The NPR Politics Podcast - Where Congress Stands On Coronavirus Relief Negotiations

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

With over 800,000 new unemployment claims filed last week and the previous coronavirus relief programs set to expire at the end of the month, congress is facing more pressure to pass some relief measures. But, after signs of a compromise last week, talks have once again stalled. Plus, President Trump steps in to try to fight social media companies. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and congressional reporter Claudia Grisales. 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 NPR, this is Nina from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I've just made myself some popcorn as an afternoon snack, settling back into my sit-stand desk that I bought back in April for my home office, which has been in the stand position maybe twice. This podcast was recorded at... Nothing wrong with setting aspirations. It is, uh... It's 2.35 Eastern on Thursday, December 10th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will probably still be sitting at my desk. All right, here's the show. I like to think about popcorn as like dinner, like a full-on dinner, not just a snack. In pandemic times, you're just like, I guess I'm having dinner and a glass of wine. Exactly. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress. So as we all know, the coronavirus pandemic is getting worse and worse. We have more than 3,000 people dying a day now. The economic impact is grim as well. 850,000 people filed for unemployment last week. Congress, of course, as we have spent a lot of time talking about on this podcast, has been stalled on another round of relief for months. What is the latest on that front, Claudia?

It seems that we're stuck again. It's been little movement since we saw a burst of energy last week with a group of centrist lawmakers who made a pitch for a new $908 billion plan that got leaders talking again for both sides and the White House. However, now these leaders are struggling to reach agreement on what that plan could make the basis for if they can reach an ultimate plan. I thought Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana earlier today had a good summary of where things stand now. We're stuck in the same place we were four months ago. That is, the Democrats are insisting upon additional monies for state and local government. The Republicans are insisting on on a waiver of liability so our schools and our businesses don't all get sued

once we fully open back up. And neither side is budging. So now they're trying to buy some time. Government shutdown deadline is approaching on Friday. So they're passing through a temporary one-week funding measure through Congress this week with the hopes that they can reach a larger deal to not only fund the government, but perhaps an economic stimulus deal by a new deadline that looks like it will be the 18th of next week. I mean, Kelsey, every metric, every story out there shows that we are now way worse than we were at peak coronavirus in March and April. I mean, the death totals, the sickness totals, the hospitals, the fact that, you know, the

winter is leading to a slowing down of the already bad economy. Like, how does that not make its way through the doors into the rooms where this is being talked about or Zoom rooms or whatever is happening? I have actually been really surprised by the major disconnect that is happening here. You see lawmakers going up to microphones in a podium saying that they must pass bills, that they're working, that they're planning, and then turning around later in the day saying, well, things aren't really working out. If you are a person who is watching what Congress is doing and looking for Congress to bring you some sort of relief, you aren't seeing the back and forth internal to the day where there's a

churn about a small movement about a piece of legislation. You're just seeing that nothing's getting passed. And you would anticipate typically in moments like this this is when congress does something they respond because the moment is too large for them not to respond but that has not been happening i'm told by justin talking to staffers who are working on this that they really do think something will come together that the two sides will budge one of the unique things about this particular situation as it compares to other times when the country has been in crisis and Congress has been trying to respond, is that the White House really hasn't been that engaged. So you don't have that top level person

either consistently calling for something or pressuring people or using that bully pulpit of the presidency to try to drive home the fact that a deal has to get done. Congress is really good at getting in their own way, but they're also pretty good at getting out of their own way when pressure mounts enough. So Claudia, you mentioned all the different factors in play before. What would you say the number one priority for each side is and what the biggest divide is here? So in terms of priorities here, I think there's a long list for each side when you look at them. When we look at Democrats, they're really, this is what is holding up negotiations right now. They really want to

see these unemployment benefits extended. And this is part of what was missing from the White House's proposal that they put forward this week. And so that is one area that they're really focused on. And of course, state and local aid. And in exchange for that, Republicans want to see this liability about the liability shield and hearing about the Paycheck Protection Program and small businesses from Republicans as well. But in the end, this list of priorities, the crossing over is what's proving to be difficult right now. We are changing presidents in about a month, a month and 10 days. Joe Biden has been you know, we talked about this yesterday, pretty engaged in this process, weighing in on it, saying what he would like to see.

His opinion does not matter as much yet. But how much is he affecting talks right now in terms of shaping the Democratic side and in terms of the thinking of, well, there is a Democrat, not a Republican, ultimately signing this bill in a month, pushing and say that they would get behind using about $900 billion as the starting point for these negotiations. They said that they'd do that. They were explicit because Joe Biden is going to become president. They're willing to do a little bit now with the full belief that he will do a little bit or a lot more later. But that didn't really clear up some of those other sticking points. And the fact that, you know, Republicans maybe don't feel like they need to clear the decks for Joe Biden. And I will say, though, the jobs numbers, unemployment numbers that we are seeing, and the threat of a really deep, potentially double dip recession, that is a scary thing for both parties because both parties would get blamed and both parties would have to find a way to bring the country out of that moment. Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking through of so many ways I've seen in my life examples of the fact

that things are probably slowing down again. People are being more cautious because the virus is yet again everywhere. And people are probably not even doing the same level, limited level of eating and things like that because it's cold and dark outside. It's just harder to do that safely. So there are a lot of things that you don't want to do in a COVID environment that you might have been willing to do in the summer. Yeah. What's the sense of the biggest danger of absolutely no deal happening? I think this will be a difficult failure on so many levels, an economic failure and a pretty tough political failure. To touch on just a couple, it really puts a damper on the start of a Biden presidency who will come in under this cloud of economic and political strains to reach some sort of coronavirus deal. Without one, the holidays

will be that much more difficult for Americans. On the losing end of all this, they could be faced with difficult choices on where they live, if they can afford their next meal. So it just raises the stakes, as Kelsey was mentioning, that much more next year. And it sets the tone for a pretty dark winter in many more ways than just battling this pandemic. Right now, things look really bad. I will say that I have watched so many negotiations that seemed hopeless kind of magically come together after a weekend or a moment when, you know, we reached the very, very end of talks and everybody was giving up. And then suddenly we have a deal and we're passing it in the next 12 hours.

I am not ruling out the possibility that that could happen in this situation. Congress is one of those places that is both mysterious and predictable. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk about a whole other negotiation happening right now in Congress. The defense authorization bill. Support for NPR and the following message come from YouStudio. Today's business world requires remote communication for training, sales enablement, and more. That's why companies like Nike, AT&T, and Dell all trust YouStudio. YouStudio securely hosts and distributes fully branded podcasts for businesses to communicate effectively with their employees, customers, and partners in a media-first mobile experience.

Get started for as little as $1 per user. Visit theletterustudio.com today for your personalized demo. Today, some people argue that the Supreme Court has more power than all other branches of government. But when and how did the Supreme Court end up getting the final say? How the court became more powerful than anything the framers could have imagined. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. And we are back. So late Tuesday, the House passed the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act.

It's essentially the military's budget. It was passed by a wide bipartisan margin in the House. But President Trump is threatening to veto the bill. Why is that? We have a few issues here. He initially threatened to veto this legislation earlier this year during the summer because it contained an effort that would end the use of Confederate names and symbols at military installations. This is something that was led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She is a target of Trump's ire. And then more recently, Trump threatened to veto the bill if it doesn't repeal a legal shield for social media companies. And we should note these

are the same companies such as Twitter that Trump has been feuding with, and he says they've been unfair to him. And so he was essentially asking lawmakers very late in the game to use this defense bill to undo this section of the Communications Decency Act. It's known as Section 230 that provides this protection. Right. It's interesting, even though you can make a very strong argument that President Trump would not have been elected in 2016 without the way that he took advantage of Facebook and Twitter and other outlets to share his message. The fact that his false widespread claims of election fraud, which are not true, continue to orbit because of social media. He's still very upset with these organizations for a lot of reasons, including the fact that Twitter has started putting labels on his false tweets.

Exactly. So, Kelsey, this bill's in front of the Senate now. Are Senate Republicans listening to him? Are they trying to put this change in? How are they reacting? Some Senate Republicans are listening to him and are frustrated with the, you know, with these tech companies. But by and large, they're not listening to him when it comes to doing anything about changing the NDAA. I mean, Claudia has been talking to a lot of them. And it really it sounds like there's going to be just as wide a bipartisan margin in the Senate, if not wider than there was in the House. Which could set up for the first time in the closing weeks of his presidency, the first time that his veto could be overridden. Yeah. Or if they can't come up with the votes to do that, I think Claudia can speak to this

a little bit more. It looks like they probably could. But if they can't, it could be the first time in almost 60 years that they didn't get this bill done. And that tells you a lot about what Washington is like right now. Would there be any real world consequences if if that didn't happen, this was passed again in the early weeks of a Biden administration? This is a policy bill. So in that way, they're fortunate. It's not the funding measure that would keep these that would keep the Pentagon and the Department of Defense funded. So in that way, they could buy more time, but it is a massive policy bill. And it does contain pay raises, for example,

hazard pay for military service members. So there are issues that will have to be put on the back burner that service members and others will have to wait and see if they can get it done in January instead of December. And of course, it's super technical. But since it would be a new session of Congress, they would have to reintroduce the bill, start from the beginning. Yeah. You know, the thing about this being a policy failing versus a political failing versus like an implementation failing, in the end, it's a failing.

It's a failing by Congress to continue doing the work that they're supposed to do. And a lot of lawmakers say that they viewed this as a bare minimum, the thing that they can always turn to to say, you know, at least we got that done. And that may not be something that they can hang their hat on now. And it really does speak to a moment where the Republican Party is making decisions about how they're going to follow President Trump and Democrats are making decisions about what their party is going to look like. This is a real inflection point for Congress. And as much as that may feel distant sometimes, it's a real inflection point for the parties in general and the way that people interact with one another. You know, this is an episode where that joke that John McCain would say like six times a week feels applicable about how the only

people who like Congress are blood relatives and paid staffers. I would argue that the paid staffers might not like too much either. Alright, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow with our

weekly roundup. And until then, you can subscribe to a roundup of our best online analysis by heading to npr.org slash politics newsletter or by following the link in the description of this episode. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.