The NPR Politics Podcast - More Funding For Ukraine Seems Likely. More COVID Money Seems... Less Likely.

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

The White House pitch to provide consistent support for Ukraine through the end of September at a cost of $33 billion has broad support in Congress. Meanwhile, the administration's ask for additional COVID funds remains tied up in disagreements over where the money will come from. This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics 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

Hi, this is Hasanatu in Maryland. After 30 days of observing the Islamic month of Ramadan, I'm about to break my fast one last time and get ready for Eid al-Fitr. This podcast was recorded at 212 Eastern on Monday, May 2nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, like I will be celebrating with my family and enjoying food during daylight. Eid Mubarak. Okay, here's the show. I was sitting next to Asma at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, and we were all keeping very close tabs on when sundown was so they could break their fast along with several other people at the table. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And the Biden administration has asked Congress for $33 billion in aid for Ukraine. That's more than double the $14 billion in support that's been authorized so far. That money is intended to last for a while until the end of the fiscal year on September 30th. It would provide Ukraine with a lot of money and a lot more weaponry and a lot more certainty than it's gotten so far. Biden is also asking for COVID money that has languished in Congress for weeks. That seems, we're going to talk about it. It seems a little less clear cut than what's happening with the Ukraine money. So Kelsey, let's actually start with the COVID funding. What is the White House asking for? And why has this been such a struggle lately?

I mean, they're basically asking for the amount of money that they weren't able to get in the last round of funding because there was this fight among House Democrats about, you know, this process of offsetting spending that forced them to strip out money for prevention and global vaccine distribution. Now the White House is coming back and saying, okay, now we really do need that money. We need to make sure that people have access to vaccines across the world and that, you know, the country is adequately prepared if there's another surge or another variant or whatever else may come ahead in this pandemic. Now, this has been a problem in Congress because Republicans say they just don't see the argument for any more new COVID money.

They say they're fine with the idea of moving funds around and essentially taking money that hasn't yet been spent from existing packages and approvals of money and shifting it to new accounts that seem to need money, but they don't want to allocate new money to address the coronavirus. Now, Democrats say that's not fair and that the states that haven't spent money yet, you know, are planning to spend the money. They just haven't had the time to do it yet, and their allocations really aren't expired yet. So there's a lot of fighting about those details, but that's kind of where the two sides are on this conversation. Mara, what do you make of all this? Do you feel like the,

I feel like the theme of the last couple months is how many different parts of America are, quote, over it in many different ways. And it just seems like Congress is in that camp as well, and that it's just not viewed as the emergency it was anymore. That's right. I think it's harder and harder for the administration to make the argument that it needs a tremendous amount of money for COVID, when as you said, so many people look at the statistics and they see cases coming down, certainly hospitalizations coming down. But what the administration argues it needs the money for is to give more booster shots to more Americans, which as people get six months away from their last shot, they might, to vaccinate people around the

world in order to truly stamp out COVID, to invest in treatments to be ready for the next pandemic. I mean, there are a lot of things that the administration says this money could be used for, even if COVID in America is transitioning from a pandemic to an endemic. And we should say that cases have been steadily increasing in recent weeks with a new variant floating around, but nowhere near the levels that we saw in December and January so far. So let's shift to Ukraine then. $33 billion is a lot of money. It is a lot of weaponry. Kelsey, what are some of the other details that we need to know about this request? It is a lot of money. But Kelsey, what are some of the other details that we need to know about this request?

It is a lot of money, but as both Democrats and Republicans point out, it is maintaining what they refer to as the current burn rate. So the amount of money that is currently being sent to Ukraine right now is just over a longer period of time. The argument that is kind of coming down right now is they're parsing how that money should be spent is whether or not that burn rate is sustainable, whether or not the Ukrainian government can absorb this level of funding now that there is more weaponry, more money, more aid coming from other countries. Now, this breaks down even further into arguments over humanitarian aid versus what sometimes is referred to as lethal aid. Lethal aid usually refers to make sure that this matches up with the needs that the Ukrainians are expressing. Like, they want to know that the Ukrainians can

actually use this money effectively, and not just end up having a situation where they're parking weapons in a, you know, I don't know, like a giant parking lot of weapons or tanks or whatever they may need to do in order to absorb the incoming aid when actually use it. And don't forget, you know, $20 billion of the 33 is for military aid. And it's not just to provide the weapons to Ukraine, it's to restock American weapons stockpiles after they've sent the weapons to Ukraine or allies have sent American weapons to Ukraine. And Mara, I want to ask about that lethal aid for a moment, because in the beginning, especially, and this concern has remained all along, but in the beginning, the Biden administration was so clear to carefully articulate its worry that it didn't want to

give so much military aid to Ukraine that it would trigger, you know, a NATO versus Russia world war. And jets especially seem to be, you know, a NATO versus Russia world war. And jets especially seem to be, you know, a hard line that the administration didn't want to cross. So even as the amount of money and weaponry increased, all along Ukraine was saying this is nowhere near enough for our needs to fight Russia. And there was a lot of frustration. Now suddenly the fire power is going up. The U.S. is giving more and more weapons to Ukraine. It does not seem like anyone in Congress is vocally saying, wait a second, might this be too much? Wait a second, could this be what leads to a war with Russia?

No. This is the exception that proves the rule in Washington. There's actually bipartisan support for this. And what's interesting about this, you're right. The trend line has been escalation. There doesn't seem to be an off-ramp for Vladimir Putin. The negotiations, the peace talks, such as they were, have ground to a halt. States is to help Ukraine win, maintain its territorial integrity from an unprovoked invasion of Russia, it feels it has to keep on giving Ukraine these weapons. Now, the criteria that the White House originally laid down as the things that would trigger a world war, a Russia versus NATO conflict, were a no-fly zone and also U.S. boots on the ground, NATO boots on the ground inside Ukraine. Those things haven't happened. But there's no doubt that as Ukraine showed the world that it

has a chance to win, that they were much better fighters than people thought, they held off the Russians longer than people thought, the American contribution of lethal aid has gone up. To the point where Ukraine drove the Russian army out of the northern areas around Kiev that had been an initial part of Russia's invasion plan, Russia totally pulled all those troops back. You know, one thing that I thought was really interesting that came up in a conversation I had with a security expert last week was that he said that there really aren't a lot of good comparisons for the way the U.S. is involved in this conflict. Because typically, when the U.S. gets involved, there are troops involved. There are U.S. troops that are going to be engaged, and there's a lot of expense

related to U.S. troops and arming those troops and taking care of those troops and settling those troops. But in this case, this is purely the US funding one side of a conflict. And there isn't a lot of really good recent precedent for how that is funded, how that is done, and the, you know, the extent and length of that kind of support. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk more broadly about what we could expect from the coming months in Congress. So we're back. And Mara, I'll start with you on this. We have spent so much time on this podcast talking about how many of the treadlines are going against

the Democrats in very, very clear ways right now. And yet Democrats do not seem to be operating on a oh my god, we're about to lose our majority schedule here. You're right. It doesn't seem as if they're doing everything they can to improve their position for the midterms. And midterms are usually pretty brutal for the party that has both houses of Congress and the White House. Every single fundamental is going against them, the way people feel about the economy and inflation, the way people feel about President Biden and his ability to make good on his campaign promises, the enthusiasm that each party shows for voting in November. They're all going against the Democrats. But no, you don't see them saying, hey, we're going to pass a scaled down version of Build Back Better as soon as possible. Let's get,

you know, pass something that Joe Manchin will accept. You just don't see that. Democrats have been on the losing side in polls on social issues before, like crime and immigration. So you think they've had some experience in how to deal with these issues, but they don't seem to have an answer to the relentless Republican attacks on those issues, which are top of voters' mind this year. Well, Kelsey, let me ask you about one of the specific things Mara mentioned, and that was whatever it would be called now, the latest iteration of Build Back Better, which the consensus seems to be, you know, really something focused on clean energy and maybe something else. It seems like it has been in this holding pattern of Democrats saying, yeah, I feel like a smaller deal is possible. And at the same time, you know, how much time is there actually left for something to realistically pass before the political calendar just eats it up? Yeah, I mean, you might think about November being far away, but I was looking at the calendar with some other Hill reporters last week, and it looks like the House is going to be in session for something like 40 days between now and the election.

40 days is not a long time. And while you could say, oh, the big problems here are working something out with Joe Manchin in the Senate, that's all well and good. But if you only have 40 days to get things through both chambers and sent to the president, that's a huge limitation. Not to mention the fact that there are serious concerns about getting other stuff done. They have to keep the government open. They have to pass government funding by the end of September. They have a bunch of other must-pass things that they have to handle, which I feel like we talk about all of the time. But that's all real.

Those are real pressures that Congress has to balance against the amount of time when they're actually available to sit there and vote. And, you know, Kelsey and I can probably, we would run out of pages to write down the number of times we've had Democrats tell us that the most important thing for them to do is to get stuff done, to deliver for voters. And the fact that they're not getting stuff done, they're not passing what they promised to pass is one of the reasons they're in so much trouble. So Mara, let me tell you something that will make any congressional Democrats listening to this poll pull their hair out. I was talking to somebody who does not cover or follow politics as closely as we all do. And they said, you know, I just don't understand. It seems like it seems like there's a lot of agreement to get an infrastructure bill passed.

It feels like that's something that they could do. Why hasn't that happened? And I was like, well, let me tell you something. In fact, this was signed into law. I mean, Democrats are facing a really fundamental issue here that goes beyond divisions within their own party or even beyond the difficulty of passing something with a very closely divided House and Senate. They are facing a situation where they have policies that they are say they are certain people in America agree with, but they are not always lining up with the things that people in America are most worried about, or at least that not the way it shows up in polling. Like people are not always worried about the exact same things as Democrats are working on in that moment. And that timing issue really seems to be

working against them. More on all of this soon. That is it for today, though. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.