The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Intends To End COVID Emergency Declarations. Now What?

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was at the White House on Wednesday for talks as President Biden continues to insist that the U.S. paying its debts is non-negotiable. House Republicans remove Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from her seat on the Foreign Relations committee. And in response to pressure from Congress, the administration says it will end the COVID emergency declaration. Here's what that means in practice.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and health correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Victor calling from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Earlier today, when I was asked for a podcast recommendation, I suggested the NPR Politics Podcast with Mathani Mathuri and Lexi Schpittle. Sorry, hosts, I forgot the names. This podcast was recorded at 12.33 p.m. on Friday, February 3rd. Now, I imagine someone will probably be out there finding new classified documents, but here's the show. You know what? Shout out to Mathony and Lexi. They deserve their credits too. I mean, the fact that he pronounced both of those names correctly, two of the tougher names, I mean, you know, props to him. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy had their first meeting at the White House this week to begin what could become very intense negotiations to raise the debt ceiling. The nation's current debt limit is just over $31 trillion. Publicly, their positions have been this. Biden says he wants the debt limit raised without conditions. And McCarthy says the House can't pass a bill unless there are some kind of spending cuts as part of the deal. So, Tam, how'd this first meeting go?

Well, if you ask Speaker McCarthy, it was a great meeting. Agreed to meet again. Yeah. I mean, like they they did. They agreed to meet again. According to the White House, though, it was a frank conversation. Yeah. So I don't know which is which. I think what it was is a conversation several months before the cliff. Yeah. And so they had a conversation. Kevin McCarthy got to go to the White House. And I don't think that they yelled at each other. But other than that, it's not clear that they actually made progress. However, then their staffs did follow up with each other. I think it is just

too early to know really how this is going to play out. I feel like we're in a time machine a little bit because we've been fighting about the debt ceiling and talking about fights over the debt ceiling since the Tea Party came in with their, you know, want for spending cuts and all of that. But, you know, they raised the debt limit three times during President Trump's tenure. And, you know, you didn't hear McCarthy talking about it quite in the same way. Republicans do always seem to find their fiscal conservative roots more easily when there's a Democrat in the White House than a Republican one. But I mean, Tim, this debate on the one hand is at this stage, it feels so inside the beltway.

But the debt limit is one of those issues that if they really mess around with it, it does have, could have very real economic consequences literally around the world. Yes. And we talked about this in an earlier podcast that I recommend people go listen to because we got into real depth about it. But the short answer is that the last time they really got to the brink, the U.S. credit rating was downgraded. And that's serious. And if they actually did go over the precipice, you know, the thing about the whole global financial system is that, at least in part, it is premised on the idea that the U.S. is good for it. to pay its debts. And if that faith goes away, if Treasury officials are having to just like scramble or stop making payments, that is going to introduce doubt into a system that up to this

point hasn't had much doubt. And so the economic consequences as, you know, the U.S. economy is teetering on, will it go into recession? Will it not go into recession? Those economic consequences could be dire. You know, we should also say, even though it is true, obviously, that President Biden passed a whole bunch of spending measures that cost a heck of a lot of money, you know, there's this narrative out there that it's Democrats who are the ones who seem to be the big spenders, when I think the three of us understand that Democrats actually passed PAYGO legislation, which meant that you had to pay as you go, pay for what you're actually spending on, meaning whether that means raising some taxes or cutting some spending. And Republicans

are the ones who voided that. So it's a really interesting dynamic that Republicans have been able to continue to control this narrative of spending when it's not always the case that they're able to balance the budget. But Domenico, I think that this round of debt limit politics is interesting to me because if you think about this as sort of a poker game where people don't know what cards they're going to play, McCarthy doesn't necessarily have the strongest hand right now. One, it's not even really clear what he's asking for. Like he wants spending cuts, but they're not, they don't want to say what they want to cut because then that gets really hard because you say what you want to cut. Because then there will be ads saying what they want.

He's only got four seats in the House. It's not even sure anything he agrees to could actually get 218 Republican votes. And you still have something called the Senate where I would note that people like Mitch McConnell are like, I'll just sit out this one. Like McConnell was asked about all this and he's like, it sounds like a negotiation between the speaker and the president. Let's see how this plays out. He's not getting a ton of sort of rhetorical backup from the Senate. So he doesn't have a lot of strength in his hand is what I'm saying, I think. Well, and that's why you hear President Biden when you hear him say, show me their budget. Right. That's what this is about.

He wants to see what their priorities are. Where do they want to cut in the federal government if they're not going to raise any revenue, which means raising some degree of taxes, whether that's on millionaires or billionaires or on average people. So that's where this fight is sort of playing out. We have to realize we are a year out from a presidential election year. And even though the country is in a pretty bad mood and has been for quite some time, you know, they don't necessarily blame President Biden and Democrats. You know, Democrats had a better than expected midterms. Republicans are still viewed pretty hotly negatively.

And they have to be careful about not overplaying their hand here. And the debt limit is a big piece of that because, you know, as Biden likes to say, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And he's got an alternative here with House Republicans that he's eager to compare himself to with Americans ahead of his expected announcement that he's going to run for reelection. And in the absence of Republicans presenting, you know, a list of the things that they would like to cut, the White House is quite eager to amplify a small number of Republicans in the House conference saying, look, they want to cut Medicare and Social Security. And they're going to keep repeating that over and over and over again until, you know, there's an alternative. This is going to be the Sue Davis soapbox that I'm

going to say in this podcast from now until we, because I'm sure we're going to do a lot of debt limit podcast. She's stepping up right now. And a lot of Republicans, including McCarthy, have since said they're not going to touch entitlements, which is Social Security and Medicare. So if you take that off the table, and then most Republicans in the House won't support anything that cuts defense spending. So if you take defense spending off the table, you are left with such a small pot of money of what is actually contributing to the debt that it's a little hard to take this negotiation seriously if the entire pot of money of what is actually contributing to the debt that it's a little hard to take this negotiation seriously if the entire pot of money that's on the table is the non-defense discretionary spending, which is like the education department, public lands, the FBI.

It's the stuff that makes the country run, and you're never going to balance the budget just looking at that pot of money. In some ways't in some ways this isn't a serious conversation. It's a serious political standoff. But if you are an actual policy wonk who's talking about balancing the budget, there's no one in their right mind across the ideological spectrum from conservative to liberal who would say you could get there just by looking at this tiny pot of money. And yet that's my soapbox. And yet every time this comes up, congressional Republicans are like, well, we got to look to the domestic spending.

Meanwhile, on the Hill this week, House Republicans were focused on a bit of revenge politics. The party voted along with strictly party lines to remove Representative Ilhan Omar. She's a Democrat from Minnesota. She was taken off of her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a pretty rancorous debate on the Hill. OK, so explain this. They were removing

her because she made anti-Semitic remarks in the past. Or were they removing her because House Republicans had been removed from a committee by Democrats in the last term? A little bit of both. I mean, this is certainly a bit of vengeance politics. Democrats acted unilaterally a couple of years ago to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia and Paul Gosar from Arizona off of their committee assignments because they had said both racist and anti-Semitic things. Republicans opposed it at the time because the precedent in the House is that parties get to decide which of their own members serves on committees. And Democrats did two years ago violate that longstanding precedent. And Republicans said, we're going to do it to you if we ever get power. And they're doing it to them. Not only did they vote to remove Ilhan Omar, who did in the past tweet things that were widely condemned as anti-Semitic. She has apologized for those things. And Democrats stood by her this week. They also unilaterally moved

to take Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off of the Intelligence Committee. But that's a committee that only the speaker decides. So it didn't get to require a vote. This required a vote. Yeah, look, like these are complicated politics. Now, it's a bit tit for tat. Also, Ilhan Omar is a Muslim black woman who has been the source of a lot of conservative anger, and she's been a convenient foil. So it was just kind of ugly. And I think even some Republicans were uncomfortable with the ugliness of it. They did extract a promise from McCarthy to sort of take this process and put it to the ethics committee because I think members don't really like this idea that they're kicking people off willy-nilly. So we'll see where it goes. But it does, you know, relations between the two parties have not been good for a while. And this kind of stuff does set a tone that I do

think makes things like finding bipartisan cooperation on things like the debt limit and any other difficult issue that much harder. I also do think it's interesting that it took them about a week to round up the votes for this thing that they promised to do. Yeah, it wasn't easy. And this is a good, nothing's easy for Kevin McCarthy these days, right? You know, what's interesting is that usually parties keep this stuff sort of shrouded in substance, even if there is some vengeful tactic underneath. But I heard Chip Roy of Texas actually just come out and say it yesterday, where he said, you know, he made a baseball metaphor where he said, you know, Democrats came out and hit one of our players. And so when they come up to bat, we're going to hit one of

theirs. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break. Domenico, we're going to let you go, but you'll be back for Can't Let It Go. And we'll be with Selena Simmons-Duffin of NPR's health team. Hey, Selena. Hey, Sue. Not only do I love having you on the podcast, but I love seeing you in the studio with us. Oh, likewise. So this week, the White House said they plan to end the COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11th. These were, of course, enacted by the Trump administration back in 2020

in the beginning days of the pandemic. The White House made the announcement in a statement saying they would oppose two bills in the Republican-controlled House intending to end the emergency declarations even sooner than that. Tam, is that what provoked this response from the White House? So the White House was definitely on the way to not extending the public health emergencies into infinity. They were definitely working on finding a way to bring this period of our lives to a close in terms of these two national emergencies that are in place. House Republicans were going to put these bills up for a vote. And there were Democrats in Congress who

did not want to have to vote against ending the COVID emergency because that would just make them look like they wanted a permanent emergency. And so they put pressure, as I understand it, on the White House to announce that they were going to end the emergency. So then they would have something to point to to say, no, we don't want to support this now, but we do support the administration's plan to end these emergencies. I will say that in the statement from the White House, there is one word that stands out to me, which is that the president intends to let the emergencies expire on May 11th. He could change his intentions. Intend is doing some work in that statement. I mean, politically, it seems quite obvious that Joe Biden has an interest in saying he's the president who ended the public health emergency as he prepares to run for a reelection in 2024.

It did seem sort of inevitable from that standpoint. Yeah. And, you know, he had said on I think it was 60 Minutes, that the pandemic was over. And what he meant by that was that the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic, the, oh, my God, we can't handle this phase, had passed and that the public in many respects had moved on. And I think as we sit here today, Selena, what does ending a public health emergency mean? Does it really have much real world impact? Well, it would have had a lot of real world impact if Congress hadn't slowly like peeled away some of the biggest impacts. So one thing that people have been really worried about is the chance for states to start disenrolling people from Medicaid, the great unwinding. So Medicaid is now 91 million people. More than one in four Americans are on Medicaid. And states haven't been able to disenroll people. But that has been peeled away. That is no longer tied to the public health emergency. Telemedicine, everyone's like, oh, no, we won't be able to do our telemed appointments. That has been extended for two years. So all of the big ticket items are no longer connected.

So I think the biggest one is that if you have been using these kiosks where you go and you get swapped and you get a free PCR test, you don't even need to tell them your insurance. That all is going to get gone. Because that was all under the structure of a public health emergency. Exactly. Right. And so you might still get free PCR tests if you go to your in-network doctor and have them write a prescription and like do that whole process that we have to do for other stuff. Like flu tests or strep tests. Yeah, exactly.

So the vaccines and treatments, there's still a lot that has been bought by the federal government. So nothing's going to change with those until that stockpile runs out. Then vaccines and treatments will be part of kind of the regular medical system again. But, you know, vaccines are free for people with insurance regardless. Right. Because that was also written into law. Yeah, exactly. So I would say that if you're walking around down the street and you're like, oh, no, the public health emergency is gone. What's this going to mean to me?

It's like probably not a lot. I think symbolically what it means is like primary, really. And how you access the things that now exist. Because I think at least D.C. is a good example of we have these public health sites where you go and get your vaccines. But that would probably eventually, these would close down and you'll just get it through your doctor or through your CVS or whatever your other way of getting your vaccines are now. And I will say that one thing that some people may notice, if you have been using your insurance to get free at-home rapid COVID tests, that is likely no longer to be covered. The insurance companies were required under the public health emergency to provide free COVID tests to people, and you could get your insurance to reimburse you.

After the public health emergency ends, those tests will be treated like any other over-the-counter medical device. So your insurance does not reimburse you for a pregnancy test, for instance. That's the most equivalent one I can think of. So people insurance does not reimburse you for a pregnancy test, for instance. That's the most equivalent one I can think of. So people are going to, if they want to have these at-home rapid tests, buy them themselves, or they could go to their doctor and get a PCR or a rapid test, just like they get, you know, a flu test or a strep test. So, Selena, let me ask you the unanswerable question. Please.

Is the pandemic over? Yeah? From the public health perspective? Certainly, if you look at graphs of cases and deaths, and you look at the Omicron surge last year, we are nowhere near where we were even a year ago, right? There was a lot of concern about the tripledemic with RSV and flu this fall. It didn't turn out to be as bad as feared. Hospitals weren't overwhelmed in the way that a lot of experts were predicting, which is great. But just about 500 people still dying every day from COVID, that's still a lot. It's still a lot of people. The other thing is the booster rates. So, you know, there's all of this talk that FDA is going to start moving towards an annual COVID shot, just like the flu shot, which has terrible uptake every year. And the thing

that's really concerning me is looking at the bivalent booster uptake, 15% of the country has gotten it, 15, 1, 5. But the really concerning number is that 40% of people over 65 have gotten the booster. And that's the population. That gets hit the hardest. Exactly. That's the population you're worried about. nature of the end of the public health emergencies, will public health experts still be able to convince people to keep doing these boosters, to keep, you know, to mask if a new variant comes along and it's really spreading out of control again?

Like, will not having that emergency kind of hanging over things in this, like, sense that this is a different phase of our lives and COVID kind of runs the scene, you know, is it going to be harder to kind of re-engage the public to participate, to be able to... That sounds so hard to me right now. I mean, I think we can all agree that like, if you, we've, Tam, we've spent a lot of time traveling. I just, you know, I think it's fair to say this country feels very over the pandemic. There's the public health component of it, but I haven't gone anywhere in a very long time where people want to talk about it, are living their lives like that. I mean, it seems like that would be really hard to do to me. I mean, I have to say that that's not too disconnected from what you're seeing when you look at cases. So I was looking at the CDC

map of hotspots. Is it all still red? No, it's green now. It's 70% of counties have a low level of transmission right now. So there was a period where people were over it, but like public health experts were like, guys, it's really bad still. And that's not what's happening right now. I think there's a little bit more alignment, like population immunity is pretty good. Transmission is looking okay. And so this like, I think that there's this acceptance that maybe there is a time to start to wind some of these things up. And, you know, the administration does have a chance to extend things that really do work for people and that are popular and not have that tied to this public health emergency declaration anymore.

And the reason that the administration did not want to just cut it off immediately, as these House bills had called for, is because they're still building the off-ramp. They are still doing the rulemaking process to, for instance, potentially allow medications that had been prescribed through telemedicine to continue to be allowed to be prescribed through telemedicine. All the technicalities of how you unwind this stuff. Lots of very technical stuff because so much had been, and to some extent still is, but not as much as before, resting on those declared emergencies. All right, Selena, thank you so much for coming on the pod. It's been so great to see you. Thanks for having me.

All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back, and so is Domenico. Hey, Domenico. Hey. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Domenico, what can't you let go of this week? In short, I think let's call this the mystery of missing monkeys. Oh, go on.

I don't know if you've heard about the Dallas Zoo. Oh, yeah. A vandal who's apparently been cutting wires to fencing and enclosures. There was a clouded leopard that had gotten out at one point. There were two tamarin monkeys that were then found outside the zoo at someone's house, and a vulture that was found dead under mysterious circumstances, and this is a pretty rare species of bird. And police have been really kind of out on the hunt looking for who this potential person could have been. They increased cameras, increased security, and they think they might have a lead now because they actually arrested somebody who I guess was tied to the disappearance of the tamarin monkeys. And, you know, now have this person in custody, a 24-year-old who was spotted at the Talus World Aquarium. So we're going to see how this unfolds a bit

more was he going for penguins we don't know right i mean what was he gonna do is he gonna drain the tanks beats me okay so the thing that got me about this story when it first came out and it was just the leopard that was missing was they were like oh yeah and it's not considered a danger to the public a leopard is not considered a danger to the public. A leopard is not considered a danger to the public? It's only it was only a 25 pound leopard. And apparently this is like a, you know, was a fairly scared animal and all of that. But I remember that, too. And it's sort of getting me thinking, I don't know. I would want to come across one if I didn't have to. No, I do not like this story because I do not like this person because I do not like people that potentially harm animals for reasons unclear.

I mean, it sounds like they're maybe trying to like liberate these animals, but that is not the way to go about it. Well, I don't know. With the vulture that was found dead in suspicious circumstances, I'm not 100 percent certain that that's the case or if this was a black market situation or what exactly was going on here. Oof, that's dark. Tam, what can't you let go of this week? Okay, so on Monday, I was hosting the pod and Domenico was on with me and there was a timestamp that I thought was really charming. And I think we should just hear it again.

Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but hopefully by then I'll be in front. What? Okay, enjoy the show. Okay, the next tip is if you get a little too close to the mic, you end up over-modulated. So it's like this careful balance when you're under that coat of not getting too excited to be under a coat. That's why producers and editors are great. So Domenico, here's my question for you. Did you know what that timestamp was actually about at the time that it happened? No, and I couldn't actually make out what she was saying, but apparently she said France,

and I had no idea what that was in reference to until somebody tweeted at us telling us. Oh, not just a somebody. You had multiple people? There have been many messages from people who are like, oh, cute. You guys don't know the internet, do you? Sometimes no. I don't know the internet. That's actually true.

Sometimes we don't. Okay. So here is the inspiration I have now learned. I spent a fair bit of time on something called knowyourmeme.com. Okay. I'm writing that down. And this is Eva Colas, who in the 2018 Miss Universe pageant had a failure of, I don't know what. Let's hear it. It's like this, it's this terrible, like, screeching owl.

It was like the Dean scream of the miss usa pageants also why is something from 2018 trending now yeah the answer my friends is tiktok uh somehow it was unearthed i mean i there's a lot more information about this on knowyourmeme.com i will tell you uh i won't get into the full details, but the answer is they were shouting over loud music. In fact, another woman at that pageant also had a vocal failure, but at least her country had two syllables. But with France, you're just out of luck. You know what's funny about TikTok bringing things back is, do you guys remember the song, I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller by Skilo? Of course, yeah.

In 1995. Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller by Skilo in 1995? I wish I was a baller. I was listening to one of our local stations and they play like a know your tune kind of thing. Know your oldies? Well, no. Know a song. Like they play a little bit of it. And then this mom calls in and said she named the song.

And they were like, how did you know that? And I was just like, my 12-year-old knew. And they're like, how did your 12-year-old know? He said, it's on TikTok. Yeah. Trending. Well, did you guys know that I am ayear-old know? He said, it's on TikTok. Yeah. Trending. Well, did you guys know that I am a meme on TikTok? I did not know you're a meme.

Well, I mean, not really. But I asked former President Trump if he had known that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the night that she died. We were on the tarmac. Tiny Dancer was playing. And his reaction was. Wow. I didn't know that. I just, you're telling me now for the first time. Tiny Dancer was playing and his reaction was. It's the music that makes the music. Yeah.

And that has turned into some sort of TikTok meme. And the weird thing is, like every six months it comes up. It's like, oh, Tam's Tam's thing is. Do you have like an alert for yourself? Pop up on TikTok or what? I don't even know. No, people tell me. Every time I hear the word meme, I just hear Mara Eliasson going, I hate memes.

Because Mara really doesn't like the word meme. I can't think of a meme without thinking about Mara. Oh, Sue, what can't you let go of? The thing I can't let go of this week is a little bit of the joie de vivre of my week, which was earlier today, I got to be the mystery reader for my daughter's pre-K four class. And it was both the most fun I've had in a while, but honestly, one of the most intense things I've had to do because kids are like, four is just, it's like a magical age, but they are just like fire hydrants of like activity and talking. And there's 19 kids in our class.

It was so fun. But they're like, they're so excited to see you, but they literally are like physically crawling all over your body while you're trying to like read books. They're fighting with each other. And kids just say the most hilarious random stuff. Like you'll just be reading about cake and like a little boy will stand up and be like, I like poop cake. You're like, I don't know what to say to that. And then like other kids are like,

I saw an alien. It was at my house. And I'm like, oh, okay. Do you like giraffes? I'm like, I do. I like giraffes. Like you don't know what they're going to ask you or how, and you're also trying to like

both lead them, but play with them, but be with them. And I was like, I literally, when I was done, I was like, I think I'm sweating through my shirt right now. But it was so fun. My daughter was like so happy to have it. It's like they're still at this age. And you both know this, like four to eight is the age when like your parents, you're still your gods among men, you know. So it's it was super fun to go spend time with a room full of four year olds.

But also really can't let it go because pre-K-4 teachers, man, they're amazing. Their ability to keep them in control and do that every day, I love them so much. So that was my fun for the week. Oh, 100%. All right, that's a wrap for us today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Matori. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and Casey Morrell.

Research and fact-checking by our intern, Devin Speak. Thanks to Christiana of Calamore, Brandon Carter, and Lexi Schipital. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.