The NPR Politics Podcast - Happy Holidays From A Fairly Unproductive Congress

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Lawmakers presided over one of the most fruitless sessions in legislative history this year — and there's still a lot left on their plate to tackle in 2024. What remains on the to-do list?Plus, a new poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist reveals attitudes toward immigration and abortion, & a famous figure enters the public domain. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Susan Davis, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This episode was edited by Erica Morrison. It was produced by Jeongyoon Han and Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.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 Hunter. This is Trent. This is Dakota. This is Morgan. And this is their teacher, Mr. Clark. We're headed into our first We the People District Competition of the Year. This podcast was recorded at 11.36 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, December 15th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully we won the district competition. And I have a note here that they did win the district competition and they are headed to the Nevada state finals in February. So congratulations. I could feel the energy in their voices. So they sounded like winners to me.

And it turns out they were. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Deird I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. Today on The Roundup, a look at everything Congress got done this year,

or more accurately, didn't get done. The holidays are upon us. The House is headed home, and the Senate says they're coming back next week. But it's not clear what they will really be able to get to before the holiday break. So, Deirdre, let's start with this. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week came to Washington in a last-ditch effort to get funding for weapons and aid, needed to continue the fight against Russia, and there was no apparent breakthrough. So why not? What next? Republicans on Capitol Hill have decided that they are insisting that no national security funding bill, which includes billions of dollars for Ukraine, will pass unless it is paired with border security reforms. They are negotiating

right now. There's a small group in the Capitol today. Most senators are gone for the weekend, but they're coming back on Monday, as you said. And they're trying to get some kind of deal that will address the sort of sharp uptick in numbers of migrants coming right and the far left. But all of the national security funding for Israel, for Ukraine, for Taiwan to defend itself is all stalled out because of Congress trying to do immigration reform. As you know, as Sue knows well, Congress can't do immigration reform. It hasn't been able to do anything significant for decades. And to try to do something on this in a weekend and then have the Senate come back next week seems like a high hurdle. But there really isn't a deadline, right? I mean, it's not like the government's going to shut down or the country's going to default. This is aid that obviously Zelensky wants, but doesn't appear is going to be happening anytime soon. I think Biden's funding request is in a really precarious position. You know, each component of this, whether it be the border funding or Ukraine or Israel, has coalitions of support on Capitol Hill, but each component has a different coalition of support. And by that, I mean, you know, Republicans overwhelmingly want border security, Democrats might swallow it to get the rest of it done. But Republicans are, especially

in the House, are very divided on Ukraine funding. Half of that conference has voted against giving Ukraine more money. You have growing opposition to Israel aid from a faction of Democrats. Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has been raising all kinds of questions about that money. So right now, it seems further apart from a deal than it is likely to come together. Deirdre did mention the lack of pressure. I think that's really true. But if we look forward to next month, there is another funding deadline or facing a shutdown January 19th. And frankly, this supplemental debate might coincide with that because, as you all know, Congress acts best when there is a pressure point.

Right. And you would think that having the president of Deirdre, this is because it is now tied to one of the most intractable issues that Congress has not been able to deal with for a generation or more, which is immigration. Though Republicans would say, this isn't immigration. We're just talking about border security. And that's part of the rub. Right. Senators said that Zelensky did have a compelling case to make, and he was very careful to steer away from the domestic politics around this bill. part of the rub. Right. Senator said that Zelensky did have a compelling case to make, and he was very careful to steer away from the domestic politics around this bill. He basically stuck to the message like, America's helped us. We really need you to continue helping us. He sketched out sort of the consequences if they don't. Obviously, there's a debate about how long

they can fight without additional billions of aid for more weapons when they're running low. I also think it's reasonable to question how sincerely Republicans want a border deal because they view this as one of their strongest lines of attack against President Biden and the Democratic Party as being weak on the border. And a big border deal that changes policy to become more conservative means Republicans essentially take co-ownership of the issue and would politically mitigate those attacks against the president going into the election year. And, you know, frankly, I don't know if many Republicans see that, you know, even if they

agree with the policy, they might not see that as politically advantageous. Let's quickly run through the other big thing that Congress has been wrestling with, which is how to keep the government funded and open. And Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, was basically ousted over the way he chose to handle it. The new speaker came in and they kicked the can past the short term measures. Yes, to get into the new year. But I thought that they were supposed to be trying to go through the regular order and pass individual, big but individual sort of subject area spending measures. What happened with that? They are stalled.

The plan is to go through those individual bills. There are essentially four of them that go through January 19th. So they have to come up with a negotiation for those, that part of the government, and then the rest, February, an early February deadline. They didn't actually bring up any of these bills in the last few weeks since the new speaker was elected. They can't get agreement amongst themselves. The bigger problem is they can't even agree on the overall spending number

for the rest of the year. So until they have that number, they can't negotiate all these individual spending bills. And it's really stalled the process. So the odds of a shutdown in January are going up. And some members yesterday were saying, I really hope they figure this out over the holidays, because when we get back on January 9th, we have 10 days until that first deadline shows up. So it's hard to see a way around this. But obviously, as Sue mentioned, when there's a deadline, that tends to motivate people. But all of the political problems around the spending bill for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, none of that went away. You know, Speaker Johnson had some weeks of goodwill, especially after what a bruising, ugly battle that was.

A lot of Republicans just wanted some peace and quiet for a bit of time. But all the problems that face McCarthy continue to face Speaker Johnson. And he doesn't have a good answer for any of these questions either. And there's already signs that the support for him is fraying. Republicans like Chip Roy of Texas are out there saying like the grace period for the speaker is over. He's very angry about the way the spending bills have been handled. He's very angry at the way that the speaker is bringing bills to the floor. So we're still facing a House in the new

year that could have a lot of angst and disgruntlement around their Speaker. And remember, they didn't change the rules. It still only takes one lawmaker to bring a motion to vacate to the floor of the House. So can't guarantee that that drama doesn't happen all over again. We are going to leave it there for now. Deirdre, thank you so much. Thanks, Tim. And we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a second. And we're back. And with us now is senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hello there.

Hey, Tim. There is a new NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll. You covered a lot of things with this poll, but let's start with this. How voters feel about the Republican presidential frontrunner, former President Donald Trump and his likely challenger, President Biden. They don't like him. Just to put it simply, we know this anecdotally. We talked to voters about this. The polling shows that Biden has a 53 percent unfavorable rating, meaning 53 percent of people have a negative view of him. But 56 percent of people say that they have a negative view of Trump. So neither candidate is very well liked at all. frustrations with the current president. It is a reminder that just because someone registers, people register their frustration with the president and because of his governance, it's a very different thing when that person is put on the ballot against somebody else.

Well, and at this moment, former President Trump isn't governing, isn't making difficult decisions that make people mad. President Biden is. Yeah. I mean, there's a ton of issues people have when it comes to, for example, the economy, gas prices, grocery prices, inflation and housing. You know, those are the things that people are really kind of their perceptions of the economy anyway, are that it's negative, even if there are some strong signs in the economy and why Biden's not really benefiting from a lot of that. But, you know, and he's got problems with his base when it comes to the Israel-Hamas crisis. Now, the question politically for us is whether or not those frustrations that they have a year from now or a little bit less than a year from now, they're going to say, you know what, I just don't trust Biden. I don't like him. I think he's too old. Or are they going to then say, Trump, do I really want him back in

office if it is the two of them? Let's get to issues. And in the last segment, we were talking about immigration and efforts on the Hill to maybe work on immigration, but probably not. This is something that Republicans appear poised to make a really big election year issue in congressional races and in the race for president. What did the survey tell you about immigration? Well, what's interesting is Republican voters are continuing to say that they prize culture and values, the people who believe what they believe and the preserving a way of life, that they put that over, for example, shepherding the economy. So when you look at the culture basket of things that Republican candidates are pushing, immigration is right at the top of the list of that, as is things like gender identity. And that's why we continue to hear these candidates talk about this. On immigration, it's a little bit of a mixed bag because people are saying that they don't trust President Biden with handling immigration as much as they do, say, the Republican Party. And 54 percent in our poll said that they want to see the border wall continue to be built. Now, does that mean immigration is a home run issue for Republicans? Well, some candidates can

take it too far. Like, for example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who's continued to say that he doesn't think something like birthright citizenship should continue to be in place for children of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Well, 63 percent in our poll said that they think that that should continue to be practiced. Birthright citizenship means basically if you're born in America, you're an American. Right. And DeSantis has accused immigrants of coming to the United States for essentially birth tourism, he calls it. But our poll is showing that two thirds of people disagree with him on that. That's a pretty big number. Let's talk about abortion. What did the poll tell you about where American voters are? Well, I think the big thing here is when we asked about a bunch of restrictions, most people are in favor of some restrictions when it comes to abortion. But when you look, for example, at six weeks and whether or not there should be a six-week abortion ban, only 39 percent of people say that abortion should never be legal or that it should be banned after six weeks.

That means that most Republicans who are governing a lot of states that are pushing these six week bans are really in the minority here. And it's really put a lot of Republicans in the hot seat. And they like to turn around and say that Democrats, what restrictions are they in favor of? But that's more of an esoteric and theoretical sort of discussion as opposed to, you know, when we see these specific cases, for example, of a woman in Texas who was trying to get an abortion because of a fatal fetal condition. That's the kind of thing that is in the spotlight where she wasn't allowed to get an abortion in Texas and had to travel out of state. Those are real life situations for people as opposed to,

you know, saying esoterically, well, you know, what restrictions are you in favor of? When we talk about issues, abortion is the one issue going into 2024 that I think Republicans feel the most defensive on and Democrats feel the most offensive on. It seems pretty clear that Democrats, including in the White House, but all the competitive Senate and House races are going to work as hard as they can to make abortion a deciding issue in all of these competitive races, because we have seen since the 2022 Dobbs decision that when it's put to voters, even in conservative places like Ohio or Kansas, that voters seem to be coming down more on the abortion rights side of the equation. Now, whether they can do that is unclear. But look, there are states like Arizona,

which could be a very consequential state, not only for the presidential race, but also for control of the Senate, in which they're trying to get a ballot initiative onto the state there. That could be a game changer in the outcome of that race. I mean, so much of both control of the Senate and frankly, the White House is going to come down to what happens in one, two, maybe three states. So you can't discount every single place where that will matter. And frankly, Republicans don't have a good answer on this equation. They have been polling about it. They have been having closed door meetings, talking to senators about how to talk about it. I recently interviewed Stephen Law,

who runs the Super PAC Senate Leadership Fund. It's basically Mitch McConnell's Super PAC. He's one of his top allies. And he was pretty clear that Republican candidates need to find a comfortable footing in how they talk about this or they do risk alienating swing voters. There is a message that Republicans can articulate that is winsome and attractive to the vast majority of voters, but they're going to have to do the hard work of it. And they can't just put out a press release. They're going to have to spend campaign money to talk about it. They're going to have to deflect attacks and explain where they are. If they do that, I think we'll be fine. Democrats can just speak more fluently about the policy and dynamics around the abortion debate. Republicans, especially Republican men, have a really hard time about it. And we have seen in past elections, even pre-jobs, that one single slip up, one single wrong statement can really become a defining moment in a competitive race.

And so there's a lot of minefields for Republican candidates on this issue. So I think it's really interesting that you have candidates on the Republican side who are calling for different kinds of bans. But then you have former President Trump who is saying that he wants to sort of move on from this topic. He sees the third rail that it's kind of become along with something like Social Security, which also Trump tries to say that he wants to preserve. Of course, whether or not Trump is going to be allowed to get away with something like that because he's if he's the candidate on the in the general election, because he's the one who appointed the three justices to the Supreme Court that made Dobbs even possible. Although I have to say my grain of salt here is that I think Trump defies so many expectation and rules of politics. And one thing that we talked about

recently in the pod that has stuck in my brain was Asma being out in Arizona talking to independent voters and finding independent voters and finding independent voters who said they intended to vote for Trump because they weren't happy with Biden, but would probably vote for the Democrats down ballot because of abortion. And it's almost kind of comical how I think there's an argument to be made that voters don't necessarily tether that issue to the president in the same way that Democrats would like them to. So they might have some work to do there. And especially as Domenico said, you know, Trump has political savvy. And even though he probably single handedly played the largest role in the over in what led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he doesn't he doesn't want to necessarily be talking about it

as much as Democrats would like him to. All right. Well, we're going to take another break and we will be back with Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things that we cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Domenico. Let me tell you what you don't see in New Jersey are longhorns, especially on the train tracks. Whether it's a cow, a steer, a heifer, a bull, whatever you want to call it, you don't see it. They called it a bull in most of the stories that I've seen. But a bull is a very specific thing that's a male, right? You can have longhorns that are male or female. But this bull or bovine,

cattle, this cattle had very long horns. So this is a longhorn that was on the tracks. No one knows why running loose on a New Jersey transit train tracks and caused delays of up to 45 minutes between Newark Penn Station and Penn Station in New York, which are like, you know, some of the busiest, it's one of the busiest tracks, you know, in the entire country. Yes. I watched this video and it is insane. And I love that like commuters been like, oh my gosh, there's a steer outside my window. I'm going to guess that there was more expletives being delayed that you couldn't get to work or get to where you needed to go because there was a bull on the

tracks. I mean, that's not one you hear a lot of times. A lot of times the tracks are broken down or you've got issues. But yeah, it was a very hilarious picture. The thing, though, that I was sort of struck me is I don't know if any, if either of you had seen, have seen the movie Leave the World Behind on Netflix, which is, by the way, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, if you didn't know that.

Oh, I think it wasn't the best. Tying it back into policy. Well, that's, I don't know. It's gotten pretty good reviews. It was interesting. But one of the things in this movie

that is scary and notable is that animals randomly show up in places as almost a warning. Lots of deer in a backyard, pink flamingos in a pool in Long Island. This is weird, right? A longhorn on the tracks in New Jersey? I don't know. Is this a warning? Is it a warning about 2024? Don't know. Don't know. Don't know. Something. I think we have red flashing lights about 2024 already. That is going to be a very unpredictable year. But we have to tell people the good news.

The bull had escaped from a slaughterhouse or from a train heading to a slaughterhouse. And now, because of his valiant traffic-clogging, train-clogging efforts, he is going to be sent to some sort of animal refuge. Maybe he'll go hang out with the turkey. Your friend the turkey. Liberty and Belle? Let's just hope it eats the turkey. I don't think that. I'd be perfectly fine with that.

I think that they're herbivores. That's true. That's terrible. Sue, what can't you let go of? The thing I can't let go of this week is the news that D.C., Washington, D.C., is likely to lose its sports arena home to the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards to the state of Virginia. And I can't let it go because I just think it's really bad news for the city. Whenever a city is losing its sports teams, it's never a cause for celebration. And it's a total bummer. And it's not good for downtown D.C.

Although, Tam, you are a Virginia resident. So maybe this is great news for people who live on the other side of the river. Well, I'm just going to go with they're probably still going to call them the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals. Nobody's going to call them like the old town Alexandria Wizards. The Northern Virginia Wizards. It reminded me a little bit of the Braves moving out of downtown Atlanta and moving out to Cobb County because that's where their fan base is largely. I don't know that that's the case in Alexandria here. So, you know, it is one of the more controversial things we've seen happen.

Tam, what about you? What can't you let go of? Well, what I cannot let go of is a fun development in the world of public domain. Go on. Fun public, okay. Yeah, so Mickey Mouse. I've heard of him. Is going to be free and available in the public domain as of the first of the year. What does this mean?

You can use like his image? You could use his likeness. I see. Now, there are a lot of caveats on this, including that it is only the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse that has come up. Okay. Nobody even, nobody uses Steamboat Willie. So there's an AP story about this, and it includes this line. Current artists and creators will be able to make use of Mickey, but with major limits.

It is only the more mischievous, rat-like, non-speaking boat captain in Steamboat Willie that has become public. Man, I feel like Disney must not love this. Disney has been so protective of its image and its brand and its characters. Like the fact that anybody can be doing anything with Mickey Mouse soon seems like something that might make them a little nervous. Yes. Well, they're they're insisting that more modern versions of Mickey will remain unaffected. And this is only the Steamboat Willie copyright. So that's what we got. Does it have anything to do with like copyright or something? Yes. Yeah. So like basically the copyright has expired. It was from 1928. So that's 95 years. And, you know, in the public domain, their lock on the intellectual property that is Steamboat Willie has expired or will expire January 1st. Well, this is going to be a boon for my Mickey Mouse t-shirt company. It's clearly going to go as part of the NPR politics logo.

Yes, but only the creepy mouse from the original film who doesn't talk. All right, that's it for this week. We will be back in your feed on Monday. Our executive producer is Mathani Mathuri. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our producers are Jung Yoon Han and Casey Morrell. Special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer and Kelsey Snell. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.