

all this time and energy bringing the plight of the dreamers to light, leaving the sort of Trump Democrats to wonder, hey, who's talking about me? Why aren't they talking about me? And a year and a half after Donald Trump was elected, Democrats are still trying to figure out who they represent. They're still left struggling to figure out who they're really for and what they're really about. Ultimately, isn't the inability to figure out what a party stands for and who it's advocating for, isn't that what leads parties to fail? That is what leads parties to fail, and it's the job of the leader to figure that out. Cheryl, thank you. Thanks, Michael. Now that there is an agreement on long-term government funding, the Senate will proceed

to a fair debate over the DACA issue, border security, and other matters pertaining to the subject of immigration. This process begins in just a few hours. On Monday, as promised to his Democratic colleagues in exchange for ending the government shutdown three weeks ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell began a rare, open-ended debate over immigration and the Dreamers, a process that will allow senators to build a bill from scratch on the Senate floor. I hope this body can seize this opportunity and deliver real progress towards securing our border,

reforming aspects of immigration policy, and achieving a resolution for individuals who were brought to our country illegally when they were young. If the Senate adopts a bill extending protections for DREAMers, the legislation would then move on to the House, where its fate is far less certain. Legal protections for tens of thousands of DREAMers will expire in three weeks. We'll be right back.

three weeks. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, President Trump released his proposal for next year's federal budget, a plan that would deeply cut spending for public housing, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and health care subsidies, while heavily increasing spending on the military and border security. The Times reports that the proposal has little chance of being enacted as written, but amounts to a statement of values by the president. By the White House's own estimate, the budget would add $984 billion to next year's federal deficit and $7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.