The NPR Politics Podcast - Congress is back in session. Can Democrats finally pass Build Back Better?

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Democrats have two major pieces of unfinished business on their to-do list. They'll try, again, to reach a compromise on President Biden's signature Build Back Better bill, and they say passing voting rights legislation is also a top priority. But they don't have the votes right now to do either.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Maureen in Grantsville, Maryland. My New Year's resolution is to produce more creative work that I'm proud of, and I just hit publish on episode one of season two of my own podcast. This episode was recorded at 2.05 p.m. on Monday, January 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but either way, I know you all will still be working hard to bring us the political news, puppy content, and Star Wars references we can't live without. Okay, here's the show. Always wanted to say that. Well, now I need to know what her podcast is about.

You can't leave us hanging like that. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And Congress is back from break, both sides, both chambers. And their to-do list for 2022

looks, well, a lot like their to-do list from the end of 2021. Certainly for Democrats, they will try again to reach a compromise on President Biden's signature Build Back Better bill. And they say passing voting rights legislation is also a top priority. Kelsey, these are two big pieces of unfinished business. Let's start with Build Back Better. Where does that stand right now? Well, I guess we could start by, you know, I'll just sing the song that never ends, which is that this hinges on the decisions of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. This is the song that never ends. Oh, yeah.

I've been singing this song for a long time now, but it is back to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. You know, as we've said many, many times, Democrats need to be completely unified in the Senate in order to pass Build Back Better because they are trying to do it using budget reconciliation. And those special budget rules that allow them to get it passed without a Republican filibuster require them to have all of their members, all the Democrats, on board to pass the bill. Last checked with Manchin, he was still opposed to some of the major pieces of this, like the overall price tag. He says it's too expensive. He doesn't support having paid family leave included in this bill.

He's raised questions about the execution and the cost of the child tax credit. And he also says the climate provisions are moving too fast. So those are some pretty basic elements of the child tax credit. And he also says the climate provisions are moving too fast. So those are some pretty basic elements of the bill, and they really don't seem to be any closer to having an agreement on it. What are we calling this now? Is it Manchinima, Cinemansion? Like, what do we, which, which corny thing do we agree on? Well, the thing is, is that Manchinima, so cinema being Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, they have different things that they want from this bill. And in a lot of ways, we pay a lot of attention to Manchin because he's been the most vocal about it. And as I talk to Democrats who are negotiating different parts of it, they feel like he is the bigger challenge.

They think that Sinema is actually more on board with the policy provisions in the bill than, say, Manchin is. So like before Christmas, he said no. But it seems as though that was not a hard no. It was more of a pause. Yeah. I mean, like, it seems like it wasn't a real breakup. It was a temporary breakup. Well, that's the thing that we've seen a lot here is that Manchin has, on many occasions, basically said he was done with the negotiations and come back to the table in some way, shape, or form. Question now is whether or not this is a real breakup, as we were just talking about, or if they're just, you know, having a lover's quarrel and taking a break and coming

back to this negotiation further down the line. I mean, the thing that I will say, though, is that Manchin's objections really haven't changed all that much. They just have kind of, you know, taken turns in the spotlight. So for a while, we were focusing on Manchin's concerns about the price tag. And then it seemed to be that that was getting resolved. And we were focusing on his concerns about the child tax credit. And that seemed to kind of fade into the background until it came back up at the end. So it's a little bit of a game of whack-a-mole here if we're going to be mixing metaphors. But like this, this is what Democrats are facing right now. And I guess if Manchin were to get

everything that he wants, and it's not 100% clear even what he wants, is there a problem then for Biden with his left flank losing progressives who feel like they've already compromised a lot. There's a huge problem with that. And they, as much as they need unanimous support in the Senate, they can barely afford to lose any votes in the House either. And there are a lot more people, members of the Progressive Caucus in the House than there are in the Senate. And, you know, if they go too far to appease Manchin, they could lose all of them in the House, and then it falls apart in a completely new and different way. You know, the vast majority of progressives were willing to compromise and wait around, and frankly have been very, very patient and much more

practical and pragmatic than I think a lot of people maybe would normally give them credit for, and they were waiting and also warning about Senator Manchin and not wanting to wait around too long because what happened through the end of last year, you wound up just having highlights of Democrats fighting Democrats, President Biden's approval rating going down. And we've seen a distinct tactic on the White House's part, on President Biden's part, to sort of shift the focus now, it feels, toward targeting Republicans a little bit more. That's absolutely right. So let's talk about pure politics here. On the policy front, Democrats want to get this done because they believe in the policy. On the politics side of it, we're officially in an election year. It has happened. We're here. The 2022 midterms are this

year. And politically, and I don't know if there's a correct answer on this, but politically, do Democrats need to pass something? Do they need Build Back Better to run on in 2022? A lot of them say that they do. They need to pass something because they're likely to lose the House in 2022. Certainly, to have something to say that they've done, that they've been able to push through, that Republicans have stood against, would certainly be more helpful than not, but also would be more helpful to get something passed in their view of what direction they think the country should go in. Because if they don't pass it, and the Republicans do wind up taking

back the House in 2023, then it's going to be a very long time before Democrats are able to get through this agenda again. So it sounds like you're saying the policy is actually more important than the politics here. I think for a lot of people, they go into politics because they want to enact policy. Right. Yes. But I think that the issue here, taking precedence, is the policy because Democrats are seeing

this sort of brick wall at the end of the road. Yeah. Well, and every day there's an announcement of a new Democratic member of Congress who's retiring or planning to retire, which means they see the writing on said brick wall. To mix more metaphors. This is the NPR Politics Mixed Metaphor Podcast. A melange of mixed metaphors. I do want to talk about one other big ticket item on the Democrats' agenda,

and that is voting rights. There are two bills that have basically been languishing in the Senate for months, and the president's going to make another big push on this. Yeah, that's right. There is this expectation that the Senate is going to vote sometime this week on two bills. That's the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. They include parts that would ensure that states have early voting and they would make Election Day a public holiday. They would increase access to mail-in voting. And so they are they're kind of comprehensive approaches to addressing voting access in the country. And where do they stand?

This is one of those situations where Democrats, again, need at least 10 Republicans to join them to get around a filibuster. And that means, you know, they'd have to have a process of trying to change the Senate rules to try to pass these bills with just a simple majority. But that, again, is extremely politically fraught. And it does not appear that they are heading in the direction of finding success here. Because at this point, they don't have the votes for that either. No. And we could go back to that song that never ends. Right. This is my other song that never ends.

All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more about the politics of voting rights. And we're back. And President Biden and Vice President Harris are going to Georgia tomorrow to deliver remarks about voting rights, to make a push for voting rights legislation. And we will be covering that tomorrow on the pod. But I wanted to bring up another idea that's been floating out there, which is reforming the Electoral Count Act. That is a law from the 19th century passed after a long ago messy election that lays out the way Congress counts the votes in the Electoral College after presidential elections. And the thought here, I think, is, hey, things were kind of a mess around, I don't know, January 6th leading up to it, questions about whether the vice

president's role was ceremonial or whether he could actually overturn, you know, throw out electors. So, Kelsey, is this actually being discussed? Well, there are some kind of complex things happening here. You know, Democrats and Republicans generally agree that the electoral contact, which I should say was written in 1887, is very complex and it's confusing and it's poorly written. But, you know, Democrats are pretty wary of Republicans wanting to make changes to this bill, in part because they think that, you know, if they were to address just this portion of it, that there would be a possibility that Republicans would essentially not be willing to move forward on any other election related changes saying that this is sufficient, that this handles the issues that Democrats have, and then Democrats would lose their opportunity to address voting rights more broadly. I think that is one of the biggest objections here. Yeah. And this law essentially dictates when states results should be turned in,

when electors to the electoral college should vote, and that members of Congress can object and prolong the vote counting even without a legitimate concern. You know, and it also dictates, remember, the role of the vice president, but it's not explicitly clear. So it's a big mess. You have a lot of people who want to reform this, even good government sort of groups on the outside want to reform this, but you are seeing some politics at play, as Kelsey's noting. Yeah, I mean, it almost seems as though there is an issue that everyone agrees is an issue that most people agree should be addressed before it becomes a problem again. And it's likely that the person who was trying to misuse the Electoral Count Act will run again in 2024. I mean, are Democrats

letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here and the perfect that they don't even have a path to get? Well, I think Democrats are seeing that there's a problem that is also current, which is access to voting being restricted in a lot of states that disproportionately affects black and brown voters. And they're seeing that as a major issue, that the Voting Rights Act used to be something that was passed almost unanimously in Congress until the Supreme Court sort of gutted key portions of that. So they don't want this to be a distraction, which is what a lot of Democrats have said, that some are going to use this as a way to move on and not address the bigger issues that need to be addressed as well. Right. And it's not like Democrats promised voters that they were going to go and change this specific law that dealt with the ceremonial aspects and the certification of the election.

They promised voters that they were going to reform voting rights and voting voting access across the country. So if they were to only accept this one narrow change, they would not be fulfilling the promises that they made to voters. And that's something that they've struggled with very significantly the entirety of this last year. Yeah. I mean, I guess this is just where we are as a country and where we are politically. But you mentioned this, it's sort of remarkable. Voting rights used to be bipartisan. Renewing the Voting Rights Act used to be sort of a pro forma thing. It just happened. I mean, some debate, but not like this, not where you have a fundamental disagreement over whether voting rights is the greatest threat to

democracy or whether, you know, voting integrity is the greatest threat to democracy. I mean, it's remarkable, the polarization. You know, I mean, obviously, it's what we've seen in public opinion, you know, two thirds of people in our PR Ipsos poll that we did recently showed that people feel that democracy is under attack, except they believe very differently why it's under attack. The right thinking that liberalism is the problem, the left saying that there's a threat to democracy when it comes to truth and what's happening with the metastasization of the big lie, that Trump really lost the election but keeps claiming that he won it falsely. Yeah, and now policy is being conducted based on those claims. All right, we are going to leave it there for now. We will be back in your feeds tomorrow after President Biden speaks in Georgia,

so it might be a little bit later than usual. And it's a new year, so we need new timestamps for the top of the show. Just record them on your phone and send them to nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.