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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our monthly Call Your Senator segment with New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who comes on to report to the people of the Empire State and beyond and answer my questions and yours each month. We're sneaking it in under the wire for this go-round here on May 31st.

Good timing actually with the debt ceiling deal front and center to go over some of the details of and see if the senator will vote thumbs up or thumbs down. Listeners, the phones are open at 212-433-WNYC. New Yorkers, call your senator at 212-433-9692. Yes, people in Jersey and Connecticut and everywhere can call too with your questions, 212-433-9692, or text us at the same number. Senator, we always appreciate that you do this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. It's good to be on.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go right there, the debt ceiling deal. Have you decided how you'll vote?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I have. This negotiation between President Biden and the Speaker of the House took a long time. It doesn't have things in it that I would have preferred, but the bottom line is it's a fair compromise about what we need to do to keep the full faith and credit of the United States solid. Also, you have to recognize that the very far-right in the House started negotiations with an unacceptable outlook. They really wanted to cut spending across all areas that would have harmed people that we fought so hard for in the last Congress.

For example, it would have taken away the funding for all the veterans who are exposed to burn pits, and that health care is something that they've earned, and that helps 3.5 million veterans. That was on the table. Very severe cuts to the SNAP program, other cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and things that were really non-negotiable. I think the President did an excellent job working hard to get where we are today, to protect the most things he could protect, as well as make sure the full faith and credit of the United States still stands.

Brian Lehrer: There's an article on HuffPost headlined, Progressives Fume at Biden's Deal with GOP. There were various articles like this in different news organizations. The one on HuffPost says, "Progressive lawmakers are seething at President Joe Biden's deal with House Republicans for raising the debt ceiling, warning that it could normalize taking the nation's economy hostage for years to come." Senator Elizabeth Warren is quoted saying, doing a deal like this "rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at." Do you agree? Are you among those who were seething that Biden even let it get this far?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I don't think it was a question of Biden letting it get this far. I think McCarthy is unreasonable and I think he is not a rational actor in this. The GOP is irresponsible. The type of statements we've heard out of them shows how irrational and unreasonable they are as a party right now. No, I'm not seething at the President. I think he did a good job in bringing people to the table and finding common sense, common ground, but what I do believe in is that we should fix this permanently.

We should clarify what the 14th Amendment means and say no future Congresses can take the full faith and credit of the United States hostage. As soon as we have a majority back in the House, I would make this among the first things I voted on because this should never happen again. It's because we lost our majority that it had the opportunity to happen, so we need to do everything we can to get our vote out, and make sure that we have a majority in the next Congress so that we can really codify what the 14th Amendment says. If the President wasn't able to reach agreement, I supported him using the 14th Amendment and taking it to the courts.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and even before you and they got to that point, HuffPost says Senator Warren and other progressives have argued that Democrats wouldn't have found yourselves in this position had you tried to eliminate the debt ceiling or raise it by a large amount, making it functionally irrelevant in prior years when you controlled both the House and the Senate. Was that a failure on your party's part before 2022's election?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think hindsight is 2020. It's really hard to assume that the people that get elected are going to be irrational and unreasonable and damaging to the country and the full faith and credit of the country. I think imagining that the--

Brian Lehrer: Except you knew they did it before, right? The Republicans will not vote against the debt ceiling when there's a Republican president, but you all went through this previously in 2011 when Obama was president, right? There were Republicans in Congress.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I'm sorry. I don't think so, Brian. I think, in the past, it wasn't about the full faith and credit of the United States. It was arguments about the budget. I don't think that we could have imagined this because this hasn't happened before. They shut down the government before over the budget. It was a different tactic that they were using. I don't think we could have imagined this. The fact that they have such a small margin, I don't think we could imagine that it would take McCarthy however many votes it took him to-- as many votes as it took him to become speaker.

That had never happened before either. No speaker before McCarthy has given away his entire leverage as speaker so that one person could vote them out. A lot of things happened that I don't think has ever happened before. I think hindsight is perfect. We can say we should have, should have, would have, and could have. At the end of the day, I think having a president who can bring people together and find a common-sense bipartisan solution with some positives and, of course, some negatives is what we ask of our president, so I'm not seething.

Brian Lehrer: Mitch in Maplewood has a question about one of the provisions in the compromise, I think. Mitch, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

Mitch: Yes. Hi, Brian. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand. One of the things that I have to say makes my blood boil is these new requirements for getting public assistance that the Republicans insist on. I don't believe that there's evidence for abuse of the SNAP and TANF systems. There's no more evidence for that than there is for the big lie for the vote, that the vote, it was stolen in the last election. It's a knee-jerk thing that they insist on. It just makes life harder for the poor in just every state that they run in. If you could just respond to that and why we're subjected to this argument over and over again when the Republicans are not asked to provide any evidence that it's true.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Mitch. Senator?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think the Republicans are very mean-spirited. I think they like these tropes of people are getting something for free that they don't deserve. The vast majority of people that receive SNAP benefits are children and the second group are older people, seniors, and then the third group are veterans. These are people who need support, people with disabilities, people who can't work, and so it is extremely cynical and very mean-spirited is what I think it is.

They just don't want to help people who are at risk and at need. It's one of the most frustrating things that I have to deal with because I sit on the agriculture committee and I lead most of the letters and the legislation to increase SNAP funding. This year, we are trying to increase SNAP funding for college kids, kids who are in foster care, more access that we put in place during COVID to make it easier to access SNAP benefits.

We are the wealthiest country in the world, and under no circumstances should we have hunger in this country. This is the kind of work we should be doing to alleviate the biggest burdens that low-income and people with challenges that make it impossible for them to work have. One of the biggest problems we have is hunger. It's frustrating. I think it was just cynical and mean.

Brian Lehrer: Can you clarify for the listeners to which recipients of government benefits the new work requirement will apply? Because I know the Republicans wanted to apply to many more categories, including Medicaid, which I think it does not apply to people on Medicaid. Can you clarify what's in and what's out on that?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: One of the changes they wanted was for able-bodied individuals on SNAP that they have a work requirement not just up to 49, but they wanted it all the way up to 54. Now, only 7% of SNAP recipients are single able-bodied adults with no children. They were already meeting work requirements. They just made it to a larger audience. One change we did get that was positive is we increased SNAP benefits for kids who just graduated from the foster care system at 18.

We saw that this 18 to 24-year-old group is a very vulnerable group. A lot of these kids are in school. They have no families to go home to sometimes on their breaks. They don't have any money from their foster parents to pay for food. This is something we work to include that we're going to try to also include in the farm bill. Now, these foster kids are included up to age 24, which I think is helpful.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's an interesting provision. That's not getting much press. I'm glad you brought that up. Just to put a pin in this part of the conversation, Republicans ask if someone is eating or getting medical care and not working, even though they're physically fit, why isn't that a fair social contract to require them to do something to contribute back to the public good?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I think when you describe it in just very simple terms, single able-bodied adults with no children, you say, of course, they should work. Well, it's not always that simple. Sometimes there are disabilities. Sometimes there are mental health issues. Sometimes there are trauma issues. There are so many different things that create impediments for people to work. Being able to get access to food is a basic human right and a humanitarian issue. I think we should be more generous, not less generous. I just don't agree that changing the standards that will guarantee less people get SNAP is the way to go.

Brian Lehrer: Hugh in Manhattan has a debt-ceiling-deal question. Hugh, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

Hugh: Hey, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Unfortunately, the guy who reminded me of something else, but my question was, I don't understand, it's not as if you were taking over the appropriating money from Congress. It's paying money that's already been spent. It's paying it back. I don't understand why the President, especially when there are so many people like myself who don't want to make a deal under these mean circumstances, why couldn't have gone to court to see whether or not the 14th Amendment applies or not. Just as a quick thing, I'm sorry to do this, but Bill Moyers had a program under Reagan on CBS. I think it was his last where he talked about three cases of people who are cut off of disability. It's heart-rending. It's 35 years ago. I don't understand why it hasn't changed.

Brian Lehrer: Hugh, thank you very much. On his basic question about invoking the 14th Amendment, which would argue that the argument in invoking the 14th Amendment would say, "Well, Congress doesn't need to authorize the debt ceiling to go up each time once we've passed the budget authorizing that spending," and because the 14th Amendment says the country will not default on its debts basically. Why couldn't Biden have invoked it, not subjected himself and the American people to any kind of compromise like this, and then let the Republicans challenge him in court? That's what the listener is asking.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The listener is quite right that this is not the kind of thing that should have been negotiated about. That's why we've typically not been in this situation, but we do have an irrational actor with McCarthy and his very far-right Republicans. They were willing to crater the US economy. One of the reasons why the President wanted to reach a deal was because if he didn't, the impact and the outcome would have been so devastating. People would have lost their jobs. People wouldn't have gotten their paychecks.

It would have just cratered so much of the economy. People's retirements could have crashed, unlimited suffering, just terrible outcome. I think he could have used the 14th Amendment. He didn't want to use it. President Obama didn't want to use it. Past presidents have chosen not to use it because it's untested. I still would have taken the risk. I would have sent it to the Supreme Court immediately. I would have played it out because it's in the Constitution. It's in the 14th Amendment. It's right there in black and white.

We do have three new justices from the far-right who say they are originalists, so they should have been on our side. I think Gorsuch would have been on our side. I think Roberts, the chief judge, would have been on our side. I would have rolled that dice. The reason why I think Biden and Obama and all past presidents have not used it is because it's untested. When you're taking such a big risk with the full faith and credit of the United States and the US economy, they would rather come up with a bipartisan solution.

It's harder and you don't get everything you want. It doesn't feel as good, especially for the callers who are disappointed, but it is certainly a responsible approach and one that shows that President Biden is putting the American people first. Yes, the cuts that we got, we all love, but we can continue to create more programs to help the people who would have been helped through the farm bill and other legislative means over the next year.

Brian Lehrer: One of the questions about a detail in the compromise and then we'll go on to some of the things, I've also heard concern that because the deal freezes most domestic programs other than Social Security and Medicare for two years, it's really a cut to things like housing assistance, in particular, which is so vital for many right now, and certainly in New York because the costs through inflation are going up while the federal budget has to say the same under the steel. It's really a cut to housing assistance, for example. Would you put it that way?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I put it this way. I would say, first of all, the budgets that we passed last year were really strong. We got increases to affordable housing. We got increases to SNAP benefits and food programs. We got increases to a lot of issues that I think Americans really wanted us to focus on. The upside is at least the place where they froze, it was a very positive place of good work we did in the last Congress, with all of the work we did to get prescription drug prices down, to invest in green energy and green jobs, to invest in infrastructure and invest in domestic manufacturing. All that was very positive.

If we're going to freeze it, freezing it last year is not terrible, but ideally, we'd like that to increase with inflation every year. That's the intention of the programs. That's what we would have liked and preferred, but freezing it at the 23 level is better than what the Republicans originally wanted, which was to go back before the Democratic Congress and all those successes and all those programs being passed into law. It's a better place than it would have been if the Republicans got their way.

Brian Lehrer: Elliot in Manhattanville, you're on WNYC with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Hello, Elliot.

Elliot: Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Senator. Changing the topic. There's been some stuff in the news about-- there's been slowdowns in confirming judges in the Senate. I don't want to get into the reason for the slowdowns, but I just hope that you could talk us through a little bit. How long does it take to confirm a judge? Are there enough days, years, months, whatever, for President Biden to fill all these vacancies that are out there?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Elliot. Senator?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Elliot, the good news is there was no slowdown in confirming judges. What the news was about was that the judiciary committee has regular votes on getting them out of committee and into the vetting process and into the queue for votes. All they did as well, Senator Feinstein was ill, they just stacked those. As soon as she was here, they voted on all of them.

There was no slowdown at all in how quickly we were actually voting on the nominees because we have a whole list of nominees ready to go. The reason why it takes so long to confirm judges is because there's no consent. Mitch McConnell has the right to not consent to do things quickly. That means for every judge, he is forcing us to take the entire amount of time for legislation to go forward after you file cloture. It takes about a week.

We never got to a point where we didn't have any judges in the queue left to vote on. It never happened, so you can rest assured there was actually no delay. So far, Biden has confirmed more judges than any other president at this point in their administration ever. That's because Senator Schumer has been so deliberative about just getting a vote every-- just filing cloture. As soon as the next one is ready, file it, file it, file it.

We've never had a pause and we've used every bit of floor time just for judges. That's been a strategic decision of Senator Schumer and President Biden. I think it's the right decision because, obviously, during Trump, he nominated a lot of highly-unqualified, radically-right judges that are harming our court system. We need to get our nominees in to balance that out and we are doing better than Trump did so far. So far, so good.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a follow-up from a listener sending a text message. It says, "Please explain your position on the ongoing issues with Senator Feinstein. She is clearly incapable of fulfilling her duties without her staff literally telling her what to do at every turn." Writes this listener, "Is the position of the Democratic Party that elected officials are entitled to keep their jobs regardless of their competence?" The reason this is relevant to the last caller is because it's been reported that when Feinstein was absent because of her medical condition, that slowed down the judiciary committee's ability to confirm judges.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: As I've said, ultimately, it didn't slow anything down because as soon as she was back, they could vote in one day on any judge that they had already had the hearing on. They just stack those votes, so that was not a problem. The second thing is she's here. She's doing her job and she's helping confirming those judges. She was elected by her state for a six-year term. It's up to her to decide if she wants to resign early because of medical issues. It's not up to anybody else.

We've had senators, certainly the last 14 years I've been here, that have been very ill for long periods of time. They've recovered and come back. Eventually, they decide when they're retiring. It's her right. To try to push her out because they don't like how she's doing her job, I think, is deeply unfair. I respect Senator Feinstein. She's done extraordinary things. She's the one who passed the assault weapons ban last time.

She's been a leader on both the judiciary and the intelligence committee. I go to the intelligence committee hearings with her and she asks very thoughtful, very probing questions. She has a lot of knowledge having been on that committee for decades. I would just assure that now that Senator Feinstein is better, she can do her job well. She's doing it. It's up to her if she wants to retire early.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming @wnyc.org. A few more minutes in our monthly Call Your Senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Senator, let me ask you something about the asylum seekers coming to New York in such large numbers as the senator from the state. Mayor Adams seems very frustrated by President Biden not giving the city enough of what the mayor is asking for in terms of federal dollars to pay to settle the people who are here after all because of federal policy or federal failure to control the borders. He's frustrated because the asylum seekers have to wait for so many months before they can qualify for work authorization.

He wants that to be as close to immediate as possible for asylum seekers who are registered in the system because they want to work, and also, so the financial responsibility for their basics doesn't fall as much on the taxpayers of New York. I think you'd support the mayor on those points, but the question is, have you spoken personally to the President about them and why is it so hard to get what seems like common sense in those respects?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, I've spoken to President Biden several times directly and in person. When he came to New York a couple of weeks ago, I had the benefit of talking to him on Air Force One about this. I gave some policy ideas about ways to ameliorate the situation. There's three things. First of all, the mayor needs more money from the federal government. The first bill we passed was $800 million.

The mayor has said he's already spent a billion. Obviously, that money's not enough. He's gotten only $38 million of that money and he's supposed to get a lot more in this next tranche that's over about $150 million. We'll see what he gets. I don't know what the number is. Hopefully, it's significant. Again, it's still a drop in the bucket on real costs. I'm working on a couple of things on costs.

I have a piece of legislation that I am introducing called the ASPIRE Act. That would do a couple of things. It would increase the work permit authorizations. Right now, they have to wait 180 days before they can get a work authorization document. This reduces that to 30 days after the asylum application is filed. That will be much more expedited. It increases the USCIS funding and it increases the Shelter and Services Program funding, which is what the mayor is using now. Those three things would go a long way to making his life easier.

The second thing I'm working on is bipartisan work on immigration reform. That could change the number of lawyers we have so that we can actually process these asylum cases much faster and to actually have Article 1 immigration courts, which would also allow the quicker review for asylum and refugee status and parole status, all of which is taking too long because we don't have enough lawyers and the courts are full.

Those are some easy bipartisan solutions that I'm putting into the mix of this group of eight that are trying to negotiate comprehensive immigration reform. President Biden did make some changes at the border that resulted in not having a huge surge, which is a positive thing. Some people don't like these requirements, but they are definitely helping system the flow. He's now required that you have to apply from your country of origin for asylum or in an intervening country before you get to the border.

You have to have been denied before you get to the border. If you show up at the border and haven't done that already, you are banned for five years. That's a pretty strict rule. A lot of migrants are waiting and not coming now and hopefully will start applying from country of origin. In order for this policy to work long-term, we need more visas. We need actually the right number of visas for the number of open jobs that are available in our country that are remaining unfilled.

Jobs in agriculture, jobs in tech, jobs in the service industry and in tourism, jobs in health care. These are just some of the chronically open jobs that would be amazing if we could right-size our immigration and have many more visas to allow for many more workers to apply legally from countries of origin to get these very important jobs. That would make a big difference. I'm hoping we can work towards that as well in these comprehensive immigration debates that we are now having in the Senate.

Brian Lehrer: Let me touch on another couple of things real quick that I know you're working on before we run out of time. I see you're reintroducing the FAMILY Act as it's called for 12 weeks of paid family leave. You and I have talked before about how that idea is popular across party lines in the general population, paid family leave. So far, Republicans in the House and Senate won't pass it. Why do you think it might go differently this time if you do?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The reintroduction, it's the same bill, but with some improvements that just clarify what the type of program that would be perfect would be. Again, we will not be able to get a vote on this until we have a Democratic majority in the House. In the meantime, I'm working with some senators on a bipartisan basis and some House members on a bipartisan basis on what version of paid leave they would support.

What we are talking about is not a universal mandatory program that everybody buys into like Social Security, which I think is the ideal because then it's there forever and people have bought into it and it's theirs. It's their social insurance. Instead, maybe a more discreet program where states can opt in, companies can opt in, individuals can opt in, and it covers all employees up to a certain income level. Particularly, the employees who can't take unpaid leave because they can't afford it.

We're trying to get that cut-off to be maybe $50,000 or $60,000 a year as a way to get the lowest and middle-income wage workers covered first in states that have nothing because taking unpaid leave isn't affordable for them. So far, the Republican working group is fairly agnostic on who's covered in terms of all life events, gender-neutral, which I think is great. They are somewhat agnostic on the length of the leave. 12 weeks is possible for some types of leave. I am fighting very hard to get us to a place of agreement so that we could perhaps vote on something that's positive and then build on that when we have the majority again. I have a handful of Republican senators and House members working with me on that.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, I see you're involved with the bipartisan COVID origins bill. Does it matter whether it came from a lab leak or a wet market leak, assuming nobody thinks it was unleashed on purpose?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: It definitely matters. It's the same type of exercise that we did post-9/11 to assess what could we have done differently to protect Americans better. You needed to do a deep dive on all the challenges that prevented us from detecting this terror attack in advance pre-9/11. As a consequence, the 9/11 report gave us a dozen or so recommendations. Most of which have been implemented and are actually working every day to subvert terrorism in our country and in our state.

The co-location of NYPD, NSA, CIA, DOD, and FBI has resulted in real-time sharing of intelligence data and information and it's worked on subverting terrorist attacks. Many actually. That works. We wanted to apply the same rigor to COVID because we need to know. Was it a lab leak? Was it a wet market? Was it some other way that we haven't even thought of so that we can protect against the next pandemic or stop it quicker?

For example, we can then have a similar fusion center like we do for anti-terrorism, where we have a task force composed of a dozen people from each of the agencies that are relevant. Somebody from HHS, somebody from FBI, someone from CIA, DOD, NSA, the Department of Ag, all of the areas of expertise that we need so that we can know what to track and trace in advance.

Sometimes the scientific community and the agriculture community has information. Sometimes the CIA and the NSA have information and working together to prevent the next pandemic and be able to have a response ready. We can also deep dive on what responses worked, which didn't work. Where were the log jams? Where were the bottlenecks? Where are the places where we couldn't get the information or the resources too fast enough? That really works. That's part of what the COVID commission's going to do, the COVID task force to assess all that, make recommendations, and then we'll work together. This bill is very bipartisan. I'm working with Senator Marshall and Senator Ernst as the Republicans and Senator Feinstein and Senator Casey as the Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: That, listeners, is our monthly Call Your Senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Senator, we always appreciate it. Thank you. Talk to you next month.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian.

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