The NPR Politics Podcast - Republicans Flout Trump On COVID And Tech

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

After bemoaning elements of a COVID relief deal that his administration helped to negotiate, President Trump ended up signing it anyway. The delay could cost the millions of Americans some of their unemployment assistance.READ: Trump Signs COVID-19 Relief Deal After His Criticism Threatened To Derail ItThis episode: political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.Connect: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 there, before we get started, some news. The NPR Politics Podcast is launching a book club. Every few weeks, I'll announce a new book that we'll discuss in our Facebook group, and I'll interview the author for the podcast. Our first book is What Were We Thinking? A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era by Carlos Lozada. We are so excited and we hope you are, too. If you'd like to read along with us, please request to join the group at n.pr slash politics group. You definitely should. It'll be lots of fun. Thanks, and here's the show. Hello, this is Sam. I'm in Rochester, New York. I'm a music therapist. In a nursing home I work, I am hoping very soon to get the COVID shot. But for now, may I present the routine podcast caveat.

This podcast was recorded at 2.10 p.m. on December 28th, 2020. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. So keep up with all of the political weirdness. On NPR.org or the NPR One app or your local NPR station. Don't fret. It's not a trap. I promise. One more thing before I go.

All right. Here's the show. Wow. Oh my gosh. I'm speechless. Let's just not do the podcast. That was really impressive. I am charmed. Okay, well, let's regather ourselves. Hey, there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. Let's ask our listeners to please send us all the comforting songs they possibly can in the meantime. Let's do a quick rewind for anybody who took the holiday week last week

off from the news. So on Monday of last week, Congress passed a relief bill that would do a whole bunch of things, including give $600 to every person who is eligible and, crucially, extend unemployment insurance benefits and also, crucially, avoid a partial government shutdown. But then on Tuesday, President Trump released a video calling the bill a, quote, disgrace, in part saying he wanted $2,000 checks instead of $600. That's after his own party, the Republicans, had been against bigger stimulus checks. So long story short, after five more days of waiting, last night Trump signed the relief bill. So after all of that, Franco, let's start with you. Do we have any inkling of why Trump changed

his mind? Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because, as you know, he wanted these bigger checks and he wanted these cuts to federal spending. And he didn't get those things. You know, he gave this, you know, big, strong statement last night, making kind of these vague assertions that Congress would take up both. But Democrats have made it clear that they're not going to agree to the cuts. And most Republicans are unlikely to approve of higher checks. The reality is he has been under a lot, a lot of pressure from lawmakers in both parties to sign. And, you know, unemployment programs expired over the weekend, but also government funding was

set to expire tonight. So, I mean, there was just a lot on the table and he was in a no-win situation. Right. Yeah. And of course, we know that President Trump is no stranger to changing his mind. Kelsey, let's turn to you. What was the reaction from lawmakers on the Hill? Well, I feel like the reaction came in a few waves. One, to start with, was that President Trump empowered his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to cut this deal and that there was an expectation that, you know, having Mnuchin cut the deal on behalf of the White House meant that the White House was on board. And there was this also opened up a lot of criticism of the president's complete and kind of hands off approach to all things coronavirus relief. He has not been personally involved in any stage of coronavirus relief,

not since the very beginning of the pandemic. And, you know, that was one of the things that made it really hard to get Republicans all on the same page for months was not knowing whether or not the president was going to support whatever they agreed to. And I guess it turns out that he kind of didn't. And this was kind of affirming a lot of the fears that Republicans I talked to said they had about making such huge spending agreements without the guidance of the president. And, you know, for Democrats, they basically said you want $2,000 checks. Well, so do we. Your negotiators are the ones who said they didn't want $2,000 checks. Republicans are the ones who said they wanted to do something

smaller. Many times they said they wanted smaller than the $600 checks that are in the bill. So Democrats are going to force a vote on this. And that is a pretty awkward situation for Republicans to be now asked to either completely disagree with the president on his interpretation of what the country needs, or to decide that, you know, they're going to approve spending that they had been messaging against for months. Well, Kelsey, let's stick with that question, because what do we expect to happen once House Democrats vote on those bigger checks, those $2,000 ones? Yeah, so we expect that Democrats will all vote for the larger checks.

Maybe some Republicans will join them, but then it'll go over to the Senate. And it's not really clear what's going to happen there. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not address the concept of voting on the checks, even though the president's statement said that the Senate will start the process for a vote to increase the checks. That's really vague language and it doesn't actually really mean anything. I see. So it's not guaranteed that the Senate will take it up? No. And, you know, I think it's actually pretty unlikely that the Senate will take it up because, you know, this is a tough vote for Republicans a couple of days before this special election in Georgia, which will determine control of the Senate.

Right. Well, let's get back to one more important thing, which is the timing of Trump signing this bill. In those six days between Congress passing it and Trump signing it, it meant, Franco, as you mentioned earlier, that extended unemployment insurance would likely lapse. So what does that mean? Yeah, I mean, you know, not signing it for days, you know, he blew past a Saturday deadline to prevent, you know, what is, you know, an estimated about 14 million people from getting these unemployment insurance, at least temporarily or likely temporarily. That measure would extend jobless benefits through March, but millions are now expected to lose those benefits, you know, possibly for a week, you know, and that's due to Trump not signing the bill and kind of playing these games and

really did put so many people in a tough spot with really no idea of like what really was he trying to gain. And he didn't really gain anything. Right. I mean, beyond that, the $300 in expanded unemployment benefits, the federal payments that are supposed to be added on to weekly benefits from states, those have a set end date. So with the president not signing this bill on time, that means that's one week of $300 benefits that just isn't going to go out.

So what was supposed to be 11 weeks of benefits is now 10. And when you're out of work, every single week of unemployment payments matters. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk more about coronavirus relief. At Planet Money, we are also grappling with what's going on in the world. We just don't know, and you're still going to have to decide. So we call up economists like Emily Oster. It's like we're fighting the pandemic by having a bake sale or something.

I mean, all due respect to bake sales. Listen and subscribe to Planet Money from NPR. And we are back. Now, before the break, we talked about the House voting on those $2,000 direct relief payments, but they're also voting today to override a Trump veto on another bill. Kelsey, fill us in on what's going on. Yeah, so the president vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act. That is one of those bipartisan bills that just kind of always passes in Congress. This would have been the 60th year of them finding bipartisan agreement on it.

And the president objected largely to a completely unrelated portion of it that has to do with cracking down on social media companies. It's a strange fight to pick. And it sets up this moment where Republicans are going to have to vote to override his veto on the same day as they're going to be voting on these checks. And it is just, you know, Republicans spent the past four years trying so hard to avoid any conflict with this president. And now they're just heaping conflict on top of conflict here in the very last days of this Congress. And that kind of is related to Franco.

Something that's really interesting about this relief bill is that this seems to be one of the last times, this is one of the last times that we'll see the whiplash of Trump's Washington, at least for a few years, a president not involved in negotiations, then loudly criticizing the bill once it's passed, then signing it anyway. Yeah, I think it is going to be one of the last times. And it's like something that as a reporter who's covered this White House, I'm just very curious about how things are going to be different. You know, I mean, I think back to, you know, 2016 and early 2017, you know, pundits would say, you know,

they would talk about how they expected Trump to kind of be humbled and to recognize the magnitude of the office and eventually settle into the job. But, you know, he didn't. You know, the chaos continued. He's an outsider. The American people elected an outsider, and they definitely got one. And even when Republicans were, you know, liking what President Trump was doing policy-wise, you know, liking what President Trump was doing policy wise, you know, so much of that was clouded by all the palace intrigue and chaos that kind of surrounded Trump. Kelsey, let me turn to you in terms of the Biden White House. What do we know about what kind of

a role they will take in the dealmaking process in terms of coronavirus relief, that kind of policy going forward? And to what degree do you think they'll be able to get it since you're on the Hill all the time? Yeah, well, I think it's important to kind of put this in the context of the fact that Joe Biden is a former senator who is building an administration full of former members of Congress and congressional staff. This is an administration that is shaping up to be just stacked with people who understand how Capitol Hill works. Now, whether or not that translates to actually getting things done is a completely different question.

It certainly means that there will be people who know how to speak the language of Congress, which is not something that you could really say about the Trump administration. But when it comes to actually getting a deal done, when it comes to coronavirus relief in particular, one thing that I keep hearing from Republicans is that they hear Joe Biden saying that this bill that was just passed, that the president just signed, is a down payment. What they think is that it's a bridge to a time when people are vaccinated and the world is going back to normal. And they think that, you know, the response that is needed will be completely different. And they don't necessarily think that that means there's got to be a whole lot more federal spending

to prop up the economy if the economy is, you know, back and humming. There is a certain expectation among some Republicans that I talk to that they need to rein in the spending that has been done over this past year because it really is an eye-popping amount of money. You know, the difference is that Democrats say, yeah, it's an eye-popping amount of money because it was absolutely necessary and there will be more spending needed. And that is a pretty fundamental difference that doesn't just get resolved by putting a new president in the White House. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, let's leave it

there for now. But remember, you can join our brand new book club by joining our Facebook group. Again, that URL is n.pr slash politics group. So go there, request to join. Until then, I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.