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Brian Lehrer: It’s The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue our election year series, 30 Issues in 30 Days. Today, we continue this final stretch on issues related to the pandemic, and we're up to issue 29, federal pandemic relief. The Senate has now adjourned following the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation, so no new bill is possible before Election Day. What's at stake when it comes to federal economic assistance as we head into this final stretch, and a new wave of virus? For this, I'm joined by Kelsey Snell, NPR congressional correspondent. Hey, Kelsey, thanks for giving us some, one station at a time, time here on WNYC. How are you?

Kelsey Snell: Of course, thanks so much for having me.

Brian: As far as I can tell, there are at least three sides on this issue, maybe four. There's the Democratic-controlled House, which passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill. That was trimmed from a version they passed in May that was over $3 trillion that the Senate never took up. There is the Republican Senate, which is looking at something much smaller, more like a half-a-trillion, and here we are where we can say half-a-trillion is small, but it's smaller than 2.2. The White House, which offered a $1.6 trillion plan but not a lot of specifics, and there's Joe Biden. Let me start there, is there any space between the house bill and what Biden is calling for, or if you're voting for Joe Biden, you're basically voting for Nancy Pelosi's relief bill?

Kelsey: Well, we haven't gotten a ton of specifics from the Biden campaign about how they would execute the release that they talk about. Democrats, in general, that I talked to you on Capitol Hill expect that if there was a President Biden, that a President Biden would work with them to craft a bill. Though I will say, by the time that inauguration happens, it is widely expected that the needs of the economy will be just different from what they are right now, as they were different today, compared to where they were in April, May, June, July. It's been a while now since there has been any sustained relief. Many of the benefits that were included in the original CARES package expired at the end of July.

We're talking about unemployment insurance, the additional $600 in weekly federal benefits that unemployed people had access to, and many of the other larger benefits of this bill are gone. Democrats say that they're going to have to address the issues and needs as they stand after the election because there is some recognition, even amongst some Republicans, that they may have to do something between the election and the next congressional session, which starts in January. We just don't know exactly what they'd be willing to do. I will say, it's really hard to get legislation done during that time, which is known as the lame-duck session.

Brian: Is there some amount of common ground in all three plans if we're identifying House, Senate, and Trump, another stimulus payment for basically everybody who makes $125,000 or less, enhanced unemployment assistance, paycheck protection? 

Kelsey: Conceptually, all of those things are in the realm of agreement, but when

you go from the conceptual agreement on the idea that you need to have additional relief payments, and additional unemployment insurance- [sound cut]

Brian: Whoops, did we just lose Kelsey’s line?

Kelsey: The details really matter here. Unemployment insurance, Republicans are talking about a much smaller number. Democrats are talking about going back to the $600 a week. When it comes to paycheck protection, that's also an issue where Republicans say that it needs considerably more money than Democrats are willing to commit to. Again, there's conceptual agreement but not a lot of agreement on execution.

Brian: This did come up in that final debate between the President and Joe Biden last Thursday. Here's moderator Kristen Walker's question, followed by President Trump's quick answer.

Kristen Walker: As of tonight, more than 12 million people are out of work, and as of tonight, 8 million more Americans have fallen into poverty, and more families are going hungry every day. Those hit hardest are women and people of color. They see Washington fighting over a relief bill. Mr. President, why haven't you been able to get them the help they need? 30 seconds here.

President Trump: Because Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to approve it? I do.

Brian: Huh?

Kelsey: This is a fairly traditional Washington work here, where people are trying to blame the other side for a deal not getting done. In this case, we just had a letter sent by Speaker Pelosi to Treasury Secretary- [sound cut]

Brian: Whoops.

Kelsey: -over the counter-proposal. We're talking about state and local funding, safe schools, childcare, tax credits for working families, unemployment insurance, and some liability protection. Those are big areas where the White House has not responded with a counteroffer.

Brian: Listeners, it's not your imagination. Our line has dropped out a couple of times, briefly to NPR's Kelsey Snell. Hopefully, it won't happen again. How much of this is not really about the money? They could more or less come to yes on the money, but it's really about other things like Pelosi is digging in over a National Test and Trace Program being funded, and the White House wants to make that optional. Did I get that right, and how central would you say that is, if so?

Kelsey: That is basically right. Pelosi basically said that she wants testing, tracing, and treatment to be a national plan that is a requirement. She says that the White House responded to that, after saying they would accept that idea, with a lot of language that would have made it optional, would have given the loopholes for people and states to remove themselves from the national standards. She has said

that that is central to actually getting any real relief to the American people, is to ensure that you're stopping the transmission of the virus, treating transmission of the virus, and tracking people who do get sick.

Brian: One of the big stumbling blocks is that the House bill includes $500 billion in assistance for state and local governments. Very much, including New York State, where we are, where we're looking at layoffs and 50% cuts, potentially, in service to Commuter Rail lines without federal dollars, or at least that's what the Commuter Rail lines say. Here's what Joe Biden and President Trump had to say, respectively, about that, in the debate.

Joe Biden: When I was in charge of the Recovery Act with $800 billion, I was able to get $145 billion to local communities that have to balance their budgets, the states that have to balance the budgets. Then, they have to fire firefighters, teachers, first responders, law enforcement officers, so they can keep their cities and counties running. He will not support that. They have not done a thing for them. Mitch McConnell said, "Let them go bankrupt. Let them go bankrupt." Come on. What’s the matter with these guys?

President Trump: The bill that was passed to the House was a bailout of badly-run, high-crime Democrat, all run by Democrat, cities and states. It was a way of getting a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars, to these guys.

Brian: Kelsey, what are the politics of that from the Republican side? This is certainly a big Mitch McConnell position. Trump, himself, maybe would compromise more on it if he thought the votes were there in the Senate. I'm not sure, but there's this idea of a blue state bailout that they keep pushing, that somehow makes it very difficult. Even though a lot of states are suffering by now, maybe it was blue state bailout in April when so many of the cases were in New York and New Jersey, now, so many states, red and blue, are having to spend a lot of extra money to make schools safe, on extra healthcare expenses, what's the resistance to state and local government funding from the feds?

Kelsey: Quite a bit of this is about the framing because the president has framed this as a red state, blue state issue. In some degree, it's because there wasn't a lot of requests coming from Republican governors for additional money at the beginning. Some of that has changed. It wasn't entirely true that no Republican governors were asking for help. In fact, the Republican Governor of Maryland was leading the National Governors Association, at the time, when the original request for the state and local funding came through.

Some of this also has to do with significant fears from Republicans about legislating to approve huge amounts of federal spending and huge amounts of transfer of federal money from the federal government to the state because once they voted for that, it makes it increasingly difficult to walk back from that position. They want to return to a place where, at some point in time, where they can have a conversation about fiscal restraint, and if they've already agreed to send such a large amount of money to the state, it becomes-- In an argument that I've heard many times from

Republicans, it becomes a question of a slippery slope.

Brian: I'll admit I got the politics of this wrong in the last couple of months. I assumed that politicians are going to want to give people money, in an election year. For Democrats, it's, I think, a belief in the-- Well, forget it. I don't even have to pick it apart. Politicians have motivation to give people money in an election year, and yet, the Republicans and Democrats can’t come to yes on this. Why wasn't that more of a controlling political bottom line, especially for Republicans?

Kelsey: Well, there has been some resistance, particularly within the White House, about having conversations about the depth of the coronavirus crisis. As we've heard, seen in many reports, the White House was trying to move past it. There's been a lot of talk by the president himself about how we're going to, as a country, turn a corner. Now, there's a strong relationship between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the president's messaging. We've seen that over and over since President Trump took office.

In some ways, it's related to that, and in other ways, again, it goes back to federal spending and the very strong core political belief for many people who are political conservatives about the federal government not having as strong of a role in state governments and the federal government not having a strong of a role in private lives. There is a core fundamental belief for many Republicans about reduce spending and a smaller role for the federal government.

Brian: Let's tick down the possible scenarios depending on what happens after the election. If there's no change in control of either House or the White House, does the fact that the election is over, by itself, help them come to yes?

Kelsey: Potentially. I think that there are so many open questions about what happens in this election that could change the way that they talk about relief. I will say it, like I said before, it is very difficult in any Congress for just about any type of legislation to get done between an election and the beginning of a new Congress. Lame-duck sessions are notoriously slow and notoriously difficult to get anything done because if your party, say, that loses, there would be very little incentive politically to negotiate with the winning party.

Now, that doesn't always happen. This is an exigent circumstance. This is not something we've ever seen before. There is serious concern looking at the stock market and looking at the overall economy that Congress's inaction could have long-term, really detrimental effects on many millions of people.

Brian: If the Democrats take both the Senate and the White House and suddenly have control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, does that change the calculus for the lame-duck session before January 20th? Would something happen that quickly in the current Congress, or would it have to wait until after them?

Kelsey: Again, because this is such a different kind of circumstance, it's hard to say, but conventional wisdom about the way politics works, that it would actually be less of an incentive for Republicans to agree to something if they anticipate a situation

where Democrats, in just a few months, would have to act by themselves to get a relief passed that maybe Republicans don't agree with. If they were to hold out and not vote now, they could never have to say that they signed on to massive spending.

Brian: If it does have to wait until after New Year’s, in that scenario where the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress and Biden wins, do you think a big debate breaks out within the Democratic Party? I think it's too easy for people to forget how difficult it was to get Obamacare through, for example. When Obama was in the White House and the Democrats had both houses of Congress, the negotiations were intense, and same thing on the stimulus bill back then during the financial crisis.

Yes, the Dems passed the big stimulus bill, but there was resistance within the party as to how much, and then, the tea party broke out as a backlash to both of those things, the ACA and the stimulus bills. A newly democratic federal government wouldn't want that to happen again. How much do you think a big tent democratic sweep would wind up in Nancy Pelosi's bill or a whole new set of debates that we're not even having it?

Kelsey: I think there will likely be-- In that scenario, there would likely be considerable debate about some portions of this bill, but I will say that in talking to Democrats over these many months, there is disagreement about some finer points in this, but the broad strokes of what Pelosi has suggested really has animated Democrats in the House and the Senate Progressives and more centrist members.

Again, there could be things, I think, in particular, about the structure of unemployment benefits, that could be something that could be very widely debated. There are a number of Democrats who think that enhanced unemployment should be triggered based on unemployment levels across the country, that if unemployment levels rose to a certain rate, that it would be guaranteed that people would get additional federal benefits. There's resistance from other Democrats to that. That's one area where I could anticipate there would be additional debate.

Brian: Last scenario, if the president loses and Biden wins but the Senate stays in Mitch McConnell's hands, on this and other issues, then, we go back to the Obama math, in general, right? The reason that Obama started doing more executive orders in his last couple of years in the White House is because he kept having a Republican Senate that would block so many of the things that he wanted to do on immigration, with DACA, on climate, we could go down the list, and he finally started taking a lot of executive orders, which then wound up getting challenged in federal court. What if Joe Biden is president and there's a Democratic House but a Republican Senate? Of course, you need two houses of Congress to pass bills, how do you think that affects the coronavirus relief?

Kelsey: In that scenario, I think much depends on the makeup of the Republican Party in the Senate. If you have a large number of more moderate senators who remain in the Senate, there is different pressure on McConnell than, say, if the people who are up for reelection right now, I'm thinking about Corey Gardner in

Colorado, Susan Collins in Maine, people who live in States where their constituents tend to be either more moderate or more less along party lines in the policies that they accept, if those people win reelection, are still in the Senate, then, the pressure points are quite different than if they lose. It really does depend on the makeup of the Senate and where the politics and the economy are.

Brian: NPR congressional correspondent, Kelsey Snell, fasten your seat belts. Hope you get some sleep over the next few days, but a lot, a lot, a lot to cover. Thanks for joining us.

Kelsey: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, much more common.

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