The NPR Politics Podcast - In News Conference, Biden Says Build Back Better May Have To Be Broken Up

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

In a press conference to mark one year in office, the president touted his administration's progress combating COVID, while conceding he'll likely need to break up his signature legislation to get it through the Senate. He also threatened major sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, but drew criticism for adding that consequences would depend on whether Russia committed a "minor incursion" or a more severe advance. This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.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 Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And it is 6.44 p.m. Eastern. We are hitting your feeds a little later than usual because President Biden just wrapped up a news conference to mark his first year in office. And folks, that was a very long news conference. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, guys.

We've only gone an hour and 20 minutes. I'll keep going. But I'm going to go. Let me get something straight here. How long are you guys ready to go? You want to go for another hour or two? I was there. It was long.

You got the very last question after nearly two hours of news conferencing. Biden made a lot of news during this press conference. I'll say right up top, he did talk a lot about the standoff in Ukraine and what he thinks Russia may or may not do next. We're going to talk a lot about that in the second half of the podcast. But let's start domestically. This obviously comes at a time when Biden's agenda is by and large stalled in Congress. He conceded that he'll probably have to break up that signature

Build Back Better package to get it through the Senate. And notably, he said one of the most popular ideas in it, the child tax credit, likely won't survive. What else did you make of it, Mara? That was really interesting. A lot of news there. The child tax credit, which is extremely expensive, along with free community college, will probably not be in it. The simple answer is just because Joe Manchin doesn't want them in it. Now, that doesn't mean that the child tax credit couldn't survive in another form because, believe it or not, there are Republicans who want it. Now, I'm not saying there's enough of them. But what he did say is he thought it would be that Build Back Better could be broken up into chunks. Universal free preschool would be in there. That's something Joe Manchin is for because West Virginia already has it.

Some kind of $500 billion plus for energy and the environment. And then there would be some tax component, probably raising taxes on wealthy people, and maybe some prescription drug benefits. But what was interesting about the fact that he acknowledged it was going to have to be broken up and that a couple planks could be passed, he pretty much said, we're going to pass what Joe Manchin wants, which is not a crazy way to approach this going forward if he wants anything to happen. I think there is, I'm not going to negotiate against myself as to what should and shouldn't be in it, but I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can

now and come back and fight for the rest later. How do you think that new approach plays going forward? I mean, are Democrats at the point where they just want to get anything done? Or is this going to continue this big divide in the party about the scope of his agenda? I think you could see both happening where the divide increases the frustration over this child tax credit that so many Democrats went all in on and its ties to addressing poverty and thinking, oh, we may not do this after all, hearing Biden utter those words, that's a huge setback for Democrats, for one. And second, it really highlights that divide in terms of those Democrats that really want to make sure that some form of this tax credit remains. And so it really kind of was an attempt, if you will, to reset the

message. But now the message appears to be very scrambled in terms of the path forward of what's going to happen to build back better. Yeah. And now we're in a 50-minute press conference, so we need to kind of move through some other things, too, because there was a lot to talk about. Biden talked about the voting rights push that has been stalled, which we have devoted several episodes to lately. I want to talk about one thing that Biden said in the middle of one of those answers, though, when he talked about lockstep Republican opposition to voting in particular, to his broader agenda as well. Let's listen to that.

I did not anticipate that there'd be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn't get anything done. I mean, Mara, like one of my favorite things is whether it's on or off the air when you'll just go, really, really? I mean, to me, that was like a really moment because like this guy was Barack Obama's vice president. Lockstep Republican opposition was like one of the main storylines of that presidency. What was Biden saying? Well, he was asked about that. How could you not anticipate this since you were President Obama's vice president? And he said it wasn't as bad then.

And of course, part of the reason is Republicans have simply have more power now because they have more votes. Obama, when he started, had 60 senators. You know, Joe Biden has a majority that you could argue is pretty ephemeral. He's got 50 Democrats, 51 with Kamala Harris, the vice president, breaking the tie. But because the 50 Democrats include a conservative Democrat like Joe Manchin, it's not a real functioning majority. So, you know, yeah, he says in his belief it's much worse now than it was during Obama, and he didn't expect it to be

that much worse. Yeah, I think we're looking at a real departure from the kind of Congress that Obama dealt with. Biden is looking at divisions that we haven't seen here before. And it's true, the John McCains are gone. And those who try to go in that direction, they're retiring or they're being frowned upon for doing so. So it is a new day here at the Capitol, and he is facing a new level of kind of post-Jan 6 partisanship division where many Democrats won't even work with certain Republicans and vice versa. So there are some massive new challenges there today. One thing we did hear a lot from Biden,

and we've been hearing more and more of it the last few weeks in this new year, which is obviously a midterm year, more of a contrast, more of an aggressive way of framing the other party. One thing he returned to several times in a pretty strong way was the idea of what are Republicans for? I mean, I wonder what would be the Republican platform right now? What do you think? What do you think? What do you think their position on taxes is? What do you think their position on human rights is? What do you think their position is on whether or not we should, what we should do about the cost of prescription drugs?

One of the things that the president is eager to do is get the storyline off of Democrats in disarray, Democrats fighting with each other, and start framing the opposition, the Republicans, and the frame is going to run on any agenda for the midterms. They never had a platform in the 2020 election either. So he has some evidence for that. But that's clearly how he wants to frame the next election. They don't stand for anything. We're trying to help you. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will talk about the many things that Biden said about the standoff in Ukraine and how what he said could affect the situation there. And we're back. More than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed near the country's border with Ukraine for weeks, leading the White House to warn yesterday that Russia could attack at any point. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Europe this week trying to sort out some

sort of resolution. And at this press conference, Biden made it sound almost inevitable that Russian President Vladimir Putin will take military action. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something. And Mara, Biden talked a lot about this and notably about the difference of scale in what Russia does and how that would matter when the U.S. and NATO weigh how to respond. And critics are already saying, well, you really undermined any sort of threat that the U.S. can impose and gave a green light to Russia doing some sort of incursion. Well, it was really interesting. Biden was very, very open and transparent. He said the U.S. response depends if it's a minor invasion. He said if it's

a full-scale invasion, it would be a disaster for Russia. Already, we've had two clarifying statements from the White House about this. Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said that President Biden has been clear if any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that's an invasion. The president even said if Russian forces move across the Ukrainian border, that's an invasion. The president even said if Russian forces move across the border and kill Ukrainian troops, that's the invasion. That gets met with a big, swift, severe, united response from the United States and our allies. But he left it open about what NATO would do if it was a minor invasion. Psaki went on to say that Biden also knows that Russians have an extensive playbook of aggression short of military action, including cyber attacks,

and those will be met with a reciprocal response. He was also very open about the fact that he can't necessarily get all the NATO countries on board to take severe action if it's just a minor invasion. And I want to get back to that point that you just made in a second. But first, Claudia, I mean, there has been really bipartisan pressure on Biden to, you know, be tough with Russia on a lot of fronts, especially with Ukraine. He's really been criticized by Republican senators for how he has handled this brewing situation in Ukraine. What has the early response been to what he said about Ukraine? I think there's clear alarm over those remarks. For example, Rob Portman, this is the Ohio Republican. He was part of a congressional bipartisan delegation that recently traveled to Ukraine, part of a symbolic trip to illustrate how worried these members are about Putin's moves here. And Portman immediately issued a statement saying he was deeply troubled by Biden's comments here. It's the wrong way to

view this threat. He said any incursion by the Russian military into Ukraine should be viewed as a major incursion because it will destabilize Ukraine and other democracies in the region. And so clearly those remarks were not in the direction that members of both sides of the aisle were moving towards in terms of making sure that this already, but just pointing out, Russia, of course, did move into Crimea in 2014. There were sanctions, but that presence remains. It remains mostly under Russian control. at length, almost like an analyst more than a president who's trying to lay down a stern line here talking about Putin's motivations, his weaknesses, all the things he's calculating, how Russia finds itself in the world. Like it was, it was a lot of Joe Biden's thoughts on Ukraine and Russia at an interesting moment for him to present them. Yeah, and he was saying, look, it's going to hurt NATO, it's going to hurt European countries if they put on some of these sanctions. It's going to be really devastating to Russia. But he was being very open about the problems that he has keeping the alliance together, and he stuck to this line that if an actual invasion happens, crossing the border, Russian troops coming over, then all of those sanctions, much tougher than they tried when Russia took Crimea, barring Russia from the international banking system and doing business with dollars,

all of that will happen. And it sounds like he's got the European allies on board for that. All right. One last thing to ask about. It's, you know, the thing hanging over all of us right now, the fact that there are almost a million cases a day of the coronavirus in this country. The rollout of the website to order tests that the federal government will send you, the tests that I call MARAs, because they kind of indirectly stem from that question you asked, Jen Psaki. MARA is up and running and seems to be working pretty smoothly so far. But look, this is a press conference at the one-year mark of a presidency that was premised on getting COVID under control. And it

is raging in a way that it's never raged before, even though, as Biden regularly argues, there are a lot more tools than before. I mean, what if anything can Biden say about COVID at this point to change minds? And did you hear it today? Yeah, he said we're in a better place, getting to the point where COVID is not going to disrupt our lives. It won't be a crisis. We're not quite there yet, but we're going to get there. We're not going back to lockdowns. He talked about, you know, he said this many times before, if done this earlier, finally, they are getting a billion at-home test kits out to people. They're also going to be distributing free high-quality masks. There are 20,000 test sites and there are more treatments. There's now this Pfizer pill. So there is progress. He said maybe we're not at the new normal yet, but it sounds like he's trying to say we're one more step along the road to an endemic instead of a pandemic, something that's just like the flu.

As one of millions of parents currently trying to deal with school closures and trying to work and hold up kids, I would say that the new normal feels far away for many of us. Yeah, I don't think we're at the new normal yet, but I guess he's saying the new normal is near. All right, that's it for today. Mara, thank you for the endurance race. You didn't quite know you signed up for today. Thanks. It was my pleasure. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Eliason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.