What A Day - Senate Parliamentarian Funkadelic

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

Senate Democrats got the green light to pass more bills with a simple majority vote. On Monday, the Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that the Dems can pass more budget reconciliation bills this year ��� the same process they used for the relief bill. We explain what this means.President Biden wants states to make all adults eligible for vaccines by April 19th. The new date is two weeks sooner than his previous goal.And in headlines: St. Louis jail uprising, Iran and the US take steps to resume nuclear deal, and Kim Kardashian West becomes a billionaire.Follow What A Day on Instagram at instagram.com/whatadayFor a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday.

It's Wednesday, April 7th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What The Day, where all our jokes for today are fully lifted from Fox's late-night show, Gutfeld. Yeah, you know, we're just trying out some conservative comedy. We like to be conservative with our comedy like they are, so... We really want to conserve the amount of Tommy that we're giving. On today's show, beginning April 19th,

every adult in every state, every adult in this country is eligible to get in line to get a COVID vaccination. All right. Well, that was interesting. But it was also President Biden yesterday moving up the date again for when states should make COVID shots available to all adults. We'll talk about what returning to normal life could look like and, you know, what even is normal nowadays. Then some headlines. But first, on Monday, Senate Democrats were handed an important detour around the filibuster, which is a big deal if they want to pass President Biden's infrastructure bill with a simple majority. And it has to do with our dear old friend, the Senate parliamentarian, a.k.a. parliamentarian Funkadelic.

That's right. She has got a cool theme song. It is Elizabeth McDonough. You can think of her as the nonpartisan referee, I guess, in the Senate. And we know that she previously said that a minimum wage hike couldn't be included in the COVID relief bill while Democrats passed that via reconciliation. And so reconciliation, as a reminder, is the process by which the Senate can pass legislation pertaining to the budget with just a simple majority, i.e. 51 votes. So the more recent takeaway is this. McDonough ruled that that simple majority vote process could be used more than once in a fiscal year. So translation, President Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan could maybe be passed while avoiding a filibuster. Oh my gosh, too good to be true. So obviously, this ruling seems really great for the president. But there are still a lot of twists and turns that need to happen before Democrats can get around Republicans who continue to stonewall the idea. So what do we know about what's going to happen next? Yeah, so for the immediate future, Senate Democrats are not exactly saying how this could come into play. A spokesperson

for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in part that, quote, some parameters still need to be worked out. Though it is conceivably possible that the ruling could allow for something like this infrastructure package to be broken into smaller pieces. But at least two important things to keep in mind for now. One is that this would still require getting every Senate Democrat on board to reach 50 votes. And once again, Senator Joe Manchin has some issues. He is specifically questioning one part of the infrastructure plan as it currently stands, raising the corporate tax rate as high as Biden has suggested. Okay, so what we're saying is we don't need to fix any trains. We don't care about Texas in the snowstorm. It's all about making it cheaper for corporations. Great.

Yeah. Then here is the second thing. Other top agenda items like HR1 or gun violence legislation, for example, would likely not be able to pass this way. So you had some progressives being happy that this new ruling came down, but hope that it also wouldn't put a damper on filibuster reform or these other major bills. We're going to keep following that, but also on the Biden to-do list, continuing to expedite vaccine distribution. That's exactly right. So if you need some good news in the fight against coronavirus, here is some. President Biden announced yesterday that by Monday, April 19th, all adults in America should be able to get vaxxed up. Most states have already opened it up anyway, but, you know, it's still good news. And this puts Americans on the fast track so that all adults can get in line for a vaccine.

This is a full two weeks before his last deadline. So under promise and over deliver seems to be the way forward rather than the last administration's policy of over promise and never deliver only embarrass. Yeah, we will be out of it by Easter. Whatever Easter of your choosing. It's it's your pick. Yeah, it's it's up to us. Yeah. And to your point, Biden's 100th day in office is at the end of the month, meaning he will meet his beefed up goal of 200 million shots by deadline. Yes, but as you mentioned before, it's a race between variants and the vaccine, so we're still not out of the woods yet. In a number of states, Michigan most notably right now, the virus is still not under control. And nationally, case counts have been climbing again. According to the CDC, the average daily rate was over 8% higher during the last week

compared to the week before. And there's no doubt that more openings will lead to more spread while we're in this uncomfortable period where we still haven't reached any kind of herd immunity. According to Health and Human Services, it'll take until the end of summer to even have 700 million doses ready to go and delivered for people to take advantage of. Yeah, we are getting there, but there still is some time. And even with that knowledge, states are sending opening notifications faster than the vaccine websites load. Yeah, I can attest. And President Biden is urging a lot of patience in the meantime. Let me explain it in a single word. Time. Time. Even moving at the record speed we're moving at, we're not even halfway through vaccinating over 300 million Americans. Yeah, wow. Well, that acknowledgement hasn't stopped officials like California Governor and the French Laundry's most infamous diner, Gavin Newsom, from announcing that the state could be reopening fully this summer. of doses coming in from the federal government through the end of this month and into May,

we can confidently say by June 15th that we can start to open up as business as usual. Yeah. And all of this is with that huge asterisk that says hospitalizations stay low and vaccine availability stays high. Right. And California, you'll remember, was the first state to announce its lockdown orders. So this does seem like a major move in a more national sense. What does Newsom say that reopening will actually look like? OK, so the good news is that it isn't entirely haphazard. You know, the mask mandate is still going to be in effect for some time. And the move is going to be statewide instead of county by county, like the more frustrating color coded guidance of the past.

So less confusion and hopefully more safe fun on the horizon. And Gavin really needs that, given that he could be facing a recall election in the fall, so all press is good press. We will keep you posted on more reopenings, but that's the latest for now. It's Wednesday WOD Squad, and for today's Tim Check, we're talking about getting back out into the world. It's been a long time, and it's still not time yet, but with lockdown restrictions getting lifted and vaccinations becoming way more widespread, at some point soon, things will start to go back to quote normal. The last year has been overwhelmingly tragic, and it's also led people and companies to make big changes to maintain business as usual, despite extreme circumstances. I'm thinking of working from home, wearing masks everywhere, eating outside, adopting pets. So giddy. As we move towards our new normal, which pandemic era innovations are you looking forward to leaving behind?

And which ones do you think might stick around? I think the big one is there was this early fight over whether you could take drinks from restaurants into Go Cups and just leave with them. Only in New Orleans, you know, that was the way before. Right. This was something that was unfamiliar, I guess, in a lot of places. And it kept a lot of bars and restaurants going for a while. This idea that, you know, you didn't have to put yourself at risk or other people at risk, people working there at risk by congregating inside. You could just go buy the drink walk back to your house

maybe the park uh and drink the drink that they maybe the park um just in the park sure yeah just just possibly yeah i mean it sounds pretty great you know i think that like there probably were fewer um public intoxication problems because there was not really a public get your drink and get the hell out of here right So like, I think that that may be the only hindrance is, you know, people just go in to get it. Like it's a cheeseburger and eating it on the sidewalk and then proceeding to get super drunk and, you know, walking in front of traffic or something. So yeah, definitely. Um, you know, with some safety barriers, I'm on board with that for sure. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll deal with that as it comes.

But same question for you. What are you thinking about here? I mean, I definitely think that we should all be singing Imagine five minutes into a crisis forever. Now that I know that that is super effective and changes the trajectory of a crisis, why would we leave that behind? But I guess in all seriousness,

like I think, you know, masks will probably be a thing for a long time, especially with travel. And, you know, I was a person who was a travel masker, uh, mostly because I just got sick on planes and I was just like, that's my life. I get sick on planes and I'm like, I don't ever want to get sick. Like a year without getting sick was really beautiful for me. It was very eyeopening. I realized, uh, other people make me ill. Um, So that's one thing. I also think that, you know, I hope that we leave behind people who are working from home having to pay for things like trash bags and like, you know, extra paper plates, if that's how they're living or paper towels. I just think that like I didn't realize how much money was being spent in an

office where they were, you know, they had their own trash bags and, you know, janitorial staff. I just feel like I respect it so much more. And I also do not want to pay for trash bags ever again in life. If we go back to an office, heads up, you know, John Leavitt, if you're listening, I'm stealing trash bags. They are not cheap. And, yeah, you know, I hope that people are still looking out for each other. Zoom can kick rocks, though. Like, sorry, Zoom. You know, everybody who got rich on Zoom like it was Dogecoin. Like, good for you. But oh, my God, it's hellish. I'm so

tired of looking at people on my computer. That's very real. Yeah. So, yeah, look forward to that one day. But just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. Take the good with you into the future. Leave all the crap you can't stand behind, and we will be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. out of their cells on Sunday night, setting fires and breaking windows on the third floor. From those windows, many were heard yelling for new court dates. During the pandemic, court cases and proceedings in St. Louis have been hugely delayed, leaving many people who

can't afford cash bail locked up in legal limbo. St. Louis mayoral candidate Tashara Jones tweeted that the uprising signaled the need for immediate change to the city's justice system, and she called for pretrial detainees to be moved out of jails. By the way, the election in St. Louis was yesterday. Jones was leading in early totals as we went to record. Well, good luck. The U.S. and Iran are taking their first steps to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Current members of the deal agreed to create a joint commission to, one, bring the U.S. back on board after Trump pulled out in 2018, and two, get Iran to comply with the deal's limitations on nuclear enrichment. Iranian officials have refused to meet directly with the U.S., so current members of the deal have

been shuttling between two hotels to talk to envoys from the U.S. and Iran. Both countries say the talks are headed in the right direction. President Biden previously promised to rejoin the deal, which would also mean lifting the over 1,500 sanctions that Trump imposed on Iran during his presidency. Kim Kardashian West is the newest member of the COVID-safe private island that is the list of the world's billionaires. Forbes released the list yesterday and Kardashian just made it at number 2,774 out of 2,755. We're not counting. Her net worth increased by over 200 million last year, mostly thanks to her businesses, KKW and Skims, plus reality TV and endorsement deals,

plus the general rule that rich people had a different kind of 2020 than pretty much everyone else did. To put that numerically, Forbes said the combined net worth of billionaires reached $13.1 trillion this year, up from $8 trillion last year. Don't spend it all in one place, you guys, because you can't, because it would take so long that you die of old age

1 million times. Amazon founder and expert money hoarder Jeff Bezos topped the list with $177 billion. To be fair, he has hinted at vague plans to donate one rusty JFK half dollar to fight world hunger. Wow, so generous. Once again, history has vindicated the people whose kitchens have a sauce drawer. The U.S. is now facing a ketchup packet shortage following a year where restaurants came to rely more on takeout orders. As ketchup packets became more rare, their prices went up, increasing by 13% since January 2020. If you use your car like a garbage can, now might be a good time to sell it.

Personally, I'd estimate the Kelly Blue Book value of the packets in my cup holder to be $5,000. Heinz is the undisputed leader in the sweet tomato condiment space, but pandemic-driven demand drove big chains like Long John Silver's and Texas Roadhouse to switch to Division III ketchup brands for their packets. Del Monte, God bless you, but

I'd rather scrape the crust off an ancient Heinz bottle cap from someone's World War II bomb shelter, quite frankly. Heinz plans to resolve the crisis by ramping up ketchup packet production by 25% or about 13 billion packets a year. That should be enough for me to make at least a few servings of my famous dish, ketchup a la swimming pool. I like the idea that people went to Long John Silver's and they were like, you know what the problem is here is that we don't have Heinz. That's the real deal breaker for LJS. And those are the headlines. One more thing before we go. This week on Take Line, host Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery

discuss the impact of the MLB pulling the All-Star Game and MLB draft out of Atlanta in response to the restrictive voting law SB202. Then they're joined by director and writer Trayvon Free to chat about his recent Oscar nomination. Yeah, give it a listen and subscribe to Take Line on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for today. If you like this show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, flip us a JFK half dollar, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the expiration dates on ketchup packets like me, What A Date is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And congratulations, billionaires. Thank you so much for your

limited contributions to society and your overwhelming ability to just hoard that money. You've done great. And it's time that you take a day off. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran, Akilah Hughes, and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.