The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's Pitch to Congress: Make Government Great Again

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Biden detailed how he says his two multi-trillion dollar legislative proposals will reshape American society.READ OUR COVERAGEThis episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and political correspondent Juana Summers.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. And the time now is 11.15 p.m. on the 28th of April. And tonight, President Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. So I stand here tonight before you in a new and vital hour of life and democracy of our nation, and I can say with absolute confidence, I have never been more confident or optimistic about

America, not because I'm president, because what's happening with the American people. We've stared into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain, and we the people did not flinch. And he delivered that address in a room that was clearly marked by those challenges that the country is facing. It was socially distanced and that House chamber was under attack not that long ago. Kelsey Snell, you were in the room tonight. What was it like? It was a very, very, very different joint address. It was very different from any State of the Union or joint address that I have ever attended. You know, in some ways, it was different just because people were wearing masks and were far apart. But it was also different because there were so few people there.

You know, members and senators were up in the areas where there are usually people from the public and guests of members. And they were all spread with at least six seats between them. And it was it was just a very, very different vibe. Yeah. And there was something else that was different that hit me in a way that I was surprised by how it hit, which is we all knew that this was going to be the first time in American history that there were two women up on the dais. Anyway, thank you all. Madam Speaker,

Madam Vice President, the Speaker of the House and the Vice President. No president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words. And it's about time. You know, what was also very interesting was that before the president came in, the second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, was in the room and he was sitting in his seat kind of near where I was sitting. And he waited till he caught the vice president's eye and then he started waving at her and blowing her kisses. It was very it was it was a moment that it was kind of fun to watch. Well, let's get to the substance of the speech. And he started in a place where we've all been for the last year, which is in the pandemic and talking about the pandemic, he made a very passionate plea for people to get vaccinated, anyone over 16 get vaccinated. And, and he also talked about just just the process of recovery that's underway.

Americans always get up. Today, that's what we're doing. America's rising anew, choosing hope over fear, truth over lies and light over darkness. After 100 days of rescue and renewal, America's ready for a takeoff, in my view. It was like really one of those kind of Joe Biden moments where, you know, he kind of tries to capture the mood of the country and kind of lift it up more. But, you know, he did it in an effective way. I mean, this is something that he has really worked for him in his first hundred days. And it was that goodwill that he has got that he really used to lay the groundwork for the rest of this speech and for his call to support some of his really ambitious

economic spending and tax plans. Yeah, I would note that he really did front load this speech with the uplift and then the pitch for the programs. And Kelsey, maybe you could talk about what stood out about his pitch for these very large, potentially economy reshaping programs. I thought it was very interesting that he was very forthright and very upfront about how he was going to pay for all of this spending, talking about taxes on the wealthy, saying that the vast majority of people would not see their taxes raised, but that he was willing to really blatantly talk about raising taxes. You don't hear that very often in a speech like this, and that's exactly what he did. And he was saying that that was necessary to do things like address climate

change and put working class families in a better position for college. Let's hear a little bit about how he described it. Nearly 90% of the infrastructure jobs created in the American Jobs Plan do not require a college degree. 75% don't require an associate's degree. The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America. That's what it is. It was a lot of talking in populist terms, things like we heard right there. He's saying that, you know, these jobs don't require a degree, but the big part of the plan that they rolled out over this week involves free two years of community college to get people into additional schooling after high school. So there's this push from the administration to make this speak to people on populist terms.

Wanda, it took pretty far into the speech for him to talk about issues of race. But when he did, he really did. Yeah, so this is a president that in the early days of his administration really sought to define himself by how he would focus on equity. And he's also as a candidate, Biden is someone who ran on a promise of making an impact on systemic racism. He named it explicitly as one of four crises facing this nation. And we heard him really start to get into these issues quite specifically on issues of race and policing that have really been at the forefront of our society, most notably because of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd,

but also the spate of killings of people by police. And he talked about what that has looked like and what it's felt like and what he hopes to do. We've all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of black Americans. Now's our opportunity to make some real progress. The vast majority of men and women wearing a uniform and a badge serve our communities and they serve them honorably.

I know them. I know they want... You know, it's interesting where the applause started in that sentence. The applause started, and I don't fully understand the dynamic and the room is hard to read, but the applause started after a fairly pro-police sentence in a section that was not necessarily pro-police. Yeah, so I think this underscores some of the challenge with where President Biden sits on these issues. He is someone who has explicitly talked about the need to confront systemic racism, but he is also someone throughout the course of his career who has presented himself as an ally of the law enforcement community, something that came, frankly, to the frustration of many activists on the left during the campaign. And you heard him in those remarks kind of wrap the law enforcement community up in this concerted push to meaningfully change the way that policing happens, and that people of color, Black people,

to say it plainly, are experiencing policing. But the other thing that he said that really struck my mind here is the fact that he is calling on Congress to pass this legislation, the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, and he gave them a deadline that I had not heard before. He called on them to do this relatively quickly to actually come up with some kind of compromise and to pass policing overhaul by the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, which is in May. That's quite quick in congressional terms. Speaking of things that the president called on Congress to pass, he really did seem to call on Congress to pass a lot, which, you know, he's president of the United States, but he is a senator to his bones, and he understands that he needs Congress. But Franco, in particular, on issues around the border and

immigration, he really just seemed to be like, hey, you guys, take care of that for me. Yeah, not surprisingly, he kind of largely avoided the border crisis, which has dogged him over the first hundred days. It's, you that has been the source of some of his bad polls at a time when most polls are positive for him. Instead, he talked about his comprehensive immigration plan. On day one of my presidency, I kept my commitment and sent a comprehensive immigration bill to the United States Congress. If you believe we need to secure the border, pass it, because it has a lot of money for high-tech border security.

If you believe in a pathway to citizenship, pass it. There's over 11 million undocumented folks, the vast majority of here overstaying visas. Pass it. We can actually, if you actually want to solve a problem, I've sent a bill to take a close look at it. And, you know, he also seemed to acknowledge that, you know, right off that it's unlikely to pass. That the very next words that he said were like, if you're not going to pass this, pass some of the measures that Congress is pushing for. And it seemed like he's just not as behind these issues as he is others. You know, maybe it's a little bit of reality about what we've been talking about, because this is an issue that is going to really be tough to get any type of bipartisan agreement on. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back,

more on President Biden's address and the Republican response. I'm Yo-Ai Shaw. I'm Kia Miyakunatis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia. You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. And we're back. And I want to talk about the tone of this speech. President Biden came into office on the promise that he was going to turn the temperature down. I don't think anyone tuning into this address was wondering,

oh my gosh, is he going to say something crazy? But did he accomplish what he needed to accomplish? Did he turn the temperature down? Did he make a bipartisan appeal? In regards to the temperature being turned down, after four years of covering, you know, former President Donald Trump, you know, and this is no shocking revelation. Yes, he turned, you know, he turned the temperature down.

Bipartisanship, you know, that's another issue. I think he called for bipartisanship, but also acknowledged how difficult that is to be. And when we heard the response from Senator Tim Scott, we really got, you know, an earful that, you know, it's going to be tough to find some agreement between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington today. Yeah, that's right. And one of the things I was thinking about as I was listening to the speech is that while I don't think that many people would categorize President Biden as a far left progressive, if you are a progressive, if you are to the left flank of the Democratic Party, I think that there is a lot to like in a speech like this. I spoke to a number of progressive

lawmakers and progressive activists ahead of the speech, who told me that their assessment of President Biden was that he had gone farther than they initially expected him to go. They gave him largely positive views. And I think there were some breadcrumbs sprinkled throughout for them to like. But when I think about a speech like this, right, there are kind of two audiences. There's the argument he's making to the American public. And then there's the message that the president is sending to the Congress. And you know, this is a man who spent a lot of time in Congress, he has relationships with a number of people who were listening to the speech,

either in the chamber or virtually, but some of the people who he needs to buy into this agenda that he's talking about, are people he has has long relationships with who know his style, who know how he approaches these types of issues. And that was something that I kind of thought about as I was listening to every line of this speech is that this is someone who's speaking to an audience to one audience, at least that he has a great deal of familiarity with. Let's go to the Republican response, because that review was not glowing. Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican senator and the only black Republican in the Senate, he argued that President Biden has not kept his promise to be bipartisan, to lead in a bipartisan way. And he pointed to the COVID relief package passed at the beginning of President Biden's term with Democratic votes alone. In February, Republicans told President Biden, we wanted to keep working together to

finish this fight. But Democrats wanted to go it alone. They spent almost $2 trillion on a partisan bill that the White House bribed was the most liberal bill in American history. Only 1% went to vaccinations, no requirement to reopen schools promptly. COVID brought Congress together five times. This administration pushed us apart. I think it's important when we hear that to remember that Congress did come together on those bills, but it wasn't easy. It was easy once. It was easy when they knew that they had to get some money out the door at the beginning of the pandemic, and they were fairly united on the CARES Act. But everything that followed was a real fight. Wanda, can we talk about something you mentioned before, which is this effort to come to some sort of agreement on policing reforms?

Senator Scott is deeply involved in that, but the way he talked about it in his response address jumped out at you. Yeah, you know, Tam, I have to say that listening to these two speeches back to back, what I heard was two legislators with two very different life experiences, with philosophically different understandings of the scale of systemic racism and the scope of it. I mean, the president spoke first, and you heard him talk about the chance, the opportunity to root out systemic racism. You heard him say that we saw the knee of injustice on the neck of Black America. And then following him, you heard Senator Scott, who is one of only 11 Black senators in history, talk about his own experiences with law enforcement, with discrimination, his efforts to legislate around the issue of race and policing that had been unsuccessful. And then you hear him talk

about the fact that he does not believe America to be a racist country. He says it's backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination. And as we talk about this policing legislation, which negotiations continue on, in which there have been some optimistic signs, you heard him say that at times, he believes that some of his colleagues, some of his Democratic colleagues want the issue more than they wanted the solution. And I just thought that was so striking, listening to them both kind of wade into this territory in very different ways. And, and it just speaks to how big the gulf is between some people in this country, even folks who I think both take these issues really seriously. They're just they're just not in the

same ballpark. Yeah. There, there, there was just such a long list of items in this address that pointed to intractable challenges that the nation faces. All right, we are going to leave it there for now. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.