The NPR Politics Podcast - Should President Biden Strike A COVID Compromise?

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Ten Republican senators are meeting with President Biden at the White House Monday to discuss their coronavirus relief proposal — which is just one-third the size of the president's plan.And Vice President Harris leaves a notable hole in the Senate roster: she was the only Black woman in the body. Organizers say that the Democratic party has long neglected investing in Black women candidates.This episode: political reporter Juana Summers, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.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

Hi, this is Michelle from Fresno, California, and I have just gotten home from taking my six-month-old daughter for a 45-minute midnight drive to put her back to sleep. This podcast was recorded at 2.06 p.m. on Monday, February 1st. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Hopefully, we'll all be back in our beds fast asleep. Enjoy the show. Fresno, that's like my homeland, my mother country or whatever you call it. I hope that kid gets some sleep so they can go home.

Yeah, seriously. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Tamra Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right, y'all, it is Monday. And later today, a group of Republican senators are going to head to the White House, where they're going to present an alternative COVID relief proposal. This, of course, comes after President Biden released his plan, which is a $1.9 trillion package. And these Republican lawmakers are proposing a smaller package. It's about $600 billion.

And, Tam, this comes after a little bit of hand-wringing among Republicans that Joe Biden is not exactly walking the walk when it comes to bipartisanship, something he made a big deal about during the campaign. What does this meeting mean when you think about that context? What this meeting means is that they are having conversations. And, you know, even as there was some saltiness about Republicans saying, hey, in his inaugural address in his campaign, he said he was going to work across party lines and he isn't doing it. He isn't calling enough. It seems like in reality, he at least was calling some of them behind the scenes. But I think in essence, what the complaint really is, is that they want Biden to come to them. They really don't think $1.9 trillion is a realistic number. You know, late last year, Congress passed a $900 billion relief package.

Biden saw it as a down payment. Many of the Republicans in Congress saw it as that's a really big number. And so now, I mean, in essence, this is a conversation that's beginning. That's how the White House is presenting it. And in a way, that's how these Republicans are seeing it, too, that, you know, there hadn't been an exchange of ideas until now. Now there's an exchange. And, you know, it really depends on how you define unity. A lot of Republicans are saying, well, he doesn't seem to want unity if he's not going to come and, you know, split the difference with Republicans. Joe Biden's definition of unity, as he's explained it, is lowering the vitriol, kind of tamping down the partisan dumpster fire, treating each other with respect, hearing each other out. It doesn't mean that every single thing that's going to be passed in Congress is going to be bipartisan. But he has

also said that he prefers a bipartisan solution. So he's willing to meet with them. But, you know, the Republican number is one third of Biden's number. That's a pretty big gulf to bridge. Yeah, Mara, I mean, these two proposals, just looking at the numbers, they're not in the same universe. So what do we think might come out of this meeting? What do we think the White House views as an opportunity meeting? What do we think the White House views as an opportunity here? Well, I think the biggest opportunity is just to talk to Republicans and prove that Biden was sincere when he said he believed in reaching across the aisle. But I haven't talked to a single Democrat who doesn't think the American people would trade getting

something done, like a $1,400 check in their bank account, versus bipartisanship. In other words, the process isn't as important to them as the outcome. And there are a lot of things in these two proposals that you can imagine common ground on. In other words, Republicans want the individual checks to be more targeted. Biden has said he's open to that. The Republicans don't want the minimum wage hike to be in this. Will Biden be willing to save that for another day? But Republicans don't want help for state and local governments, and Democrats do. That seems to be a really hard thing to compromise on. But, you know, Biden was in the White House just five years ago. This is a kind of do-over for him. And his team took away two really important lessons from the Obama experience trying to get Republicans to

compromise with him. One is don't wait around too long to see if Republicans will negotiate with you. Number two, when you're dealing with an economic crisis, better to go too big than too small. And time is of the essence. So Biden has said when asked, how long are you going to give these negotiations? He said a couple of weeks. And that's it. Because of course, extended unemployment benefits run out in March. Yeah. And we are not expecting this to be like, you know, offer counteroffer, let's get out our slide rules and figure this out. In essence, this is a hey, we're gonna chat and see if anything's possible. But this, this is not strictly speaking, a negotiation that's happening.

So Mara, is this the start of our new bipartisan era of Washington that Joe Biden likes to talk about? Well, it's something I mean, we didn't see this happening during the Trump years. Sometimes Democrats would come up think they made a deal with Trump. The next day it would be torpedoed by Stephen Miller or some Trump aide. I think at least they're going up to the White House to talk with Biden. The people who are going up, like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman, these are serious legislators. I think they're extremely far apart. It's very hard for me to imagine that they'll come up with a bipartisan compromise, but at least they're trying. And

don't forget, this is what the voters wanted. One of the reasons they elected Biden is because he promised to reach across the aisle. But the voters also want results. And the White House seems to be confident that that is the top priority. Voters aren't going to say, oh, I really wish you had been more bipartisan. No, they're going to say, where's the help you promised me to help me weather this pandemic and buy groceries? Tam, I want to ask you about one other big promise that Biden made as a candidate. He talked a lot about ethics, particularly as we saw the Trump administration mixing business and government. What has Biden delivered so far? What Biden did is on the same day that President Trump left office and released all of his appointees from any ethical obligations that they had signed

on to, they were supposed to have to, you know, they were supposed to have to stay out of lobbying for some number of years. President Trump repealed that, revoked it, made it go away. The very same day, the day that Joe Biden entered office, he signed an ethics executive order that doesn't just go further than what Trump required for members of his administration. It actually goes further than what President Obama required for appointees serving in his administration. So it has any number of provisions, including some new ones, preventing golden parachutes is what it would be called. So like, if someone leaves a job to come to government, their former employer can't give them a big fat bonus to reward them for entering government, you know, with the hopes of wink wink getting better treatment. And several other things like that.

So it's really tough. And good government types are happy with it. But, you know, good government types always say that it could be better and they have some ideas for improving it. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to look at the future of Black women in the Senate. We are still in the middle of this pandemic. And right now, having science news you can trust from variants to vaccines is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday, listen and subscribe to Shortwave, the daily science podcast

from NPR. And we're back. Vice President Harris resigned her Senate seat before assuming the vice presidency. But her departure also leaves a visible absence in the Senate. She was the only Black woman in the body. Right. And Juana, you have a story on this that you have been reporting, and we want to talk to you about your reporting. You know, it is striking, given that when this vacancy opened up, there was a lot of pressure on the governor of California to nominate a black woman to replace her. But in the end, that didn't happen. And that leaves this absence in the Senate. Yeah, Tam, you know, it's really interesting.

I talked to more than a dozen black women who have run campaigns, won campaigns, campaigned themselves, organized. And they described this as sort of a bittersweet moment. They watched Vice President Harris make history as she assumed the vice presidency. But at the same time, one woman, Molly Watson, described this to me as a full erasure of Black women from the Senate, and said that it was incredibly emotional to see everybody else, as she put it, represented in the United States Senate except for Black women. And your reporting highlights some of the structural barriers that are in place that are preventing more Black women from being elected to the Senate in the first place. Yeah, and it's difficult because this has been a problem plaguing the

Senate for its entire history. And there's not just one barrier that has made this challenging for Black women to see representation. People I talk to point to a number of high barriers, including the fact that the party establishment doesn't often see candidates of color, particularly Black women, as viable candidates who can win. Black women, of course, face that double bind of sexism and racism, not to mention the impact that is felt across the country of voter suppression tactics. But I think someone that I talked to really cut to the quick of what the issue is here. And that is Carol Mosley Braun. She, of course, was the first Black woman to ever be elected to the Senate.

The party establishment does not appreciate or embrace candidates until the candidates have already won. And that's unfortunate because they don't get out there and support in a timely enough manner that the candidates can raise the money they need. And again, it's bloody expensive. You're talking multimillion dollar campaigns. And if you don't start off with a Rolodex full of people who can write you big checks and write big checks to the party, you're trying to do it past the hat kind of way. That doesn't work anymore. And the other thing she told me that I think is really important is the fact that, yes, you need to raise money to run a successful campaign. We saw last cycle, even candidates like Jamie Harrison raising upwards of $130 million for a successful campaign. We saw last cycle even candidates like Jamie Harrison,

raising upwards of $130 million for a Senate seat. But it's also about getting attention. If you don't prove that you can raise money, deep pocketed donors won't come and give you more money. The party establishment often doesn't pay attention to you. So you end up in kind of this vicious cycle. Do you think, Juana, that the stupendous fundraising success of Raphael Warnock and Jamie Harrison, as you just mentioned, can be replicated by Black women in the next cycle? I think that the Black women I talk to think that it is not only possible, that it's a necessity. They're talking very openly in a way that I haven't heard as much before about the fact that they feel like they have to build structures

outside of the traditional party system to make sure that candidates that look like them have adequate resources so that when they're interested in running, and they believe that many women are and they are qualified, that they can hit the ground running. I think that's why there's been a lot of talk this year about groups like Higher Heights, which focuses on Black women, and the Collective PAC that focuses on Black Democratic candidates, who are oftentimes some of the folks that have stepped into the void to help these candidates raise money when the traditional party infrastructure hasn't been there for them. And Stephanie Brown James from the Collective PAC made this point to me, and I'm going to paraphrase her here, is that she wants to

see white-led groups in the progressive community on the Democratic side of the aisle begin to put their money where their mouth is. We've come off of another year in which we're talking about the tremendous value of Black women and Black people to the Democratic Party. But that's got to translate into real support and real resources. And by resources, she means money. And we should probably just widen our aperture a little bit. There are governor's races where we're going to have black female candidates. Obviously, Stacey Abrams is going to run again for the governor of Georgia. She is now a superstar in Democratic politics. of the Democratic wins in those two Georgia Senate runoffs because she registered so many African Americans. She's had a plan. She worked at it over years and years to expand the electorate there. And also in Virginia, there are two black women running for governor for the Democratic

primary for governor, State Senator Jennifer McClellan and State Delegate Jennifer Carol Foy. So two black women named Jennifer are running for the Democratic nomination for governor in Virginia. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And it's something that came up in some of these conversations is the fact that while the Senate is certainly an opportunity and this absence is deeply felt, there are all sorts of offices up and down the ballot with tons of qualified black women who want to run. I think about something that Cori Bush, a freshman lawmaker from Missouri, said, is that black women shouldn't have to sacrifice representation at one table in order to have a seat at another one. Well, we are all going to keep watching. We are going to leave it there

for today. You can sign up for a roundup of our best online analysis at npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.