The NPR Politics Podcast - Can Another $1.9 Trillion Rescue The Economy?

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

The pandemic is taking an immense toll on the nation: some 4000 Americans die each day. And, in December, another 140 thousand people lost their jobs. President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a pricy relief package meant to take on those outsized crises, suggesting the price of doing nothing is even greater than the cost of the legislation.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley.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. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And we have NPR's Chief Economics Correspondent Scott Horsley here with us. Hey, Scott. Hey, Tim. I used to cover the White House. Indeed you did. And now you cover the economy, which is convenient. The time now is 9.39 p.m. on Thursday, the 14th of January. And earlier this evening, President-elect Joe Biden outlined an ambitious plan that he hopes will help the nation make it through the twin crises, as he described it, of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout. He is asking Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion sprawling coronavirus relief package. And it's not hard to see that we're in the middle of the once in several generations economic crisis with a once in several generations public health crisis. The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight.

There's no time to waste. We have to act and we have to act now. And Aisha, you were there in Wilmington with Joe Biden when he made that announcement, delivered that address. What should we know about his plan? So, you know, this is, as you said, a really big plan. But what Joe Biden and his team are saying is that this is what's needed to meet the moment. They're asking for direct payments of $1,400. That's to supplement that $600 that Congress passed in December. It would also expand and extend unemployment benefits, give aid to small businesses. There's $130 billion in it for schools to safely reopen. And there's also supposed to be

a lot of money to stand up a national vaccination program and things of that nature. But this this is a really big package. And some of it is a bit of a Democrat wish list, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are many of these are items that we have heard Democrats talking about for a long time, certainly that we've heard them talking about, you know, since this summer when they passed their Coronavirus relief bill in the House, but then it didn't go anywhere. So in a way, you know, Biden, when Congress in December passed this $900 billion relief plan, he said it was a down payment. I guess now he's coming to collect the rest. Yeah, basically. I mean, and that's why he talked about it's going to like like the current plan gives $300 in federal funding for unemployment benefits. And that goes, I think, through March or so.

Scott can let me know. Yeah, the existing plan is it runs through March. And Biden's plan would bump that up to $400 and also extend the emergency payments through September or even longer if economic conditions warrant. Yeah, so it's things of that nature. It's, you know, expanding the payments and basically trying to get, you know, money into people's hands now. Yeah, I mean, I guess, Scott, March is really soon. It sounds like with this plan, Biden is essentially saying, like, hold your hats, guys. This is going to be tough for a while. Exactly.

And he's right about that. We are 10 months into this pandemic now, at least on U.S. soil, and it's looking as bad as it ever has. We're losing more than 4,000 Americans every day. And in addition to the very real human toll, the economic cost is now starting to mount once again. We learned last week that we lost jobs as a country in December for the first time since April.

Just this morning, Thursday morning, we learned that another 1.2 million Americans applied for unemployment aid in the first week of the new year. So both the medical toll and the economic toll are just mounting. And we all have our fingers crossed that these new vaccines are going to bring hope and relief from this pandemic. But that's going to take time, especially because the initial rollout has been so slow. In fact, Biden today called it a dismal failure. We'll have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated, to create more places for them to get vaccinated, to mobilize more medical teams to get shots in people's arms, to increase vaccine supply,

and to get it out the door as fast as possible. But that's really what it's going to take. I mean, everybody has acknowledged, and we've said many times, we're not going to have an economic recovery until we get a handle on this pandemic. Right now, we're moving in the wrong direction. So I think if he can actually deliver on that pandemic relief, he's going to have some running room to deal with some of these other issues. Many of these ideas have been proposed before and been knocked down by Republicans in past negotiations. In the most recent negotiation, they were certainly getting louder and louder about

worries about the debt and the deficit and saying the price tag was too big. And now Biden is talking about another really big price tag. But he is also trying to sort of anticipate those arguments that he that he's going to get from the other party. You know, I know what I just described does not come cheaply. The failure to do so will cost us dearly. The consensus among leading economists is we simply can't not afford not to do what I'm proposing. Right. So what he's saying there is, okay, the price tag of doing this is $1.9 trillion. The price tag of not doing it is potentially even higher because we've got more than 18 million people right now on the unemployment lines. Many of them have been on the

unemployment rolls since March and are likely to stay on the rolls for months to come. The longer it takes to solve this problem, the more long-term distress there's going to be, the more people might lose their roof over their head, they might lose their job skills, the scarring could be really damaging. And he also argued that right now the government can borrow money at next to nothing, so it's a good time to take on additional government debt, even though our existing debt's pretty high, and really tackle this challenge in an aggressive way. You know, the Trump administration has been really aggressive in developing these vaccines in record time, or encouraging the private sector

to develop vaccines in record time. But then they basically just gave the vaccines to the states and said, now it's up to you. And we've seen that that hasn't been terribly effective. And that's been similar to the administration's sort of M.O. in dealing with the pandemic from the get-go. So President-elect Biden is pushing for a much more aggressive federal role. That comes with a price tag, but he's suggesting the payoff will be, we get out of the pandemic faster, we have less scarring for the workforce, and people can go back to, you know, seeing their loved ones and living their lives the way they want to. And certainly there are economists or even the Fed chairman who have been making a similar argument that you almost can't spend too much right now on, on, on stimulus.

The other thing that stood out to me was, you know, Biden really leaning into the idea that not only is this an economic argument, but that it's a moral argument, that there's a moral obligation to help people who especially, you know, first responders, people, you know, those people that have been working in the grocery stores and doing all these essential workers who have who may be struggling to keep them in their homes and make sure that people are fed and and to make sure that people don't fall into really hard times at this moment. It's the right thing for our economy. It's the fair thing. It's the decent thing to do. All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more on Biden's proposals, including something related to the minimum wage. Support for NPR and the following message come from BetterHelp, offering online counseling. BetterHelp therapist Hesu Jo knows that lockdown has been hard on us

as humans. We as people are hardwired to connect with others, which is why this whole time is so difficult. The connection that happens between people can be very powerful and how healing it can be to have a healthy relationship with someone. To get matched with a counselor within 48 hours and save 10%, go to betterhelp.com slash politics. With civil unrest, the pandemic and the economic crisis, you want to know what's happening right when you wake up. And that's why there is Up First, the news you need in about 10 minutes from NPR News. Listen every day. And we're back. And there are some other things in this plan that do not appear to be directly related to the pandemic response. And that includes a call from Biden to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

To at least $15 an hour. People tell me that's going to be hard to pass. Florida just passed it, as divided as that state is. They just passed it. The rest of the country is ready to move as well. There should be a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. No one working 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line. It's a big ask. And, you know, when we're talking about that wish list, this has been a part of the Democratic wish list for a long time. And they, you know, they're making the case that it should be done

now. Now, when Biden says that Florida passed an increase to $15 an hour, it did. It's a fairly slow phase in in Florida that doesn't get to $15 until 2026. But you know, there's 20 states that raise their minimum wage on the 1st of January. There are 22 local cities that raised their minimum wage on the 1st of January. There is certainly, you know, popular support for a higher minimum wage. The federal minimum right now is $7.25. It hasn't budged since 2009. $15 may be a reach for a lot of business people and for some voters, but, I think there's momentum in much of the country for something higher than the current minimum of seven and a quarter. You know, Republicans are probably going to really push back on this and probably not. I

probably don't need that. Probably. Can this get, can this package get through without some Republican support? Of course, Biden has said he wants it to be bipartisan, but Congress being what it is, does he need to bring some Republicans on board to get this done? This is the thing to keep in mind. You know, Democrats are in a much stronger position having won those two runoff elections in Georgia and having a very narrow margin in the Senate, not much bigger margin in the House. So they do have more control than they would have had those runoff elections gone the other way. But they're going to need Republican support to do a lot of what they want to do on their agenda.

That said, if push really comes to shove, they could try to pass some of the economic pieces of this proposal through reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority vote. Remember, that's how Republicans passed the 2017 tax cut. The signature legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration was done on a straight party line vote as well. Scott, we have fallen into legislative rabbit holes here. Can you help us better understand what reconciliation means in this context? What we should say is it's a legislative maneuver that allows the majority party to pass a financial legislation without the threat of a filibuster, that is without needing to have 60 votes to overcome the opposition of the minority party. Well, this will be the first test of many of what

Biden's governing majority looks like. And whether Joe Manchin ends up spending more time, you know, voting on the Republican side of the world, and whether someone like Lisa Murkowski will end up voting more on the Democratic side of the world. You know, this could be, you know, a future where moderates rule, potentially. Joe Manchin will be the Susan Collins of 2021. I bet he'll get an invitation to the White House pretty soon. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of Joe Manchin at the White House pretty soon. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of Joe Manchin at the White House. Okay. One more thing to note before we go. This was a pure policy speech. And this happened, this speech, a day after President Trump was impeached for the second time. And Biden made

no mention of impeachment or his predecessor. And he did something I think we're going to see a lot of going forward. He emphasized national unity. When America acts as one, there's never been a single thing we've been unable to do, no matter how consequential the issue has been. Out of all the peril of this moment, I want you to know, I give you a word, I see the promise, the promise as well. We've seen clearly what we face now. And I remain so optimistic about America. That was what was so striking in, I thought, this speech. It was not soaring oratory. That's not Joe Biden's stock in trade. But there was definitely a note of empathy.

And there was a note of humility, which are two things that have often been missing in words from the president during the last four years. Well, we will leave it there for now. Scott, thank you so much for coming back on the pod. Always good to be with you all. Yeah, and we will be back early tomorrow with a special episode for you. Keep your eyes on your feeds. That is all I will say about it for now. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.