The NPR Politics Podcast - The Fifty-Fifty Senate Is Going To Be A Little Bit Weird

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate; that means that Democrats effectively hold a majority in the chamber. But the even split means that the body's top leadership needs to work out terms for how things like committee membership work.This episode: political reporter Juana Summers, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, 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 Lieko from Boulder, Colorado. I'm getting ready to go for a 46-mile trail run to celebrate both my 46th birthday today and the inauguration of our 46th president. This podcast was recorded at 2.34 p.m. on Thursday, January 21st. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Enjoy the show. I mean, happy birthday to her, but a 46-mile run does not sound like my kind of celebration. I am tired just thinking about that, thinking about half of that. How long does that take? Too long, Mara. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. This is President Biden's first full day in office, and he's already signed a series of orders and directives that are meant to target the COVID-19 pandemic. Mara, what's in these packages? What are your big takeaways here? The big takeaway is that the Biden administration is going to use the federal government much more aggressively than the Trump administration did. The Trump administration pretty much left all things COVID to the states, and then they said that they would step in to help when necessary. Biden has signed an order to direct government agencies to use the

Defense Production Act. Trump did this too, but Biden's going to use it a lot more aggressively. He wants to use it to address shortfalls in all sorts of things, vaccines, masks, gowns, gloves, syringes. And also, he's going to try to get 100 million doses of the vaccine, not just manufactured, but distributed and into people's arms in 100 days. And it's just worth stating, I think that a number of the things that we saw the president roll out between today and yesterday in that first sweep of executive orders, these are things that people had been calling on the Trump administration to do for some time that they did not do. That's right. And according to the incoming Biden administration

people, they say that things are worse than they thought. There was no vaccine distribution plan when they came in. They're now saying they're going to have to start from scratch. Sue, we also have heard that the new administration is pushing Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion relief package. And, you know, any way you cut it, that is a lot of money. What's in the package? This is $1.9 trillion in addition to trillions of dollars that have already gone out the door. A lot of this package is really familiar things. You know, it's additional unemployment benefits. It's direct aid to small businesses. The big thing that has gotten a lot of attention is the $1,400 stimulus

checks that are included in it. If you recall, in the last COVID bill that Congress passed, it included $600 checks. And then there was this big blow up because President Trump then said he wanted it to be $2,000. Democrats said, great, let's do that. So this $1,400 number is sort of combining those two to get to the $2,000. It's kind of an arbitrary figure to begin with. But because of sort of the political moment and Trump saying he supported it and everybody rallying around it, Democrats are kind of stuck with this figure right now. And it's not going to be easy. You know, Sue, there were a lot there were a small handful of Republicans who were favorable to those two thousand dollar checks. Yeah. People like Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio. We know that since Biden has

been inaugurated, all of a sudden, Republicans have become born again deficit hawks. They never seem to care about the deficit when there's a Republican in the White House. And we know that Trump increased the deficit to historic levels. Are they still going to support the $2,000 checks now that it's a Democratic president who wants them? You know, it's a tricky issue because I do think there's a lot of Republicans like Josh Hawley who take away from the Trump era that there is a popularity in economic populism that Trump sort of championed and that they see this as a winning political issue, especially because a lot of their own base, again, is white working class people who could really benefit from this money, from this direct stimulus. But there's also, you know, some hesitancy among some Democrats that this is the right thing to do. And it's kind of a blunt instrument to just put money out there. And some would argue that that money might be better spent in more targeted ways. The big question, and we're going to say this so many times over the next two years, is what can get through the

Senate, right? And Roy Blunt, who's a top Republican, he's a member of leadership, said on the whole, he saw the $1.9 trillion package as a non-starter, but it was a package that had a lot of starters in it. So I do think that they are hopeful that they can get to some kind of common middle ground. But Joe Biden's not going to get exactly what he outlined in his bill. It's going to have to kind of go through that sausage making process. And maybe break it into parts. Yeah. Mara, a lot of the incoming administration's priorities were previewed last night at a White House press briefing.

And I have to say that briefing, I watched it from home, looked and sounded a lot different from recent White House press briefings. Well, first of all, it happened. Right. And we went for about a year without White House press briefings. Well, first of all, it happened. Right. And we went for about a year without White House press briefings happening at all. But my reaction when I was watching it last night was so normal. That was what I was thinking. There was a lot of information. There wasn't a lot of sparring with the press.

The first press briefing of the Trump era, remember, was all about crowd size. This is all about what the administration wants to do. It doesn't mean that the press and the Biden administration will always get along, but it was pretty normal. And the new incoming press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that she is committed to transmitting information that's accurate and truthful and transparent. And not all that information, as she said, will be easy to take. It also sounded like she was committing to the return of the regular press briefing. As you noted, those did not happen frequently.

Yes, definitely. Definitely. All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about what's ahead for Congress. the violence. We're just going to stop you. That's it. Are you concerned that we're close to that? Yes. I think it's a call to action for people to use violence. How'd we get here? What's next? Listen to No Compromise wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So yesterday after the inauguration, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over a pretty notable session in the Senate. The chair lays before the Senate two

certificates of election for the state of Georgia and a certificate of appointment to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former Senator Kamala D. Harris of California. Yeah, that was very weird. Okay. She swore in three senators, including two Democrats from Georgia, which means that with her tie-breaking vote, Democrats are now effectively in control of the chamber. Sue, how does that change things? Well, I mean, it changes everything. Chuck Schumer is now the majority leader. Democrats will be able to run the committees and set the agenda. But in some ways, you know, the Senate, it changes nothing. The rules of the Senate still exist. You

still have a filibuster that will require bipartisan consensus, a 60 vote super majority to get anything done unless Democrats decide to change the rules of the Senate. And it's going to be tough. The majority does matter a lot. I think it especially makes it easier for things like confirmations and judicial nominations to get through because they only need a simple majority now. And Kamala Harris could be spending a lot of time up on Capitol Hill if they're faced with a lot of these 50-50 votes. And I have seen some chatter about this online and people tweeting about it. But just to clarify for everyone, Harris can only vote in a tie situation. She's not just like this extra vote that Democrats can rely on. It has to be a tie measure.

And she can be the tiebreaker, but only gets to vote in tiebreaking situations. So what about the filibuster? McConnell wants some kind of upfront commitment from Schumer that the Democrats won't get rid of it. What leverage does McConnell have to get that? Well, in every new Senate, they have to pass something that's called an organizing resolution. And this goes to that sort of power sharing agreement. The number of seats that each party get on committees, the number of staff that each committee gets, that kind of stuff, the sort of just how the Senate runs, that's decided by an organizing resolution. And the size of the majority matters to that. If Democrats had a 65-seat

majority, they would have more seats on committees and more staff. It's sort of ratioed to the size of your majority. With a 50-50 Senate, that raises the question of power sharing. I mean, should Republicans have equal numbers of senators on committees, equal numbers of staff for those committees? What Democrats want to do is go to precedent. You know, the Senate is a chamber full of precedents, and we've had 50-50 senates before. And the last time was during the Bush administration, and they reached a deal that did give equal representation to the two parties on committees, gave them equal staff, but still gave Democrats sort of veto power. If something got tied up in committee on an 8-8 vote, Democrats could still advance it to the floor. And Democrats still control the floor

itself. That's what they want to do. They say that's the way it's been done before. What McConnell's trying to do is add language into it that would essentially tie Chuck Schumer's hands and not be able to touch the legislative filibuster over the next two years. And Democrats have outright rejected that and said, we're not going to agree to something just because Mitch McConnell wants it. But we're kind of stuck because the organizing resolution can be filibustered. So unless they get 60 senators to agree to how the Senate can organize, we're sort of existing in this weird limbo right now where we can't move forward with things like the impeachment trial or committees organizing themselves or who's the chairman of what. We're just in this like weird middle. Sue, I'm curious, given how up in the air all of that work

is, what does that mean for when we could actually start seeing legislation moving through the upper chamber? Not anytime soon. You know, once they get on the other end of this organizing resolution, I think the top priority right now is nominations. We have already seen that they can get some nominations through even in this limbo. They already approved Avril Haines, who's the director of national intelligence. Schumer wants to try to get the treasury secretary through other top nominees through in the Senate. You can kind of do anything you want if you have enough agreement among senators. But beyond that, you know, the confirmations are going to take top priority. They want to get Biden in his cabinet. And guys, we still got an impeachment trial to get around. So Schumer did say today he is also

at a dual track talking to McConnell about a bipartisan resolution to set the terms for that trial. We don't know when it's going to start yet. Speaker Pelosi today said it would be soon and that, you know, Democrats overall say they don't expect it to take very long. We've even heard that some think it could be as short as three days. But they got to get through these sort of early days before we can get into sort of the real meat of legislating. Sue, if they can't get an organizing resolution, what does that mean, that the Senate can't do anything? I think they will get an organizing resolution because think of things like this. Jack Reed, who is right now the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, his office put something out today that was like, hey, just a reminder, we're not the chairman yet.

We can't be chairman until the organizing resolution is passed because committees are continuing bodies. So if they don't pass an organizing resolution, Jim Inhofe, the Republican, remains the chairman on the Armed Services Committee. So you can see that not passing an organizing resolution for Democrats isn't really an option. They have to. So that's the leverage McConnell has. Yeah, they would sort of cede the power to Republicans to run their committees who are all currently the chairman. So it just creates such an untenable position that I don't think not passing one is an option. All right, we'll leave it there for today. You can find all the ways to stay connected with us by following the links in the description of this episode. I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.