Today, Explained - The Senate’s $1.9 trillion all-nighter

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

The Senate voted on more than 40 pieces of legislation overnight. Vox’s Li Zhou explains what the “vote-a-rama” means for President Biden’s agenda. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600.

Visit connectsontario.ca. All right. Should I do this? On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50, the Senate being equally divided, the Vice President votes in Harris cast her first tie-breaking vote early this Friday morning in a Senate vote-a-rama. Leigh, what is a vote-a-rama? Beyond being the best name for a Senate procedure, it's one of the key steps to getting a budget reconciliation bill passed, which is a way to pass legislation with just 51 votes instead of 60. And Democrats may end up using this route to advance COVID-19 relief. And we explained the heck out of budget reconciliation with our colleague Dylan Matthews in our episode titled 46, which came out on Inauguration Day.

But a voterama we have yet to explain. This is something that doesn't happen terribly often, I imagine? Right. It's happened just a handful of times in the last decade. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Mr. Hickenlooper, Mr. Hickenlooper, aye. Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Ossoff, aye. Mr. Portman, Mr. Portman. Aye. It's an opportunity for senators to introduce amendments to the budget resolution.

Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Brasso, proposes an amendment numbered 653. The senator from New Hampshire, Mrs. Shaheen, for herself and others, proposes an amendment numbered 834 as modified. Senator from Indiana, Mr. Braun, for himself and others, proposes amendment number 833. And then they take a series of back-to-back votes for hours and hours and hours. Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Fisher, aye. Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Cornyn, aye.

Until they resolve all the amendments that people have proposed. Mr. Lujan, Mr. Lujan, aye. This Voterama has historically been used to delay legislation passing. So like, if you're the party that does not want this bill to advance, you're using this as a technique to try to procrastinate as much as possible.

So that's why there are so many amendments. It started at 2.30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, and then it went until 5.30 a.m. on Friday morning. So that's about 15 hours of votes, amendments. There were a lot of staffers bringing in food last night and, you know, senators walking in and out to try to stay awake and stay alert. How many amendments are we talking about? How many things were introduced last night? In total, they voted on about 40,

but roughly 900 amendments were actually filed prior to that. So we could have seen this go on for even longer than what we saw. 900? Yes. That is a huge number. What are we talking about? The ones we saw were related to the stimulus bill. So there were a lot of amendments related to who is able to get relief checks, for example.

There was an amendment aimed at barring undocumented immigrants from ever getting these checks moving forward. It would establish a dangerous precedent if the federal government were to give a direct cash payment to those who have jumped the line and subverted our nation's immigration system to enter the United States. And there was another aimed at preventing inmates from receiving the checks as well. Other amendments were also related to funding issues. So Republicans wanted to have an amendment that tied school funding to reopening. So if as a school you didn't reopen, you wouldn't be able to receive any support. And that failed. And then there was an amendment that Joni Ernst put forth, which was to prevent increases to the federal minimum wage during a pandemic. Mr. President, a $15 federal

minimum wage would be devastating for our hardest hit small businesses at a time when they can least afford it. And Bernie Sanders was actually able to neutralize that in a very interesting way. It was never my intention to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour immediately and during the pandemic. My legislation gradually increases the minimum wage to $15 an hour over a five-year period. So I will support this amendment because nobody is talking about doubling the federal minimum wage during the pandemic. So Democrats and Republicans actually ended up both supporting that amendment. Let me thank Saka Mami for the music.

Okay, well, let's talk about what ended up happening with the stimulus, because a lot of people are hoping to get some checks in this country, yeah? Right, yeah. So this afternoon, the House approved this budget resolution. What's next? So the next step now is that they actually get to work on writing the bill itself, and that's expected to take a couple of weeks. Democrats are hoping they can pass it before March 14th, which is the next big deadline for when unemployment insurance benefits are set to expire.

Wow, it seems like we're actually working in advance for once. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of incredible to see that lawmakers seem ahead of the curve rather than pushed down to the wire. And what was the vote on the stimulus? The vote was 51-50 on party lines. Democrats stayed united, as did Republicans. And Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, came in to break the tie for the first time.

She did, yeah. She was at the Senate bright and early to take on that tie-breaking responsibility. It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it, Leigh. Was there anything that was less partisan that got more unanimous support from, say, both parties? There were a couple bipartisan amendments. One of them was one from Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, which basically aims to limit future stimulus checks to people who are not considered in the high-income tax bracket. So that just tries to target those payments more. And that actually had overwhelming support and passed

99 to 1. Who's the one? The one senator holding out was Rand Paul. Rand Paul, the guy who like got beat up by his neighbor? Yep, yep, yep. The very same. A sham, this is. A travesty. A dark blot on the history of our country. Okay. Was there anything else that got a lot of bipartisan support? There were a couple other amendments, including one that addresses tax policies for remote workers and tries to navigate the issues that people have dealt with during the pandemic while they've been working away from the office. Mobile workers generally have to file tax returns in multiple states whose tax rules often differ.

This amendment, Mr. President, would address these challenges. Okay, so they got a lot done. Why did they do all this in one all-nighter voterama? Was there some sort of exigency here? Whenever the Senate considers a budget resolution, they do a voterama and they go all night. They do it all at once. Yep. Did anyone think that maybe making huge decisions when people are sleep deprived is like a bad idea? I do think that is a big question that the Senate deals with a lot, unfortunately.

I guess at the end of the day, though, at least they're doing stuff in Congress, yeah? Yeah, yeah, super productive. Things are moving. It's a big deal, too, because obviously the impeachment trial is coming up. And so there have been a lot of questions about whether the Senate especially

is going to be able to juggle legislation and the trial. So for them to get things done now is pretty huge. More with Leigh on that big, important stimulus in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday, and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at

checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM.

Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Okay, so Leigh, the Democrats didn't pass the much-ballyhooed $1.9 trillion stimulus plan last night. But did they sort of figure out that it's all but certain to happen, just like they want it to? They send a pretty strong message about that. So what the resolution that they pass does is it's effectively a blueprint. It's instructions to committees for how they want this bill to be laid out. And they're pretty specific instructions. They're like, make sure you include the $1,400 stimulus checks, make sure you include the enhanced unemployment insurance, that kind of thing. It's interesting that Democrats are taking this route

in a parallel path with talks with Republicans. So Republicans met this week with Joe Biden to talk about their plan. Sitting down with 10 Republican senators in the Oval Office for a lengthy two-hour meeting. But even after that meeting, no sense that they're any closer to reaching a bipartisan deal. What they offered was just so much less than what Joe Biden has proposed that it's unclear if we're really going to get to some kind of deal because of that distance. And we haven't talked about this on the show really, but what, the Republicans want to do $600 billion instead of $1.9 trillion? Exactly. Their plan is about a third of what Joe Biden wants. And it really

only overlaps with him in terms of funding for vaccines and testing. So they both include $160 billion to help scale up the vaccine effort. And then other than that, there are pretty big cuts. Just a comparison of extended unemployment benefits between the two plans. The Gang of Ten Republican plan includes $300 a week supplemental through June. The Biden plan is $400 a week through September. They slashed the amount of funding for schools, the amount of funding for child care. And of course, there's this issue of the minimum wage and state and local aid. None of those, neither of those are in the Republican plan. And they would offer less money in direct payments to people as well.

I saw Susan Collins, I think, making the argument that a lot of the money from prior stimulus hasn't been spent yet. It's been approved. It's sitting there waiting to be used. And that's a reason that Biden shouldn't be just sanctioning $1.9 trillion in spending. Does she have a fair argument there? She's right in that the government is extremely slow so that the money from the $900 billion package is still going out. But I don't think that's an argument in not passing more just because that's intended to cover, you know, the economic fallout we're seeing at the moment. And this stimulus package is intended to tide us over for who knows how long this pandemic and the economic fallout related to it continues.

So why aren't Republicans buying that argument that this is, you know, the kind of stimulus that needs to be sustained over time? There is a sense from Republicans that they want to continue to return to their roots of fiscal conservatism, which has been a big issue within the party for a long time and was honestly forgotten a bit under the Trump administration. And they're dialing back into that and looking toward, you know, what issues this could raise for additions to the deficit, for example. Whereas we've heard from many economists that in this moment, the need to address aid is greater than the need to worry about those concerns. And I wonder, is part of that channeling sort of the

Obama administration when they came into office during the Great Recession and passed stimulus, but have since said that the stimulus wasn't as big as they have liked? Yeah, it absolutely is. I think Democrats, many people are kind of scarred from that experience. At the time, you did see Democrats work with Republicans to get something done. But as a result, that package ended up being smaller and not as effective in addressing the needs. And the recovery was slower as a result. So the Biden White House is hoping to avoid

a repeat of 2009, effectively. We should have learned the lesson, we should learn the lesson of 2008 and 9, when Congress was too timid and constrained in its response to the global financial crisis, and it took years, years for the economy to get out of recession. We must not repeat that mistake today. I mean, Larry Summers, who was a chief economic advisor to the Obama administration around the time of that stimulus, came out with this op-ed that said that the Biden administration is going too big here. I believe the title of it was, The Biden Stimulus is Admirably Ambitious, But It Brings Some Big Risks Too. Can we talk about some of those risks? going too big here. I believe the title of it was the Biden stimulus is admirably ambitious, but it brings some big risks too. Can we talk about some of those risks? Is there a sense here that if Biden bets big on a $1.9 trillion stimulus and expends a lot of political capital to get it

passed, that it'll be a lot harder to do other extremely ambitious things he wants to do, including raising the minimum wage or, you know, massive environmental spending or even massive spending on racial justice programs. One potential concern is that if Joe Biden moves forward with COVID-19 relief and does it via budget reconciliation, which allows Democrats to just do it on their own, that sets a tone for Democrats wanting to move forward with their agenda without bipartisan support. And there is a concern, you know, maybe this will upset Republicans and maybe prevent them from being as collaborative in the future on other proposals like the ones you mentioned. One caveat I think that's important to consider with that is that it's unclear how much Republican support there would have been for many of these proposals bills coming out of the House, including democracy reforms, gun control, lowering prescription drug prices,

all legislation that he blocked. So this suggests maybe that the Republican will to work with Democrats on a lot of these ambitious measures was limited to begin with. And that's an important factor to consider, too, in determining how aggressive Biden wants to go with COVID-19 relief and other bills moving forward. So maybe one of the learnings from the Obama years is like, you know, don't waste your time trying to get Republicans on board and just legislate if you can legislate.

That is one of the learnings that it seems like Democrats are applying right now. Lizzo, thank you for explaining how a Voterama works to us. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.