[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and today is day 50 of Joe Biden's presidency, exactly halfway through the traditional first 100 days period that new presidents often frame as the time when they launched the major initiatives they got elected for. As it happens, day 50 is the day Congress has expected to give final approval to Biden's first big priority, the COVID relief bill. The President is planning his first national prime-time address for tomorrow night. Of course, we'll carry it live on WNYC. With us now on that and what comes next, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Hi, Senator, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Cory Booker: It's really great to be on with you, Brian, especially to discuss such an extraordinary piece of legislation.

Brian: How psyched versus how ambivalent about the last-minute compromises are you about the COVID relief bill? We had one of your colleagues from the New Jersey House delegation yesterday, who said she considered not voting for it, though she will, because of those compromises.

Senator Booker: Look, they should not in any way overshadow the tremendous change that this bill is going to make in the lives of Americans. The last big bill like this was the $1.9 trillion Donald Trump tax plan. That bill, 65% of its benefits went to the top 20% of earners in our country. Only 1% of its benefits went to the bottom 20%. It was a bill that shifted hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthy.

This bill is a bill that's targeted dramatically towards helping working people. 80% of New Jersey families will see direct cash benefits either to the CTC or the $1,400 checks. We have unemployment insurance, rental help, health care, subsidies that help people get health insurance. It is a tremendous effort that will cut child poverty in half, give financial security to so many working-class families, and help us to get out of this pandemic a lot quicker.

Obviously, there's compromises. Every bill has to have them, but let's keep focused on the fact that this is one of the greatest bills of our lifetime, especially if you think that no administration was able to cut child poverty in half. The Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, the New Deal programs of FDR. This is going to do it for the year. If I have my way, that part of this plan and coming legislation will be permanent.

Brian: Many of our listeners know you proposed a Baby Bonds bill to help close the wealth gap in this country. I've read that white families have 10 times the assets of Black families. We could go lots and lots of other stats like that with implications for who gets to afford college or buy a home that appreciates rather than pay rent their whole life, so the gap gets passed on from generation to generation. Do you see that or other really structural economic reforms going anywhere now that Democrats have both houses of Congress beyond just this immediate relief tied to COVID?

Senator Booker: Yes, I'm having active conversations with the White House about doing some kind of game-changing legislation. My Baby Bonds bill now has 17 co-sponsors, including Chuck Schumer. People are looking to right the apple cart, not just on racial discrimination or our country, but we have seen families who are working hard in America literally losing ground because of the cost of living.

Everything from childcare to college tuition has gone up stress. That theoretically has made the American dream harder and harder to reach. That's why, in fact, I'm about to meet with Senator Brown, Senator Bennet, Rosa DeLauro, some of the people that are trying to architect the permanency of the child tax credit. Because if we do that, we would basically not only cut child poverty but we would relieve the financial strain.

Remember, this expansion from $2,000 to $3,600 per child of the tax credit will literally bring thousands of dollars into families who are struggling right now annually. The bill in its totality will increase the income of working families of upwards of 20% because of the many different benefits that they can avail themselves of. This is something we in America need to do. We're seeing increasingly despair, growing deaths of despair from opioid addiction to suicide.

We're seeing continued financial insecurity, which undermines childhood success. We know on the flip side of that, every dollar invested in our children in programs like the child tax credit returns $9 to our economy because children who are above the poverty line and financially secure, do better in school are less likely to get in trouble with the police and have overall higher lifetime earnings.

We need to be a nation that begins to better invest in ourselves, in our infrastructure, in our education and higher education, as well as trying to end the scourge of our society, which is being the richest nation on the planet Earth by having, amongst industrial nations, the highest child poverty, the highest childhood infant mortality, the highest maternal mortality, childhood obesity.

There's so many issues that are shameful, ignominious compared to our competitors because they're doing a better job of investing in themselves. We as a society, if we want the big economic payoffs, we've got to start making those investments. One of the best signs I saw today, I don't know if you saw this, Brian, but the OECD, which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development, they looked at overall [inaudible 00:06:13] economic growth at all the countries.

They just projected that this American Rescue Plan, which is investing in Americans, put as much as double America's economic growth this year. As a result, it has now, as of today, revised upward its projections for the entire world economic recovery. Unlike the Trump tax cuts, giving wealthy people more wealth, it does not fuel the economy as powerfully as giving working people more economic security and more opportunities.

Brian: I had not seen that OECD report. That is really interesting projection from economists about how trickle-up economics rather than trickle-down economics can actually fuel economic growth. That's really fascinating. I'm glad you brought it to us. Senator Cory Booker with us, Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

To all these other goals that you were starting to articulate, the COVID relief bill could get around the filibuster because budget bills can do that under the rules, but so much else from the Democratic agenda cannot, HR1, the voting rights bill, which passed the House. Also, the police reform bill, the labor rights bill that, I think, the House passed yesterday, comprehensive immigration reform. Are you just stuck now and confronted with the historic choice of whether to abolish the filibuster before you can really do anything else?

Senator Booker: Yes, we are. First of all, actually, that's too simplistic. There will be other opportunities to do reconciliation over the next two years. I know the Biden administration is looking at the next major-- This is the first pillar that they've dropped. The next major pillar will be an American recovery plan that is about making historic infrastructure investments like Eisenhower did.

It's almost like we inherited this house called America from our grandparents, who made major investments in the new roof and everything. Now, we're trashing that house and about to pass this over to our children with two to $3 trillion of infrastructure deficit. We have got to do the house repairs, roads, and bridges, securing of our electrical and energy grids, as well as the things that should be.

There's no way that Korea or South Korea or Germany should have more broadband penetration for their families, children, schools than we do. There's a lot of things we have to do. Those things like that, there's a lot of talk about another major reconciliation plan later this year. I think to your point on issues that are important to me, criminal justice reform, issues about comprehensive immigration reform and, as you said, HR1, those will not get into reconciliation because it don't necessarily have the budget impact that would survive what's called the "bird rule," which is a rule that something has to be really germane to the budget reconciliation.

There is a lot more pressure now on the filibuster, which was something just a few years ago, most Americans did not know the powerful way it's shaped our nation. It is a relic, a racist relic. If you know the history of the filibuster, not part of our constitutional mandate of the Senate generations pass and there was no filibuster in the Senate, but it began to be used and sharpened to stop civil rights legislation.

In fact, the longest filibuster record is Strom Thurmond's rant against civil rights. That's when it really came to be and then it was perfected and used in a way we had not seen in history by Mitch McConnell to stop Barack Obama's not just his agenda, but his actually putting judges onto the federal judiciary. I'm one of those people that is worried about if we should have another alignment of the Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump again.

The legislation that they could have passed in those years could have done severe damage to vulnerable communities in New Jersey. At the same time, I'm now a person that is calling for us to reform the filibuster. It can't be used to stop, not the Democratic agenda but, really, the will of the American people like raising the minimum wage wildly supported by Republicans, passing states like Florida, the $15 minimum wage being stopped in the Senate because we can't just have an up or down vote and we need reform.

Brian: Before you go, beyond policy debates, do you have a larger sense that things are returning to some kind of normal after four years of Trump like we were also on edge all the time as every day would bring new threats to basic norms? He would signal support for political violence or elevate Putin over his own intelligence appointees or lie repeatedly about the coronavirus. In fact, let me play you a clip. I don't know if you've heard this yet of Dr. Fauci on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday talking about how Trump as president would undermine public health and safety after the CDC and Trump's own coronavirus advisors would come out with guidelines for how to reopen the economy

Dr. Anthony Fauci: Dr. Birx and I and others put together these guidelines that people had to have an indication that there was a decline in cases before they opened up as it were. We carefully articulated that to the American public. Unfortunately, soon thereafter, the President said, "Liberate Virginia, liberate Michigan." People took that as a signal that they didn't have to pay attention to the carefully-crafted guidelines.

Brian: Unbelievable. It's day 50 of Biden, which means it's day 50 post-Trump. Senator, I played that Fauci clip. Really, it's just an example. Do you see anything like a return to basic norms beyond the policy debates that's worth noting?

Senator Booker: My family and my grandparents, my parents would tell me about these moments of national unity. I saw it in 9/11. My grandparents told me about it in World War II, the times when we were facing crisis and the country pulled together. It is stunning to me that we had a president that didn't try to unify the country to common cause and common purpose to beat the common foe of COVID, but instead ignited political animus and conspiracy theories and division, attacked politicians as opposed to drawing them closer.

This was a disastrous leadership that cost us tens of thousands of lives in the United States of America and fueled the internet to push people further towards extremism when it comes to just doing something as basic as wearing a mask. Other countries that did, in Canada is close to us, had significantly lower death rates where their conservatives and their more liberal party joined together to fight it.

This is a shameful presidency, what they did during the time of a great crisis. It will go down as one of the few times I can think of where national unity was beginning to spark that was just smashed by a president that seemed to lead with temper tantrum and insidious divisiveness as opposed to calls to love, to come together with brotherhood, sacrifice, and service.

I am just grateful that there were millions of Americans of all parties, frontline hospital workers and lab techs and others that kept on working in this crisis, kept on pushing, kept on helping our country to get through because we lack leadership in the White House. Thankfully now with Joe Biden, who has problems sometimes even with his left, he is trying to find a common ground for all of us to truly assert that we are one nation under God.

Brian: Senator Cory Booker, we always appreciate it. Keep coming on with us.

Senator Booker: Thank you so much, Brian, always appreciate you. Take care now.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.