Today, Explained - 46

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in today and got straight to work. Vox’s Laura McGann and Dylan Matthews explain what will be done immediately, and what’s possible with the slimmest of majorities in Congress. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. It's a historic day in America. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear. I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear. The 46th president of the United States was sworn into office today. That's the most presidents we've ever had. Office of President of the United States.

And will, to the best of my ability, will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend, preserve, protect, and defend, And at 78 years of age, he's the most senior president we've ever had. So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. President. And as my colleague Cleo Abram put it, yesterday was the last day a woman had never been vice president before.

I, Kamala Devi Harris, solemnly swear. That I will support and defend. Not to mention a half black woman, a half Tamil woman, one half of an interracial couple. Shout outs to the first, second gentleman. So help me God. So help me God. And shoutouts to the most diverse cabinet in the history of the republic. The first black person to lead the Department of Defense. The first woman to head the Fed. I could go on, but I won't because this group has their work cut out for them. You might have noticed this inauguration didn't look like any of those that preceded it. Vox's editorial director of policy and politics sure did. Her name's Lauren McGann. Gosh, I have covered about half a dozen inaugurations

at this point, and this one wasn't like any of the others. It was a stage of far fewer people than usual, massed, of course, six feet apart, social distancing. Probably the most striking for me was the National Mall was empty and it was closed to the public. And instead, the inaugural committee had put in several hundred thousand flags to represent Americans who couldn't be there to celebrate the inauguration because of COVID. And at the same time, the National Guard is all around Washington, D.C. I live a few blocks from the Capitol, and all around the Capitol for several days now has been completely blocked off. Huge fences. There are basically military checkpoints several blocks away. And so as you're watching inauguration, you're seeing this kind of normal moment in a way of the incoming president being sworn in on the platform at the Capitol, as we've seen many times

before. But it was unlike anything else just to see it amid COVID and amid this unprecedented security. Let's talk about who ended up on the stage. You had your gagas. I'll say, can you see? Your J-Los. Una nación bajo Dios indivisible con libertad y justicia para todos. Your J-Los. Your Garth Brooks. Or was it Chris Gaines?

But more importantly for our politics and our democracy, who was there? And perhaps most important of all, who was not there? So you had the kind of normal cast of characters. You know, there were the friends of Biden, his fellow Democrats, all excited to show up. And then there was the former presidents of both parties. They come in with their spouses. George W. Bush was there. Ladies and gentlemen, the 43rd President of the United States, the Honorable George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush. Barack Obama was there.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States, the Honorable Barack H. Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter couldn't come, but Joe Biden did acknowledge him. And so we had the past presidents there. We had members of Congress from both parties there. I believe that is Ted Cruz there. There was a smattering of Supreme Court justices, both conservative and liberal.

But most notably was the one person who was not, and that was Donald Trump. The whole point of inauguration is to document the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, and the president who was in power did not show up. He left several hours before events even started to unfold this morning. He got in Air Force One and flew away. He never conceded the election formally. He never called Joe Biden to congratulate him. He didn't welcome him to the White House like is typically done. Michelle Obama and Barack Obama greeted Donald Trump and Melania Trump, something that Donald Trump has often referenced over the last four years. But they did not extend that same courtesy to the Bidens.

And of course, it was impossible to watch the inauguration ceremonies today and not be thinking about the mob that staged an insurrection on the very same building two weeks ago to the day. Absolutely. The setting was the exact same setting we saw on cable news two weeks ago, where we watched arguably a group of protesters that were whipped up into a mob by the president in a speech. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, where Donald Trump did not escort Joe Biden down to Capitol Hill today. To watch that, to see this moment where a split screen in my mind of, on the one hand, I was watching this Capitol two weeks ago, wondering would democracy survive, and then two weeks later seeing Democrats and Republicans come together to perform a ritual that says America is a democracy and we will carry

on. It was really profound. And though he never called out the president by name, the insurrection seemed to sort of loom very largely over moments in Biden's inaugural speech. Absolutely. It really, in a way, animated a speech that speaks to the themes that Joe Biden has been committed to his entire political career. Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy. One of the things that was so striking to me, listening to him speak today, was really the start, where we often talk about America as a democracy and that we do these rituals at the same time to celebrate that democracy and we're proud of it. But something about today and in this inauguration where it just felt so much more profound.

And the way that Joe Biden put it is that he said, The people, the will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded. We've learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed. And it felt in that moment that we were about to hear a speech that we're going to remember for a long time. This felt so important and so important right now. And so when you say the rioters and how the rioters being the kind of force behind the speech and looming over the speech they did. But the speech itself became even more profound than even what happened two weeks ago.

It really transitioned into a speech about all of the big problems America faces right now and Biden's philosophy on how the country needs to tackle those problems. A cry that can't be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. He specifically named the rise of far-right terrorism, but he also spent much of the speech on COVID and how are we going to fight this pandemic. And he spoke about climate change and he spoke about the economy and jobs.

And he was able, I think quite successfully, to lay out the stakes of the moment, which are about our health and our economy and our very foundation as a political system, but inject hope and make us believe maybe just for a moment that we could do this together, that if we really did come together, we could actually overcome some of this. And there were moments during the campaign when Biden was criticized for sort of his Pollyanna-ish style thinking about Republicans and Democrats and the best in people transcending American politics. But right now, when we're afraid, when we're seeing this bitterness and rage challenge who we are as a political system,

when thousands of people a day are dying of the coronavirus, when so many lives are uncertain with their lives being upended economically by the coronavirus, to hear someone say, you know, we can look at each other and do better together, there was something really hopeful about it in a way that I felt was sincere. And I think he's hitting on something that as much as there was an angry mob of a few thousand people, tens of millions of people voted for Joe Biden, who is a man who has built his political career on this school of thought. In another January, on New Year's Day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote,

if my name ever goes down into history, it'll be for this act and my whole soul is in it. My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. after he gave this speech. But as everyone and their uncle seems to know, he's on his way to the White House to sign a raft of executive orders. What are the first things President Biden, the 46th president of the United States, is going to do as president? He's going to sign, I think it's 17 executive actions. And he's already got a bunch of bills queued up that he's planning to send over to Congress. But just to hear the list, he's going to sign an executive order to stop the border wall construction, to end the travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority countries, to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement.

He's signing an executive order to end the Keystone Pipeline and revoke oil and gas development, national wildlife monuments. He's going to make sure that the U.S. Census begins counting non-citizens again. He's going to get the United States back into the World Health Organization. He's announcing a mask challenge for the first 100 days of his presidency. He's also... Sorry, I got to stop on that one. A mask challenge? Oh, yes. We're all going to wear masks for 100 days. I don't know what happens after that, but for the first 100 days, he's challenging us all. Put on your masks, John. He should teach Obama how to wear his correctly.

Right. Well, he took off his mask to yell something at Biden. It was like an ad for what not to do. One, don't yell. Two, if you are going to yell, leave your mask on, man. Anyway, extended eviction and foreclosure moratoriums. He's going to pause student loan payments until September 30th. He is going to sign an executive order that will help DREAMers, the young undocumented Americans who have been in a state of limbo. He's going to change Trump's arrest priorities for ICE. He's going to, this is huge, restructure the federal government coordination in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He's also going to sign an executive order that is going to advance a system of different racial equity measures throughout the federal government and also strengthen workplace discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity

for other Americans as well. He's going to try to freeze last-minute Trump administration regulatory actions, that stuff that maybe he was trying to squeak through at the very end. He's also going to announce his executive branch ethics doctrine, and it'll be created also as an executive order, but it'll be interesting to see what that looks like as Trump just, one of his final actions was to revoke his executive order, banning lobbyists from, banning former officials from lobbying. And it was anyway, it was his drain the swamp order that he just revoked today so that his buddies can make money. I guess the swamp was drained. Laura, thank you so much. You're welcome, Sean. After the break, how much of Biden's historically ambitious platform can he get done without an executive order, but with the slimmest of majorities in Congress?

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Terms and conditions apply. Dylan Matthews, we talked to you in September in an episode called This is the Future Joe Biden Wants. And we discussed his very ambitious agenda, trillions of dollars in spending on climate, on health care, on racial justice. But we didn't really know what kind of Congress he would have. And now we know, right? We do. Amid the chaos on Capitol Hill yesterday, Democrats ended up winning both Senate seats in the Georgia runoff election.

Now the parties in the Senate are split 50-50, but the incoming vice president, Kamala Harris, becomes the tie-breaking vote. And that means that Democrats will have a razor-thin but real majority in the Senate. So now we can finally talk about the concrete things that President Biden can accomplish. We absolutely can. And to do that, I'm afraid we're going to have to talk about this kind of boring, very annoying process

called budget reconciliation. Ah, Dylan, do we have to? Yes, Sean, we have to. Fine. So, long time ago, in the immediate aftermath of Richard Nixon, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Congress realized that it was becoming too difficult to pass spending bills, and so they set up this process that allows the expedited passage of certain kinds of bills.

And for our purposes, what matters about budget reconciliation is that it can get around filibusters. So normally in the Senate, any senator can decide they want to filibuster a bill. And I'll tell you one thing, the wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes all winter. And it takes 60 votes, not just 50, to break that and ultimately pass the bill. That is an almost insurmountable barrier for Democrats now. They would need to cleave off 10 Republicans to get anything done that way. That would be really, really hard. What budget reconciliation says is if you fit our strict guidelines, you can pass your bill with only 50 people. So if all the

Democrats agree on something and Kamala Harris can step in to break the tie, you can pass your agenda that way without needing to win over a bunch of conservative Republicans to back it. So what are the limits of budget reconciliation? So the important word in budget reconciliation is budget. That this is really meant to make it easier to pass tax and spending legislation to keep the government on track, keep them to their budget commitments. So the rule of thumb, and there are a lot of technicalities beyond this, but the rule of thumb is if it has to do with taxing people or spending stuff, you can probably do it with budget reconciliation. And if it doesn't have to do with that, you probably can't do it with budget reconciliation. Let's run through some of budget reconciliation's greatest hits, shall we?

Absolutely, let's. So if you've ever been unemployed and had to get health care through COBRA, COBRA is an Omnibus Reconciliation Bill. That's part of the acronym. That was passed through budget reconciliation. The Bush tax cuts, both rounds. With my signature, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 will deliver substantial tax relief to 136 million American taxpayers.

The Trump tax cuts. Something this big, something this generational, something this profound could not have been done without exquisite presidential leadership. Mr. President, thank you. A part of the Affordable Care Act under Obama, including nationalizing student loans and reducing student loan rates. For almost two decades, we've been trying to fix a sweetheart deal in federal law that essentially gave billions of dollars to banks to act as unnecessary middlemen in administering student loans. Budget reconciliation, welfare reform, budget reconciliation. You could go on, but the point is a lot of really high impact, really famous bills have

passed this way just because it makes passing controversial legislation a lot easier. And so it's a very effective tool that senators like to jump for when they have something that they know is going to be tough to pass, but they need a little extra hand. I mean, running down that list, it sounds like, you know, Bush's tax cuts, Obama's health care plan, Trump's tax cuts. It's some of the most ambitious and landmark legislation from the past three presidents, but it's also some things that seem to not happen very often. Is there a limit to how many times you can reconcile budget to essentially pass ambitious legislation? Yes. So the way things are supposed to work, and being Congress, things often don't work the way things are supposed to work, and being Congress, things often don't work the way

they're supposed to work. But the way they're supposed to work is that Congress passes a budget every single year. And that budget includes what are called reconciliation instructions. And those instructions are what give Congress the ability to use this process at all. And so usually that means that they are limited to reconciliation once per budget cycle. Now, because the system breaks down a lot, a budget actually hasn't been passed for 2021 yet. So Democrats in Congress right now have basically three shots at this. They have the 2021 budget, which still hasn't passed, and so they can pass it and do something. Then later this year, they can pass the 2022 budget and try to do reconciliation through that. And then the last year before the midterms, they could do the fiscal year 2023 budget. So one, two, three,

three shots at the apple. So there's a raft of things Biden wants to do. What could he potentially do? Let's talk about the list of policies that are feasible here through budget reconciliation or having 51 votes in the Senate. So first things first. The Biden administration is unveiling a $1.9 trillion economic proposal that will serve as the opening point for negotiations with Congress for a first stage rescue package as it tries to grapple with both the economic crisis and the pandemic during the first weeks in office. The program is... He and his allies in Congress also want to do some things to strengthen the

safety net that they kind of wanted to do anyway. So probably the biggest thing there is strengthening the child tax credit. So right is strengthening the child tax credit. So right now, the child tax credit kind of perversely doesn't go to the poorest people. You have to work to get it. And so Biden and a bunch of people in Congress have a plan to massively expand it so that it's essentially like 250 bucks a month per kid, per adult, so long as you're not pretty rich. So that would be a really big expansion of the safety net. And they're sort of framing it as COVID response,

but it's something they want to do permanently. Another thing like that is they want to keep expanding unemployment insurance for the crisis. And Biden, and especially Ron Wyden, who's going to be handling all this stuff in the Senate, want to tie that to the unemployment rate. So in the future, if we get in another crisis like this, you don't have to wait for Congress. It just kicks in automatically. So that's one kind of set of things he wants to do.

So that seems to sort of cover the COVID relief bucket. Let's talk about some of the things that we talked about back in September, like caregiving and climate change. Can any of that happen through budget reconciliation? So caregiving and supporting change? Can any of that happen through budget reconciliation? So caregiving and supporting child care and early childhood education, that's a perfect reconciliation thing. That's just spending. So Biden has a plan to do universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds. Every three and four-year-old child will get access to free, high-quality preschool like students have here. That's an

easy reconciliation thing. He wants to expand tax credits so that people have more support to hire child care and daycare. You apply to which one you want to go to. The state then sends you a letter saying you're approved and lays out the amount you're going to pay. The state sends that information to the child care provider, and then the state reimburses the child care center on the back end. You just pay what you're supposed to pay. Not a dime for some working families, and no more than 7% for anyone else. That's very easy to do with reconciliation. And so that's something he really emphasized and that I would expect him to try to put into one of his reconciliation packages since it's very appropriate for that. Climate change is a little harder. A good rule of thumb is you can't do just like regulation out of budget reconciliation. So Biden wants to mandate

that electricity is carbon neutral by 2035. You can't really do that with budget reconciliation. There are like some weird hacks you could try, but that's not really what it's made for. as the government so that you have a customer base for green companies to investigating new ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere, to paying people to build mass transit systems that reduce emissions in cities. He has this whole spending package as part of climate response. I think part of why he did that is just this reconciliation rule. That is stuff you can do through this process, even if you can't, like, mandate certain activities. Okay, so regulation is a no-go without budget reconciliation. What else can't he do with it?

Yes, there are some big things that they can't do, and particularly some things that I think a lot of people in the Democratic base are really excited about. So one is the kind of bucket of things that sometimes gets called democracy reform, banning gerrymandering by states, things like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, sort of resurrection bill that Democrats have put together, campaign finance reform, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states. Those are things that you hear a lot from Democrats, not just as priorities, but as priorities they think are kind of like prerequisites for Democrats being competitive in the future. And those would all be huge stretches to do with budget

reconciliation. I have not talked to anyone who thinks that the process is well-suited for those. And there's just a lot of other stuff that the Democrats want to do that is not budget or spending related directly. Creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. I've heard like some debate about this, but it seems like it would be challenging to do in reconciliation. It affects the budget, but it's not really a budget thing. It's about like giving people security's not really a budget thing. It's about giving people security in the place where they live. Minimum wage increases are just a regulation for businesses. That doesn't seem like something you could do, even though it's one of the more

popular things that Democrats always try to do. So it's not boundless, but it can do a lot of things. And so for all of these other ambitious things that President Biden would certainly like to do, be it raising the minimum wage, be it immigration reform, he would need to have buy-in from Republicans. He would. And I don't want to rule that out entirely. There are some issues where you might be able to cleave off some Republicans. Under Obama, there was an immigration reform push that passed the Senate with over 60 votes, including people like Marco Rubio on the Republican side voting for it. I don't know if that's still possible after everything that Trump has done to the Republican Party, but I think Biden certainly hopes it is and certainly thinks it's possible to carve off some Republicans who are open to immigration.

But all of those things require that kind of buy-in. And a lot of the Democratic agenda is stuff that you're just not going to cleave off any Republicans. I would be shocked if you got a single Republican who would vote for a $15 an hour minimum wage. And so in the absence of that, you're left with this weird little budget process. And this weird little budget process still might end up giving us more legislation than we saw in the past few years. Absolutely. Yes. I think it's, if even a fraction of what Biden has said he wants that is passable through budget reconciliation is passed,

he would be one of the more influential presidents in recent American history. Those are some really big changes to the way that the United States would work. Dylan Matthews. He crammed a lot of information into our conversation. If you want to review it, you can listen to the episode in halftime, or you can read his piece, What Biden and a Democratic Senate Can Actually Do, over at Vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained, a daily news podcast that is

finally, I'm pretty sure, going to be a little less about the antics and insanity of President Let me introduce Amanda Gorman, our nation's first ever National Poet Laureate. Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans, and the world. One day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We've braved the belly of the beast. We've learned that quiet isn't always peace. And the norms and notions of what just is isn't always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always just is. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we've weathered

and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried. That we'll forever be tied together, victorious, not because we will never again know defeat,

but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we're to live up to our own time, then victory won't lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we've made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare it,

because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It's the past we step into and how we repair it. We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed. It can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So while once we asked how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance

of the next generation. Our blenders become their burdens, but one thing is certain. If we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the windswept Northeast, where our forefathers first

realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked south. We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover. In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid. The new dawn balloons as we free it. For there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it.