[music]

President Biden: Everyone over the age of 16, everyone, is now eligible to get vaccinated right now, right away.

[applause]

President Biden: Go get vaccinated, America. Go and get the vaccination. They're available. You're eligible now.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: President Biden said those words last night, and he also said these.

President Biden: We've all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black Americans. Now's our opportunity to make some real progress.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, President Biden said those words last night, but he also said these.

President Biden: The vast majority of men and women wearing a uniform and a badge serve our communities, and they serve them honorably. I know them.

[applause]

President Biden: I know they want to help meet this moment as well.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden said those words last night, and he also said these.

President Biden: We won't ignore what our intelligence agency has determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today: white supremacist terrorism.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden said those words last night, but Senator Tim Scott in his Republican response said these about the new Georgia voting law.

Senator Tim Scott: If you actually read this law, it's mainstream. It will be easier to vote early in Georgia than in Democrat-run New York, but the [unintelligible 00:01:55] doesn't want you to know that. They want people of virtue signaling by yelling about a law they haven't even read.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Scott said those words last night, and he also said these.

Senator Tim Scott: 100 years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic, and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today, kids are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again, and if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor.

Brian Lehrer: With those words from each from last night, we welcome Democratic congressman, Adriano Espaillat, from Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, including Kingsbridge, Morris Heights, and University Heights, Norwood, and others. Congressman, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Thank you, Brian. Thank you for inviting me again.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think the American families plan-- We were talking about some of the details with our previous guests, what do you think the American families plan would mean to people in your district?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: It will mean so many things. For example, over 140,000 children benefited from the childcare tax credit. The earned income tax credit is another big winner for my district, where you have working-class families that are really having a difficult time making ends meet. They're getting ready to reinsert themselves back in the economy, and this will be a great boost for them for the cost of the everyday living. I think it goes a long way. I think it's smart to support families. They need the support now, and I'm looking forward to working with the administration on this.

Brian Lehrer: To get specific, in New York City, we already have universal pre-K, so the new piece from Biden here, for children under five, would be the cap of no more than 7.5% of your income to pay for childcare for kids under five for people making up to one-and-a-half times the median income of the state. Your district is by and large pretty low income, so does this just look good on paper, or could it be really important on the ground to many of your constituents?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Look, we know what universal pre-K can do because we've implemented it here in New York City. We know how important it is for families, and most importantly for the children. There's significant evidence and data showing that kids that start early, as early as a headstart, and that's I guess why it's called a headstart, are far more advanced in terms of their vocabulary and the words that they know than kids who do not attend these programs, and they take that with them for life, not just for one grade or two grades. It continues to be a tool and an asset as they move forward.

We know, just like we know that the $15 minimum wage, which he also mentioned yesterday, helps stabilize my district, Brian, because a family-- a couple, let's say, that was bringing home $600 a week, that was making $725 a few years before, after the $15-an-hour minimum wage was enacted, was now bringing home $1200 a week, and that's the difference in paying rent or maybe even being able to save a little money. It stabilized the rent issue in my district. I saw it happen overnight. The universal pre-K, we know the importance of it and how it can help families. I'm a strong advocate for it, and I think it will continue to help families here.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, because the numbers are a little dense, it's no more than 7% of your income for childcare for kids under five, for people making up to one-and-a-half times the median income of the state. Do you happen to know what one-and-a-half times the median income is in New York state, that cut off?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I don't have the answer for that right now, but I'm sure I could get that to you. I don't have the answer right now, but look, these are important initiatives that the president laid out last night. I think it's a state of the union to focus a lot on working-class families. Anytime you are helping working-class families, you're helping my district. I'm supportive of many of the initiatives that he brought forward last night.

Brian Lehrer: Neither of us have had the time to look that one up [chuckles] with all the other things we're doing to digest all this new content, but it is interesting to me that he made it regional. I think that's a progressive stroke, instead of having-- People say, "Instead of having the minimum wage even be $15 across the board, nationally, it should depend on the cost of living, which is higher in New York than in other places, and things like that."

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: No question about that, yes. That was very helpful.

Brian Lehrer: I thought that was good. Listeners, we can take some more phone calls from you with Congressman Espaillat on either speech last night. 646-435-7280, let's take one right now. Tulis in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in. Hi, Tulis.

Tulis: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Congressman, nice to hear you.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Thank you.

Tulis: I'm addressing to Tim Scott. Last night, he declared that the United States is not a racist country. Now, this was news to me. I'm just shocked that he would come out and say that. I don't know what planet he lives on, but I literally jumped out of my chair and was looking at the TV. I'm interested to know, A, what planet does he live on, and B, what's your response to that?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Well, maybe Pluto, which is pretty far away. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Is that even a planet anymore? Oh, that is another show.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: No, maybe a moon Brian. Breakaway moon. Look, he was speaking for his party as well, and that's what they stand for. They stand, not just for adapting and promoting racist election laws that will throw us back, they want to criminalize a bottle of water. They want to criminalize a bottle of water, and this is a fine and dandy for him? I don't think so. I think that we got to fight to pass the legislation that the President laid out. He laid out a package of legislations. He gave us a mandate to go ahead as Congress and pass this legislation, which includes the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which I think is clearly very important to pass right now.

He laid out VAWA, which is the Violence Against Women Act, that we haven't re-enacted. He laid out immigration reform, that we must pass. Gun safety, gun control laws that we must pass. He mentioned the ghost guns bill which is my piece of legislation that he has already addressed through executive order.

Brian Lehrer: To the caller's point, criticizing Senator Scott for saying-- and I think he said those words exactly that way, I think she quoted him right, "This is not a racist country." It sounds like you're taking issue with that. Do you want to make that case in those terms, rather than there is a lot of systemic racism in this country that needs to be dealt with, "This is a racist country?"

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Race matters very much. Still matters very much. Race matters, in particular, for young Black and brown women and men that are stopped on the street by cops. Remember, Brian, we had the stop-and-frisk policies here that literally stopped hundreds of thousands of young people every year for no justified reason. In fact, over 90+% of them were not found to carry a contraband or weapon or had not committed a crime. Yet, they kept the data on these young people that were stopped, and they did it year after year.

At one point, they may have had data on a significant portion of the young population of color in New York City, and this is New York City. You could imagine in the deep south where the KKK and white supremacists are boldly taken off their hoods, what the situation is over there. I don't know what planet you live on. He's supposed to serve South Carolina where I know lots of that happens as well. Certainly, he was off focus and was speaking for his party as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play one more clip of Senator Scott basically accusing Biden of posturing on bipartisanship in unity while achieving less of it than Donald Trump. Listen.

Senator Tim Scott: Last year, under Republican leadership, we passed five bipartisan COVID packages. Congress supported our schools, our hospitals, saved our economy, and funded Operation Warp Speed, delivering vaccines in record time. All five bills got 90 votes in the Senate. Common sense found common ground. In February, Republicans told President Biden we wanted to keep working together to finish this fight, but Democrats wanted to go it alone. They spent almost $2 trillion on a partisan bill that the White House Bride was the most liberal bill in American history.

Brian Lehrer: Congressmen Espaillat, what's your reaction to Senator Scott, specifically on last year's COVID bills when Trump was president and McConnell was majority leader getting bipartisan support and Biden's proposals being one-party bills?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: It shows that the other side of the island is not willing to compromise that even when people are dying and the nation is facing the crisis of our generations, they are not willing to step up. What it shows is that we did, we weren't altogether happy with those bills, but we felt that the American people and the country was going through a serious crisis and people were dying, and we had to step up. Yes, we held our nose, and we did what we had to do to support the American people. They don't do that. They rather step away.

They rather turn their head, turn their backs, and not support a piece of legislation that's so critical to the existence and the wellbeing of most Americans, regardless of what party they belong to.

This is what Biden is proposing is very popular among the rank and file, and yet they continuously oppose it. If you look at the whole poll, it shows that what Biden do, and they're in trouble politically because people needed those $1,400. People need that rent assistance. People need the kinds of efforts that were put for making sure that there's food security there, the food stamp, the snap program increases. People from all parties need that kind of help. When they turn their backs on their rank and file, you will see that some of them, yes, may feel betrayed, and so they're in trouble right now. I believe he was trying to spin the table on us. He was trying to play three-card Monte and us yesterday, but it didn't work.

Brian Lehrer: One of the things that Biden talked about, you and I had mentioned this, is the free two years of community college in the American families plan, but he didn't say anything about student loan forgiveness, and I think Mary, a law student in Bedstein, is calling in on that. Mary, you're on WNYC with Congressmen Espaillat. Hi.

Mary: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Yes, we could, Mary.

Mary: Okay, thanks. I think Biden's reason for rejecting $50,000 of debt cancellation is just completely unfair. He, and even the right, talks about it as a subsidy for the rich or for people who will be rich. My proposal to Biden and any of those critics is that if you're going to be paying down my debt, and I'm so rich, thanks to government paying down my debt, then tax me when I'm making that huge salary, get the money back. I just have a little quick story. I basically could have had the opportunity to-- I'm a law student, and I could have had gone to Brooklyn Law School for free, but I chose to pay substantial tuition at NYU Law School because I'm a Black woman, and I felt like I needed that name in order to get respect.

Because of that debt, I'll be taking a job at a large law firm. Let me tell you that, if you're getting paid more than six figures as a lawyer, right out of law school, you are helping corporations, you are not helping people because I'm using this expensive education to service corporations because of the way that the government has laid out these student loans. What I would much rather do is pay 5% of my salary for the next 10 years and help people that I care about. That's not really an option for me right now. I just want to hear what kind of feedback there is to that idea.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Don't give up on the student loan forgiveness. I know he didn't mention it, but don't give up on it. I think it has a lot of traction in Congress, precisely because of what you brought up. I think that we're going to be making our case for it. Remember, today, I think, is the 100th day of his administration, so lots will happen in 4 years. The free community college proposal is also a good one, and the one that was floated originally by President Obama, so don't give up on that. We're still fighting for that. I am confident that at some point, we will accomplish that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Mary. Call us again. Biden has come under some criticism for the way he handled vaccinations in the speech. Some public health people like Dr. Leana Wen think he should have made a bigger point of saying, "Only vaccinated members of Congress were allowed into the room last night," and then gone further and allowed them to take their masks off as a sign of how effective the vaccines are and how much they return us to normal. Other people say he could have given President Trump credit for Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccine so quickly before the Biden administration distributed them so quickly, both to be gracious about something good Trump actually did, and to remind all those vaccine-resistant Republicans, which is a lot of people, that this is a Trump thing too. Any thoughts?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Oh, I think that he's been very successful in the vaccine distribution. In fact, I also feel that now that we have excess vaccines, that we can play a major role in helping vaccinate other countries. Let me tell you what's going on, Brian. Other countries have purchased vaccines from pharmaceuticals, and they were pushed to the back of the line. In a place like the Northeast, where you get people traveling back and forth to Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, other countries in the Caribbean, and in the border, where you have young people showing up from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, I think it is smart that when we distributed these excess vaccines, that we do it in a coherent way, in an organized way that makes sense for America as well.

I sent a letter requesting that if and when we do that, that we give priority to those allies of ours that also have an impact on our safety. We will never be free of the virus unless the entire world is free of it. We're in a position now to even consider that. Over 200 million people have been vaccinated. That's a significant number of people. Well, we're getting there, and I took my card yesterday to get in. I have my vaccination card that I had to show to get into the chamber, and so, yes, we are now safer as a country. We still got a long way to go. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. We're looking to open up safely, but we've done a good job of vaccinating our population, and President Biden has played a pivotal role in that. Yes, the past administration was also very effective in getting Operation Warp Speed move ahead and provide the vaccine for us very rapidly, probably faster than any other time before.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, two things real quick, and then on the local news, I'm going to talk about these with State Senator Myrie, who's up next. Mayor de Blasio, probably our listeners haven't even heard this yet, most of them. Mayor de Blasio announced this morning, "Full reopening of the city on July 1st." Is that the right thing, or is that premature?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Well, look, we're doing a lot, we're making progress. I'd rather see the city open up incrementally, and not just on one particular day, particularly on the eve of July the 4th, where we know lots of things go on in neighborhoods across the city. I'd rather see it opening up step-by-step, to make sure that everybody's safe. People are still dying from COVID-19. I don't know what the figure was last night, but people are still positive, coming out positive, and people are still dying from it, so this is not over yet. Don't let your guard totally down. Make sure that you still take some measures that will protect you, your family, and the city of New York.

Brian Lehrer: New York will lose a congressional seat because of the census results coming in just 89 votes short of not losing one. Do you think that there is any legal recourse, as Governor Cuomo says he's going to look for, to challenge the count?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I hope so. Brian, that we do an excellent job uptown at counting folks in our census every 10 years. I think we lead the city, even though we're an immigrant neighborhood, and most people will say, well, immigrants probably are afraid to come forward and fill out that form, every time we lead the city, we do a great job at that, and if we ever needed a message to highlight the importance of filling out that census form, is those 89 forms that we didn't get? I hope that, legally, we have a route to challenge that. It would be a great statement to make, that New York City didn't lose a congressional seat. That hasn't happened in a long time. It will be a great statement to make, and I'm hopeful that perhaps there's some legal angle that we can grab on to and make that case.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Adriano Espaillat, from upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, including Kingsbridge, Morris Heights and University Heights, plus Norwood and others, thanks a lot for coming on. We always appreciate you.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: You know the neighborhoods, Brian. You know every single neighborhood and the Northwest Bronx. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: You know where I live, and that I walk in those neighborhoods.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I know.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for joining us.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: All right. Take care.

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