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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. NPR White House Correspondent, Ayesha Rascoe is our first guest today. Joe Biden is the third president she has covered after Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Can only imagine what a different task it has been in each of these three cases. In the case of Biden, coming in at the height of the pandemic and simultaneously to the introduction of the vaccines and with all the economic disruption in people's lives that the pandemic also caused and plans to do things about that and the cause for economic reform that had been coming along with that and the post-George Floyd racial justice movement and coming in just after the January six Capitol riot and the Trump big lie about a stolen election that still hangs over our democracy, questions about how future elections will be conducted or respected looming on the near horizon in conjunction with that. What a time to be a president and what a time, therefore to be a White House correspondent. Ayesha, we always appreciate it when you come on one-on-one with us with the WNYC audience. Welcome back to the show.

Ayesha Rascoe: Thank you. That was quite the intro. When you put it like that it does sound like a lot. [laughs] I must say.

Brian Lehrer: I want to pull back on that in a couple of minutes but let's start with some news of the day. I see they announced that Biden will meet with Pope Francis when he goes to Europe for the G20 economic summit. What would be an agenda there from either side for the two of them to meet or to appear together in public at this time? I'm thinking that they do have a lot of overlap on economic justice.

Ayesha Rascoe: Yes. The White House has said they will be talking about those areas where they do overlap, where they called it concern for human dignity. The response to the pandemic, things like climate change as well as economic justice, equity. That's a big part of what Biden has said that he's fighting for and concerned about. Of course, this is a big deal for Biden because he is a very devout Catholic. He goes to mass pretty much every weekend and has been for years. This is something that is really a part of his DNA, is a part of who he is. He is a very devout Catholic.

Brian Lehrer: Can they avoid the abortion issue? Because what I think and I think I'm seeing it in the press already and this is a little bit of a media critique but the first thing people talk about is the desire by some conservative Catholics to see Biden denied communion though he's only our second Catholic president because he supports abortion rights. As we were just saying I think if we look beyond what we have beyond that we have an economic justice president meeting an economic justice pope.

Ayesha Rascoe: The pope himself when talking about this issue of whether public figures who support abortion should be able to get communion, what he has said is that this is a pastoral issue, that this shouldn't be made with political considerations, that this is an issue for individuals, priesthood, and bishops to decide based on the need to pastor people. He has taken a much I would say a less rigid approach to this than some of the more conservative bishops. Obviously, at times they have been at odds with this pope.

Brian Lehrer: Both Biden and Francis have their vaccine deniers that they have to deal with too. We know about the US obviously but there are some cardinals who criticize the pope for advocating vaccines, even for getting vaccinated himself. I wonder if there could also be some tension between Biden and the pope with the pope calling for more global vaccine equity even while the US is going on to a booster dose round. Think they have to premanage that issue in any way?

Ayesha Rascoe: I think that they will try to stay away from the issues that are most tricky or that could raise tensions. I think they will try to talk about those issues where they have that common ground. I do think that the White House will make the argument, and this is the argument that Biden has made over and over again is that the US has given more in terms of vaccines than any other country.

It has put forward more money. I've seen the US is the richest country. The fact is that there is a lot of the world that has not even gotten its first shot and the US is talking about booster shots. That is something that is hard to argue around but the argument that the White House makes is that the US has given a lot of money and given a lot of vaccines.

Brian Lehrer: With us is NPR White House correspondent, Ayesha Rascoe. To pull back, about Biden as an economic justice president, there were many stories at the beginning of his presidency. It seems like a long time ago. He's only in the first year still. At the beginning of his presidency that his human infrastructure agenda showed he wants to be the next FDR or LBJ and really transform our relationship with government to help close the tremendous wage and wealth gaps that preexisted the pandemic but that got so much worse during it and so much more attention. Now, most of that is stuck in Congress.

As you know, voting rights legislation is stuck in Congress, police reform legislation is stuck in Congress. That looked like it might have had a bipartisan base. Now apparently not. We know some constituencies are getting frustrated with Biden. Is he getting frustrated with the structural gridlock?

Ayesha Rascoe: The thing about Biden is that he is a man of the Senate. That is where he spent most of his life. I do think that he believes in the legislative process, probably in a different way than any of the recent previous presidents. He believes that there is a way to compromise and to get things done.

This is a test though of that idea that but he is someone who looks at these issues and says, "I'm not going to get everything that I want. The other side, they're not going to get everything they want but we can get something. We won't get everything but we're going to get something." That is a fundamental belief of his and like I said this is a test of that because they do need to get something done.

They do absolutely have to get something done or his whole agenda will crash. They have to and Democrats, in general, have to have something to show for controlling the house and the senate and the presidency, even though it's very [inaudible 00:07:18] the house and the Senate. They have to show something. Right now, there has been so much back and forth and it is possible for a very small minority of Democrats to really gum up the whole process that they have to figure out how they're going to make that work.

Brian Lehrer: Do you see a path to yes with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema from Joe Biden's own party? We talk about it on the show all the time, a lot of national political media talk about it and nobody can figure out what that path to yes is partly because Manchin and Sinema won't exactly say what their bottom line would be for any kind of a deal. Do you see it any more than maybe other people we've had on the show?

Ayesha Rascoe: I certainly don't want to make a prediction. What I would say is that there is going to be pressure to get something. Even for Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin, nothing is not going to be what you want to take back to your constituents. If there is any pressure on them, it is that they need to be able to show that they have accomplished something for their constituents. I would think that there would be some push to find some path but I don't know what that path is.

Brian Lehrer: Pulling back even further in a way, I've been asking Washington guests recently about the way Biden and other Democrats are branding the human infrastructure bill, I'll call it that, and about the way the press is branding it. When the Republicans want to push something, they seem to come up with clear catchy hooks like stop the steal even if the concept itself is based on a lie.

The big package that Biden wants to hammer down inequality with that he can't get Sinema and Manchin on board with yet including childcare and eldercare and free community college and universal Pre-K and better wages and make corporations pay their fair share of taxes, plus the climate provisions, it keeps getting called the reconciliation bill.

What the heck does that mean to anybody who's not a news junkie like you or me? The press calls it the $3.5 trillion spending plan when that misleads on the real cost for one thing. The point of the bill isn't spending, it's all those policy goals I just mentioned. This is a long way of asking you is the White House purposely branding it this way or is much of the press miscommunicating it?

Ayesha Rascoe: I don't think that the White House is purposely branding it this way but I also don't think that the White House has come up with a brand or a slogan other than Build Back Better which doesn't really tell people what is actually in this bill. Part of the problem is that it's clear that you're not going to get the 3.5 trillion, the spending. Some of it is that it's not clear what is going to be in. Like childcare, there's a lot of stuff in there for that and climate and this, but if you have to trim back, what's going to be left on the table? Part of it is that you don't know exactly what's going to be in this bill.

You don't know exactly what is going to be in there, but that is part of the issue is that they have not been able to put forward a very clear-- this is the childcare help you go to work, get people back higher wages bill. They don't have a clear, catchy, concise thing that they are saying that the White House is putting forward to name this bill. Why that's the case I'm not really sure.

Obviously, a lot has been going on. You had Afghanistan a little while ago, you have supply chain issues, and the economy and this and that. I don't know whether it is distraction, but they have not been able to really put forward a short succinct name, title, case for this is what we're selling. This is what we want people to get behind.

Brian Lehrer: I guess their political strategy is to bundle all these things together. Certainly, the progressives want this bundled together with hard infrastructure, physical infrastructure which has bipartisan support. I wonder sometimes if they would have been better off pulling them further apart and just having the Universal Pre-K bill. I bet that would be popular across America, red and blue, or the take care of grandma in her own home rather than a nursing home bill and those individual pieces. You know what I mean?

Ayesha Rascoe: The problem with that though is that Congress doesn't really legislate that way anymore. All of these individual bills that's a lot of legislating. What often happens in my time in Washington which has been longer than I would even imagine is that you get these massive bills at some funding deadline and everything just gets pushed through.

You very rarely get these piecemeal bills that go through all the processes, go through the house and the senate, and get signed into law. That doesn't happen as much. It's like you got a few trains and you got to get your thing onto the train to get something out the door. Yes, it could make sense to just try to do childcare by itself, but that's not really the way congress works.

Brian Lehrer: Pulling back yet even further, there are structural problems that you know and we've talked about with democracy right now that leave the Republicans who have a minority of public support nationally with majority power because of the filibuster because small rural states get the same number of senators as New York and California, et cetera and because of the games that Trump and McConnell played with Supreme Court appointments. Now Biden can't change the constitutional structure of two senators per state. Has he taken a position on either the filibuster or the court?

Ayesha Rascoe: On the filibuster what he has said is that he would support maybe making changes to it going back to the talking filibuster and making it more difficult. There is frustration though, especially from civil rights groups that he has not really taken up the charge of changing the filibuster. That has not been-- he has not taken that up and made that a priority.

"We are going to change the filibuster." That just simply has not happened. A lot of civil rights groups that I have talked to have said they really feel like Biden needs to put pressure on lawmakers to say, "We have to make changes to the filibuster. We cannot let it stand in the way of getting something done on voting rights. We cannot allow that to happen, and it's unacceptable to allow that to happen."

The White House has not taken that up though. It may be the case that they feel like with, and it's not just Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who are against changing the filibuster. There are other Democrats who are also against it, but who are not speaking up loudly because you have Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema so they don't feel the need to speak up about it, but they are also opposed to changing the filibuster. The votes just simply are not there at this time.

Brian Lehrer: I see a court reform commission that Biden appointed is coming back with some findings. Headlines this morning are focusing on their concern that adding more justices might look partisan. Have you seen what they're saying yet?

Ayesha Rascoe: Yes, it seems that this commission-- and we should be clear, this report that's coming out from the commission is not making formal recommendations. This is a work in progress discussion type document but it does say or raise concerns about this idea of adding more justices that it could bog down the system meaning, even more, when it comes to confirmations. That if you add justices that it would be even harder to get justices confirmed, that parties might decide or the Senate might decide not to confirm any more justices.

They are raising concerns about the idea of court-packing. They do say or they seem to have more of a positive view on possible term limits for Supreme Court justices. The thing about this commission though is that it always did seem like something that was meant to kick the can down the road. When you want to put a commission together it's a great way to just buy time in Washington as you set up a blue-ribbon commission. It's a time-honored tradition. That's what a lot of Democrats and progressives are complaining about that they feel like this commission was meant to buy time and it's not serious.

Brian Lehrer: As we run out of time, Ayesha, having covered three presidents now, what are some of the biggest differences in how you have to approach your job if there are any during Obama, Trump, and Biden when the issues are so different?

Ayesha Rascoe: The issues are so different. I think my approach is always the same at trying to get at the truth, trying to see what's cut through the spin and get at what's actually happening. I will say a huge difference between the Biden administration and the Trump administration is that a lot of the Trump administration crises before the pandemic they were created by the Trump administration itself. They were just a bunch of self-inflicted controversies and crises. Whereas you have Biden dealing with real external forces and pressures and not all created by him. That's a big difference in seeing these are real pressing issues and it's not clear how they're going to be resolved.

Brian Lehrer: Ayesha, everybody really appreciates your reporting on NPR from DC as White House Correspondent. WNYC and Brian Lehrer's listeners really, really appreciate it that you come on with us just on the show here from time to time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and keep it up.

Ayesha Rascoe: Thank you. Thank you very much. Love to be on.

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