The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: October 1st

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Congress kept the government open but Democrats are still working out how to pass the two major pillars of the Biden agenda. And the president's approval rating has somewhat recovered as the public thinks less about Afghanistan, but the midterms could be bad for Biden if Congress stalls out.This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, acting congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.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

This is Francesca calling from New Jersey, where I just sent Aisha a photo I took of a zonkey, the offspring of a zebra and a donkey, who lives at a local farm. This podcast was recorded at... It is 1.06 p.m. on Friday, October 1st, 2021. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. People may not know this. I am very fascinated with those types of like cross things, like a polar bear and a grizzly bear. They can get together.

So it's like either a pizzly or a growler, a growler bear. What would you get if you combined a Democrat and a Republican? I don't know. That's an elephant and a donkey, right? A donkey? A donkey or something. Okay. Send us that photo, please. Okay. All right. I will tweet out a picture of the donkey. Hey, there is the NPR politics podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior

political editor and correspondent. This week, Congress was going to act on infrastructure, and then it was also supposed to be acting on climate, maybe some social programs. There was also this need to fund the budget. And, oh, yeah, there's also the debt ceiling. There were all of these things that needed to happen, but only really one of those things happened this week, Deidre. Can you talk about what did get done? They funded the government.

We are not about to have a government shutdown. The government is open. Congress did pass a short-term funding bill funding the government through December 3rd. They actually had a photo op on Capitol Hill yesterday congratulating themselves for not shutting down the government, which I thought was kind of odd. So they passed this stopgap funding bill. It also includes some emergency money for natural disasters like Hurricane Ida and for Afghan resettlement programs. But of course, because they gave themselves another deadline, we'll be having

this conversation on December 3rd. Well, and so that's through December 3rd, they at least funded the government, but there was also supposed to be an infrastructure bill. So where do things stand with this process and this infrastructure bill and the other bill, Deirdre? Well, it's been a messy few days on Capitol Hill, that's for sure. I mean, House Speaker Pelosi initially set a deadline for Monday to vote on this trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate already passed last month. It got moved to Thursday. Now she's saying it might happen today. We'll see. But what happened is the speaker didn't have the votes, and it's unclear whether she will get them today or maybe in the next couple of days. But what's happening here is that there's a large group of House progressives who said they would defeat that

$1 trillion infrastructure bill unless there was an agreement with the Senate and the White House on this broader spending package that includes programs like climate, education, health care, child care. And so right now, there are these really intense negotiations. And while it looked pretty messy, and it still is a little messy, sometimes this happens, things have to look really bad before they make a big turning point. We understand President Biden is heading to Capitol Hill this afternoon. Those visits tend to happen to rally the troops. It's pretty clear it's going to be less than the three and a half trillion dollars that progressives have been pushing. But what will centrists like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema accept.

Even if progressives don't get $3.5 trillion and they maybe get $1.5 trillion, which is one of the numbers floating around out there for these social programs, climate, etc., that's still a lot of money. Like that is a lot, like over a trillion dollars is a lot of money. And it also shows like how much the political framework paradigm has shifted from even just the Obama administration, where when the U.S. was in the middle of a massive recession, they could not pass a trillion dollar bill to help. They could not pass a trillion dollar stimulus bill. It was not. And now a trillion dollars is like a fallback. Right. And I think that, you know, it's funny because I've seen even Republicans say, oh, look, Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, his red line is apparently another $1.5 trillion in spending. And that's supposedly the moderate position from West Virginia.

This is not the way things would have been and were a dozen years ago. The parties have changed quite dramatically. And a position even like Manchin's is scoffed at by progressives as not being progressive, really. And so we're talking about this infrastructure bill, this other package that they're trying to get through. There is this other thing that has to get done, and that is the debt ceiling. And if they do not raise the debt ceiling, then the U.S. could default on its obligations, its monetary obligations. It looks like the Republicans are standing firm on having Democrats pass this through reconciliation, which would basically require Democrat votes, only Democrats to vote for this to get the to raise the debt ceiling and no Republicans. What is the prospects for getting that done and how long might that take?

Well, they have a deadline. I mean, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Congress that if they don't raise the debt limit, which is how the government is allowed to keep borrowing money, and this is for debt that it's already racked up, not new spending, things that it's already put on the nation's credit card, if they don't do that by October 18th, she has said it could be, quote, catastrophic. And so that could have real world impacts for the financial markets and for people who are trying to borrow to buy a new car or to have a student loan. So, you know, I think it's still an open question. Republicans, like you said, Aisha, are insisting they are not going to help Democrats pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling. So, and Democrats say they don't want

to put it on this spending package that they would pass, you know, with Democratic votes alone. I think there's a sensitivity that that, you know, forces them into a deadline on a pretty complicated policy bill that they're still writing. So I guess we, you know, we could have another sort of cliff looking at Washington. And, you know, we'll have to see whether the parties can agree. I mean, I think both parties say over and over, no one is going to let the nation default. But, you know, unless there's some kind of, you know, agreement to figure out a way to get this through, it could be kind of a nervous period, right around October 18. All right. Well, a cliffhanger, certainly. You guys like that pun? Good one.

All right. Well, let's take a quick break on that note. And when we come back, we'll talk about how Americans are feeling about President Biden these days. More on that when we get back. And we're back. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan a month ago, Biden's approval ratings have recovered some. You know, they took a bit of a hit after that very chaotic withdrawal. And so we have found that they've recovered a bit in the latest NPR, PBS NewsHour, Marist poll. Domenico, you are the poll person, you know all about this. Where is President Biden right now when it comes to approval ratings? Well, last month, during or just slightly after that chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden's approval rating was

only 43%, with 51% majority disapproving. But this month now, the end of this month, Biden has gained back some of that. He's drawn to 45% approving, 46% disapproving. That's a net gain of about seven percentage points. It's not great. I wouldn't call it like a bounce back or any of that kind of thing. It does appear, though, that he's bottomed out. He hit a plateau. And when you look inside the numbers, Republicans have pretty much maxed out on their disapproval of Biden. And where the movement is coming from here, albeit on the margins, is from Democrats and independents. And, you know, actually a majority of the 9% who are unsure of how Biden is doing his job, the pollsters said, are actually Democrats or Democratic-leaning groups. So that tells you

that Biden might have some room to grow if stuff on Capitol Hill gets better, if COVID and the economy continue to improve. On the other hand, things don't go well, he could be stuck on a kind of mediocre plateau. Well, I mean, it's my job to have to follow the twists and turns on Capitol Hill, but my sense is people have mostly tuned it out. They don't really have to pay attention to the day in and day out drama. But if a string of negative headlines continues and Democrats are really stuck or fail to get through Biden's agenda, I think a lot of those people that Domenico just talked about, leading Democrats and independents could bolt from Biden, and that could be a problem.

Yeah, I think we also have to recognize that there was a lot of hyperbolic media coverage of what happened in Afghanistan, certainly serious. You know, there were deaths, obviously, there. But the way that it was presented was like, it's off a cliff, the Biden presidency is over, you know, can he recover? And it was just this level at which I think a lot of people or some people were saying, well, like, let's wait and see if Afghanistan is a thing that continues to be on people's minds, because quite frankly, for some 15 years, it really was not a prominent issue on people's minds. So what made people think that now suddenly it was going to become a prominent issue? And I think as we've seen it start to fade somewhat from prominence on television, it's

also faded from prominence in people's minds. And I do think, though, that all of this that Deirdre's talking about comes down to competence. I think that the Afghanistan withdrawal certainly dinged the perception of Biden as a competent manager of the government. And if he can't get his own party to get something out of Congress, and it continues to be coverage of Democrats looking like they can't negotiate with themselves, well, that's going to make them look ineffective and make Biden look, you know, kind of mediocre. Is there something where when you mentioned Domenico about how Afghanistan looked in the moment, and no doubt it looked very chaotic, but it's less at the top of mind right now. There's in Congress, things look

pretty chaotic right now. Like there's people going back and forth. And for, as you said, Deidre, people probably aren't paying attention to every twist and turn. Is this also a situation where everything does look very chaotic right now, but if something is able to come through, the chaos of this moment may be forgotten? I think so. I mean, I think it could fade just sort of like the upper over the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan appears to have faded in this latest poll. in for congressional leaders is when actually something has to be withdrawn, can't be done. They wind up absolutely not being able to get anything done. If something were to pass, even if it was by Christmas or something like that, I think that you could see a reshaping of that narrative. All of this said, though, we still have this sense from Democrats and Republicans, both publicly and privately, that Republicans still have the advantage from Democrats and Republicans, both publicly and privately, that Republicans still have the advantage to take over the House next year, regardless of all of these issues, just because of their structural advantages. What are some other stuff that stood out to you in this poll? Yeah, well, in talking about the structural advantages that Republicans

have, what I think a lot of people might be surprised by here is that you have Democrats leading on the congressional ballot, we call it. Which party would you rather have controlling Congress? They lead by a pretty significant margin, Democrats, by eight points, 46 to 38 percent over Republicans. And that's the kind of margin Democrats have traditionally needed to retain control of the House. Humongous caveat here though and a big red flag for Democrats that they have to look at inside these numbers is that that eight-point lead is generated by double-digit margins in the northeast and in the west for Democrats. In the midwest and in the south where a lot of those swing districts are, Democrats are actually trailing on the congressional ballot. So that's a big warning sign for Democrats. And I think they put that eight point lead to the to the, you know, back burner a little bit and really zero in on the fact that they're down by a few points in the Midwest and South. And that could foretell big losses. And Republicans really think that they have an opportunity to sort of expand the playing field into some places where they can pick off some Democrats.

And they're sort of have a much bigger enthusiasm right now. I mean, I talked to a Republican recently who said that they that over 700 Republicans have filed to run for the House of Representatives. And that number is double the amount of candidates who had filed in the 2010 midterms. And that at that point, after that midterm, Republicans won 63 seats. So I see what your point is on the generic ballot, but I think there's also an enthusiasm issue with the Republican base. And, and it doesn't seem like the Democratic base is there yet, but it could pick up if they pass these big agenda items. One thing that Republicans had been trying to use to get people, you know, motivated and, you know, get their base worked up is the idea of the vaccine mandates that the White House has been pushing and Republicans have been

trying to make that a bit of a wedge issue. Is there anything in the poll that found, you know, how people are thinking about the White House's push to mandate vaccines in some private workplaces? Yeah, well, I think Biden and the White House were very reticent to come forward with federal vaccine mandates because they just felt like anytime you have the federal government telling people what to do, it can be a political problem sometimes. But what we actually found in our survey is that there's broad support for some of these federal requirements. For example, you know, when it comes to workers in hospitals and home health care facilities and other medical facilities needing to be vaccinated, two-thirds of people agree with that. Only 38%

of Republicans, but 56% of independents and 92% of Democrats agree. You know, when it comes to employers with 100 or more employees requiring workers to be vaccinated or show a negative test result at least once a week, 55% agree with that, including a majority of independents and almost 9 in 10 Democrats. So what we're seeing here, and a lot of times this is what happens, Republicans who are strongly opposed to some of these mandates wind up driving the narrative, even though independents who might be more quiet about it, and Democrats who are beating the drum in the opposite direction, maybe don't get as much attention for it. But what we're seeing is basically broad majority support for some of

these federal requirements, at least so far. I think stepping back just on the COVID issue in general, I think maybe the feeling that the public may be getting that life could be getting back to normal because of these vaccine mandates or because of, you know, people feeling safer about going back to their sort of normal activities pre-pandemic may be helping the president's approval ratings. And I think Republicans saw the slide in the summer as the Delta variant was spiking and thinking, you know, he campaigned on ending the pandemic and he's failed. But there's still time between now and the midterms for us to get past this pandemic. You know, who knows what will

happen in the next, you know, year, 14 months. But this is one area where if he delivers on that promise, Democrats can also, you know, hold that up as, you know, promise made, promise kept. All right. Let's just leave that there for now. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go the part of the show where we talk about all the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about politics or otherwise and I hope there's a lot of otherwise because you know it's been a lot of politics this week so Domenico starting with you what can't you let go of this week well I've got your otherwise across the pond in Denmark we're gonna start and a museum gave an artist eighty four thousand $84,000 to create two works of modern art.

Well, the artist sent back two blank canvases that he says make up a new work of art. The installation was called Take the Money and Run. It's amazing. He said that this is a commentary on poor wages. He says it's not theft. He said it is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work. How is it poor wages if he got $84,000? It's an artistic commentary on other people's situations.

He's saying other people don't get paid enough. That's what he's saying. They get nothing, blank. They get nothing or they get very little. He's saying that other people don't get a lot of money for doing a lot of work. And look at me, I don't have to do nothing and I'm going to get $84,000. This is the best troll, the quote, the work is that I have taken their money. So is he really going to be able to keep the money? I think he, I don't know what they're going to do. The museum was not happy about it.

Oh, they're not happy about it? They said that they're not satisfied with his explanation, but that hasn't stopped them from displaying the works as part of its exhibition called, listen to this, Work It Out. Well, maybe the museum needs to work it out. I think that's a very good gig if you can get it, right? Yeah. Like, that's the thing.

He could have called it. I wonder what some other titles of this could have been. Like, maybe like, How's It Feel, Suckas? Oh, my God. You know, like, that could have been one. See ya, wouldn't want to be ya. And like. Okay.

Well, Deidre, what can't you let go of this week? Oh my God. This is definitely not politics related. I cannot let go of this crazy video of a Florida man catching a six-foot alligator in his trash can. It was insane. Have you guys seen this?

Yes. You have to look it up. Now you have to watch it. I made my husband watch it last night. I mean, you know how many things come up when you Google Florida man and alligator? This one will pop up. This is the new thing. This is the new thing. This is great. So this guy literally has this six-foot alligator thrashing around,

and he's charging at it as it's snapping at him with this trash can, one of those giant blue recycling cans sort of on its side. I don't think they take that in our county anyway. I know. But then he pushes it in. He charges it. He manages to get the thing stood up upright and then closes the top as this alligator is still thrashing around. And then the crazy part about this is this was not even his own front yard.

This was like his neighbor who had this. And the guy was a veteran who says that his time in the army prepared him for his, you know, for his encounter with an alligator. And then he rolls

the recycling can to the pond and sets the alligator free. Oh, there you go. Oh, wow. I never saw the end, but he did all of this in slides. Like, not even sneakers. Oh.

I saw that. In what? In slides, like flip-flops. Like flip-flops. Like flip-flops. Oh, flip-flops. Okay. Yeah, but they were like slides.

And what I thought was amazing about it was everyone else was just watching. First of all, I would be running the opposite way. I would not be the one who'd be like, oh, I'm going to put this on YouTube. I'd be like, got to go. Also, like the gator, you know, putting it in a pond. I mean, I hope he was far away. I mean, those things can come back on land. Yeah. Well, putting it in a pond. I mean, I hope he was far away. I mean, those things can come back on land.

Yeah. Well, and that was the thing. And he tells the guy who's filming him, because no one else is helping him. He's doing this all by himself. And he's like, let me know when the head's in the trash can. And the guy's like, yeah, I got you, man. I'm like. And then by the time the guy told him that the alligator's head was in the trash can the alligator had stepped back but when he threw the lid down it like hit the alligator's

head and it stunned him but that scream someone lets out a scream when he throws the lid and that scream is me that's me going because i definitely would have been no help. This is another reason why I could not live in Florida. Gators. But that's a great neighbor, though. I mean, that is a really great neighbor. And I showed my husband, I was like, this is the sort of thing that

he would do, and I would just be standing back, like, you know, commentating. Like, don't do it! Oh, no, you're going to snow! I mean, don't they have people for that kind of thing? I mean, it's Florida, for goodness sake. No. They have people who do this. Well, now we know how to do it, though.

Just get a trash can. We got it. So, Aisha, what is the thing that you cannot let go of this week? So, I think you guys know about this because if you look at our Slack channel, you've seen this. And if you happen to follow any of us on the politics team on Twitter, we did a lot of commentating about this. I don't think commentating is a word. We commented on it. I'm making some stuff up today.

But so there was this letter to ask a manager. And I love this letter so, so very much. So it's about this. So just I'm going to try to tell this as quickly and simply as possible. There's this woman. She has a fiance, Ted. Ted works for this team of people, right? And they're very close. Like they work on this at this company, small company, whatever.

The team that he works on is very close there's this other guy his name is bob quote-unquote bob let's call him that ted and bob ted and bob get into an accident and it's serious and they make a car accident it's serious they make it through but afterwards there's another team member let's call her sally sally tells ted this is the letter writer's fiance that she prayed to god that if he had to take one of them, please take Ted. Don't take Bob. And she told Ted this, right? She told this to Ted. She told Ted, I ask God to take you and not Bob.

Jeez. Because Bob's a really great guy. Do we have any information, though, like on the merits of Bob's life, like the things that he's done compared to Ted? Yes. So she said that Bob gives her great advice on her struggling marriage and he's loaned her money, which is a very good friend. Definitely. So she did not want the money train to end. But Ted, for some reason, was very offended that Sally said this and that he didn't invite her to the wedding.

And, you know, everyone got mad at him because they didn't know the backstory on what had happened. And he didn't want this woman to come to his wedding um because she he said that she wished that he was dead she did not wish that he was dead she was bargaining with the lord and she said if one of them got to go then it needs to be an awkward wedding guest situation i mean you know you know how much weddings cost you know people are allowed to invite whoever they want to invite to these weddings. So bye. Hey, by the way, just a little quick Googling, doing a little public service announcement here back to Deirdre's Can't Let It Go. There is, in fact, a nuisance alligator hotline.

It is 866-FWC-GATOR. Oh. 392-4286. Now, I do like that the acronym for Nuisance Alligator Hotline is what, Aisha? Nuisance Alligator Hotline. Yeah, it's what I would say if I saw a gator and someone said, Will you help out? Nah. I'm not helping you.

Oh, nah. Oh, nah. That is truly a public service you help out? Nah. I'm not helping you. Oh, nah. Oh, nah. That is truly a public service announcement. But you would probably put another word in front of the nah. Heck nah. I'll say it because we're a family program. Heck nah. We'll have to come up with what the heck stands for.

But yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, I think that's a good place to leave it. That's a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathani Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood and Elena Moore.

Thanks to Lexi Shapiro and Brandon Carter. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.