The NPR Politics Podcast - COVID Relief Spending Dwarfs All Precedents

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

There is no easy way to describe how big $1.9 trillion dollars is. It's only the latest round of recovery spending. Democrats say this package could fundamentally change how Americans think about the role government can play in their lives.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and national political correspondent Mara LiassonConnect: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 y'all, I'm Professor Martha Olney at the University of California at Berkeley, and I'm just sitting down in my basement in El Cerrito, California, to teach my 500-student class in macroanalysis online on Zoom. And I'm remembering that today is the one-year anniversary of the last time I taught the class in person. Miss y'all, see y'all in person sometime in the future. This podcast was recorded at 2.07 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. And until then, let's keep Zooming. How do you raise your hand in class with 500 people on Zoom?

I can't even imagine if people aren't muted on a 500-person Zoom. Like, the logistics of that just sound pretty awful. I feel like everyone involved is probably eager to get back into the actual classroom. Yeah, I think a lot of kids are zoning out. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And President Biden is on the cusp of his first major legislative achievement. He might even call it a big blanken deal. The $1.9 trillion American rescue package. It's nominally a COVID relief bill. But as we've talked about a lot on the podcast, there's so much more in this

bill than just pandemic aid. And the reason we keep talking about it, Kelsey, is it's just an unprecedented amount of money. It's the biggest stimulus package, standalone stimulus package in American history. And if you add up all the spending that Congress has approved in the last year, we're talking about $6 trillion in spending. I don't even really know how to put into context for people how big the scope of this is. Well, we were starting to try to do that a little bit earlier, right? Like we were trying to compare it to other stimulus. We were trying to compare it to wars. One thing that I looked into was how it compares to the New Deal. And there was an analysis that the St. Louis Fed posted looking back at the 2009 stimulus and comparing those two things. And at the time,

in 2009 dollars, the New Deal totaled about $653 billion, $653 billion compared to $1.9 trillion that Congress is voting on this week. I also found an estimate from the Watson Institute, which is with Brown University, that says that all of the post 9-11 wars combined through 2020 cost just $5.4 trillion. So less than the combined. Yes. So we have spent more in the past year to confront this one pandemic than we have in 20 years of wars around the world. I mean, I think that just kind of speaks to, one, how much of the impact this pandemic has as if it is, you know, the normal course of things that that these numbers are so enormous, but the huge, huge, huge fallout in the economy feels so enormous that $1.9 trillion does not seem as, as huge as it as it is in comparison to

historical context. And we're going to find out if it's too big or not, if it triggers inflation. And we've had such an interesting debate about that, because if this is merely filling what they call the output gap, in other words, if it's just keeping the economy afloat, it's going to be fine. It's not going to trigger inflation. If it's going to send amounts of money into the economy that are way over the hit that the economy has taken from COVID, well, then it's going to spark inflation. But as we know, Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, has said even if it does, he can handle it. You know, we've talked a lot about in the pod about some of the most notable parts of the bill that people will feel soon, like the $1,400 stimulus checks,

extended unemployment benefits. But I want to talk more about the big political picture here, because Democrats have been pretty clear that they see this bill as something much bigger than just a bunch of policies. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, he talked about this right before the Senate passed the bill on Saturday. Let's be clear. This bill that we are completing now is the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working people in the modern history of this country. And not only are we going to go forward to crush this pandemic, to rebuild our economy, and to get our kids back to school safely, we're going to do something even more important. We're going to help restore faith in the United States government among the people of our country. Piece of cake, right, Mara?

Look, that is certainly what Democrats hope. And there's no doubt that people in an emergency, in a crisis, a depression, a pandemic, look to the government for help. And all of a sudden, they understand what government is supposed to do. We've had decades of Republicans running against the government. Remember Ronald Reagan, the government isn't part of the solution, it's part of the problem. But this is a moment in time when people needed help from the government and the Democrats are determined to give it to them. The question that I have for Bernie Sanders is, he seems very confident that they're going to restore faith in the United States government. Well, to do that, they're going to have to implement and execute this COVID relief bill

correctly. In other words, the money has to go to people. The vaccines have to get into people's arms. Schools have to open. I mean, those things have to happen before Bernie Sanders' wish comes true. They also have to happen fairly quickly and without some sort of, you know, people have to view this as being done legitimately. It can't appear that there's a lot of corruption happening in the process of spending this money, right? And the interesting thing about this is these are Democrats who were in office just five years ago. They learned hard lessons about how the Obama stimulus plan was seen exactly in the way Kelsey just described. It was doled out into people's paychecks. People didn't know they were getting help from the government. This time, you can see the Biden administration applying those lessons.house size check to every eligible American. They can't do that. With Joe Biden's signature on it.

Right, with Joe Biden's signature. But the White House is also intent on making sure Biden takes a victory lap, something they think Obama didn't do. And he's going to spend a lot of time telling Americans what kind of help they're getting from their government. One of the criticisms of the bill from Republicans has been that Democrats are using this as a vehicle to include all these policies they couldn't get done in the past. And Kelsey, we joke about this a lot, but Democrats are like, yeah, absolutely. Definitely, that's what we're doing. That is what we're doing. They also, they say, they say, we're doing that and we ran on it. Yeah. And I think one of the- You mean like expanding the ACA? Yeah, I was going to say, I think maybe one of the best examples of that in this bill,

and we haven't focused on this as much, is that it does the most since the law was passed to expand and strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats haven't been able to do for the past decade because Republicans have controlled some lever of power in either Congress or the White House to block them from doing that. Kelsey, can you just sort of broadly explain what the bill would do for the ACA? Yeah, the idea is that they want to capture a lot of people who fell into this space between being eligible for the marketplaces to basically buy Obamacare plans, but were not eligible for any kind of help in paying for it. So there's $34 billion to help people buy insurance on the marketplaces through 2022. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the

nonpartisan arm that kind of estimates how much things cost once they are moving through Congress, they say that an additional 1.7 million people could enroll in the exchanges under the proposal, which is a huge number. And about 1.3 million of them are currently uninsured. So this could have, if the CBO is correct, this could have a serious, serious implication on getting more people into a place where they're insured, where they can go get health care. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this bill when we get back. This message comes from NPR sponsor H Hint, fruit-infused water with no calories or sweeteners. Hint water comes in over 25 flavors.

The watermelon water actually tastes like watermelon. The blackberry water tastes like blackberries. Hint is water with a touch of true fruit flavor. You can get Hint water at stores, or you can have it delivered directly to your door. When you buy two cases, you'll get a third case free and free shipping. Visit drinkhint.com and use promo code NPR at checkout. On NPR's Consider This podcast, we help you make sense of one big story in the news every day, like how to combat disinformation and conspiracy theories, which pose a real threat to democracy,

and what life looks like after you're vaccinated, the next phase of do's and don'ts. All that in 15 minutes every weekday. Listen now to Consider This from NPR. And we're back. And Mara, I think one of the reasons this bill is seen as such a big deal is it's probably one of the Democrats' best opportunities for a big win this year. How much do you think is at stake for Biden and Democrats in Congress that this bill be seen as a success, not just actually being effective and working to do the things they say it's going to do, but that people, you know, have a positive view of it? I think it's really important that people have a positive view of it. And I think that these proposals are already popular, but they're going to make sure that the execution of this bill, its implementation,

is also seen positively. But I would say there is still another bite at the apple for the Biden administration. This was an emergency bill, even though it had plenty of transformative social safety net programs in it. But the real Biden agenda, the thing that he thinks will transform the country and define his legacy is the Build Back Better package. And that's the next thing they're going to have a crack at. They get another reconciliation bill. That means they get another chance to pass something with just 51 votes. A lot of discussions about what should go into that big bill. He wants infrastructure. There are things like voting rights and immigration that probably can't go in reconciliation, but maybe those could be passed with 60 votes. Lots of decisions ahead, but they're going to get another bite at this apple. I don't know if it'll work, but they are not done. And you're going to hear more about that gigantic, you know, maybe even $3 trillion Build Back Better package pretty soon. But Kelsey, it's kind of amazing to me that at this early phase of a new Congress and a new

presidency, everyone's kind of already acknowledging that the chances of doing things with bipartisan support in the Senate seems pretty unlikely. We're looking at two reconciliation packages as the big kind of vehicles this year. And I think Democrats seem pretty aware of the fact that they're not likely to get a lot of Republican support to do basically anything in this Congress. Right. I mean, there are two schools of thought that I hear the most on this. One is that they think that Republicans will see the light and that they will see that there's so much popularity around this bill and there will suddenly be this opportunity for unity.

That school is small. Very small and getting smaller. It is, it's pretty much two people at this point, maybe three. And, you know, the other school is people who are saying, well, this just means it's time to get rid of the filibuster. That the idea that the minority party should have so much sway over what actually becomes law is an antiquated idea. And they say that the only way to move forward is to get rid of the filibuster. But getting rid of the filibuster means you have to convince those two, three people to jump on your side. And they at least publicly are not willing to do that. Kelsey, what about the third school of thought that says there are pieces of the Build Back Better agenda

that could be broken off? They might be pretty small pieces like universal broadband or prescription drugs, something like that, that you could break off and get 60 votes. It wouldn't be the big enchilada, but at least it would show that two parties can still cooperate on some things. What do you think about that? I'm really skeptical about that. In a moment where there is so much distrust and division and personal animosity in the Capitol,

it is hard to see how that actually comes to fruition. Things can change. Things can absolutely change. But at this precise moment, you know, relationships between the two parties are not particularly good in Washington. I wouldn't bet my life, but I'd probably bet my car that you don't have 10 Republican votes for any kind of difficult measure on immigration or prescription drugs or gun legislation, the kind of stuff that Democrats... Well, certainly not guns. but what about universal broadband? I mean, if there's anything that's... it's small... The thing you have to go back to, Mara, though, is that it's like the incentives, right?

And you look at these really narrow Democratic majorities, 50-50 in the Senate. I think as of right now, they have about a three-seat advantage in the House. And Republicans really think that they can win back the majority in the 2022 midterms. I'm sorry to bring up the midterms. I know people are still recovering from the last election. But I just, it speaks to the motivations of the

party on Capitol Hill right now, where especially House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who's looking at a very good opportunity to win the House, where I think that they see the position of opposition as much more strategically advantageous than giving Joe Biden or Democrats any kind of legislative victories on anything that is a heavy lift. I think there's certainly some stuff they can get through, but not the stuff that really comes to define a Congress or define a presidency. That's certainly what's worked for them in the past. But that means that they are going to have Republicans stand up and vote again and again against a higher minimum wage,

against stimulus checks, against infrastructure that could help their communities. They're saying that that is a good political place for them to be. Just because it worked in the past, I don't know if it works going forward. I'm with you on this. I think this is one of the things I've been really fascinated by in this debate, and I don't have a good answer for it, but that the economic politics that we're used to have just changed in the Trump era. And I don't know how Republicans can continue to be against things like a higher minimum wage when their party is increasingly becoming a party of the working class, specifically the white working class.

Right. All right. Well, I think that's all we've got for today, but we'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.