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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here are a few details of the Coronavirus package agreed to by Congress over the weekend that are especially relevant to our area. I thought you might like us to aggregate some of these. Here are a few. New York, of course, is a performing and visual arts capital so hard hit by venues having to close. We know all that. The new bill does include relief specifically for performance venues, independent movie theaters, and other cultural institutions. Some have called this, the Save our Stages Provision.

Details of who would be eligible for what are still emerging, but a version of that provision that the New York delegation fought so hard for is in the bill. There's also around $4 billion for the MTA. Now from the media reports I'm seeing this morning, that will be enough to stave off the dire service cuts, and fare hikes, and transit work of layoffs that the MTA had been forecasting without it. There's no direct aid to state and local governments, but transit systems yes, that's big for our area.

According to the news organization, THE CITY, there's new leeway for state and local governments to use funds allocated under the previous relief bill passed in March to balance the current fiscal year budgets for New York City and New York State without major spending cuts. Also relevant to our area with so many unemployed gig workers and freelance workers who are not usually eligible for unemployment insurance. The relief bill earlier this year, as you know, if you're affected, did include many of you. Your unemployment benefits will continue at least into March, if you're a gig worker or other freelancer who was covered under the previous relief bill.

Some other provisions, those $1,200 stimulus checks that you got earlier this year, if you make $75,000 or less, there will be a new round of checks at $600 per adult and child phasing out, if your income is more than $75,000. Also, remember the $600 per week and enhanced unemployment benefits, half of that is also back $300 a week. According to stats published in the news organization in THE CITY, there are a million people on unemployment right now in New York alone, a million people. How meaningful is the $300 extra per week, while the average unemployment payment to New Yorkers is less than $300 a week.

The average person on unemployment will your income more than double. The regular maximum unemployment payment per week is only about $500. Even on top of that maximum, $300 additional is a big percentage increase. That is coming back at the level of $300 a week. The Paycheck Protection Business loans are back according to the news organization, The Hill. Businesses that already received the PPP loan will be eligible to get a second one under the new terms. This time, some of the PPP funds will be set aside for the smallest businesses and community-based lenders.

On the lenders, the deal provides $9 billion in emergency treasury capital investments for community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions. These are known by the acronym CDFIs and MDIs. For those of you who aren't familiar, these are financial institutions that largely cater to minorities. Also, according to The Hill, the bill extends the eviction moratorium that is set to expire at the end of the year through the end of January. That's only one month more eviction protection, but at least it's a month. They're going to go back and try to do something else after the inauguration.

It also includes $25 billion for rental assistance to families potentially facing eviction. Eligible renters would be able to receive assistance with rent and utility payments, according to The Hill, and bills that are not those that have accumulated since the start of the pandemic, by applying with entities that state and local government’s contract with. The Hill says that $25 billion for renters is the amount proposed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House earlier this month.

With us now is one of our local members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Democratic Congressman Thomas Suozzi, whose North Shore of Long Island district, extends from Eastern Queens all the way across Nassau and into Western Suffolk County. Congressman, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Thomas Suozzi: Hey Brian, thanks so much for having me on. You did a great job on your briefing. That was really well done. A lot of details in there. Good job.

Brian: Thank you very much. Want to start with that rental assistance provision that came from your group?

Thomas: The bottom line is there's a lot of members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, but also the Democrats that have been pushing for rental assistance. People are just suffering and they can't pay their basic bills. One of the things I talk about regularly is that the effects of the pandemic are cruelly uneven. Some people are unscathed. Some people are working remotely and they're getting their paychecks and they're doing fine. Other people, their lives are just wiped out completely. They can't go back to work. They can't pay their rent. They can't pay the utilities.

Part of the Problem Solvers effort, because Mitch McConnell was not talking to Nancy Pelosi, nobody was talking to the president or Steven Mnuchin from the treasury office, there was nothing happening. We got these 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans in the Problem Solvers Caucus said, "Listen, let's just do a fix to get us through the winter until the new president is here. Let's do a shorter-term fix." If you remember, we were talking about $3 trillion, then $2 trillion, and now this is $900 billion.

It's because it's for a shorter period of time because we're hoping we can do something else with a President Biden in office. We're just trying to help renters that are facing a tough time. There's $25 billion in the program for that.

Brian: Do you know specifically who qualifies for that kind of rent or related expenses relief and how they apply for it?

Thomas: It's embarrassing to say, but I don't know what the final details are just yet and we're not going to know for about another hour this morning. I can't give you an answer on that.

Brian: I know this is still all emerging for you even for us. Listeners, since this affects so many of you, all these provisions that we went over and probably some I didn't even find or think of, we'll open the phones right away. For you to call in now with questions about the relief bill finally coming out of Congress or any other questions you have about national affairs for Congressman Thomas Suozzi from the North Shore of Eastern Queens through Nassau and Western Suffolk counties. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can tweet a question @BrianLehrer. A little later Congressman will come back to this group.

You're in the Problem Solvers Caucus, these 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans who were trying to reduce polarization with bipartisan initiatives, maybe a good match for the approach that President Joe Biden will try to take and what it can accomplish and what it might fail to address. We'll also touch on President Trump, still trying to overturn the election back at the Supreme Court. Even now with a new lawsuit and with some potentially really scary military scenarios that got reported on over the weekend. Let's keep going down some of the items in the bill first. The Save our Stages Provision, do you know yet how performing arts venues and other cultural institutions can qualify?

Thomas: Well, I only know that there's $15 billion in the program for this. It will be based upon your loss of revenues. It may be limited to $10 million per performing venue. It's so important to us in New York, certainly in my district, but also in Broadway. I've got theaters out in my district. I've got the Paramount and I've got the North Port Theater and The Stage in Westbury, The Telecenter. So many different places that are affected. There's going to be movie theaters involved. There's a big debate about the effect on Minor League Baseball whether that would be considered cultural institution as well as a live performance venue.

That's a big debate that probably was not resolved in the final language, but it'll be debated going forward. The Republicans demanded that it also include churches and synagogues and religious institutions. We have to see how that will actually play out in the process. The bottom line is this was very big for us in New York. I've been fighting for this since day one. I wanted a special provision for restaurants as well, but the PPP program, I think will be a big play as part of that as well for restaurants because so many restaurants are in so much trouble. Like I said, this whole thing is so cruelly uneven. Some places are unscathed from these impacts of the Coronavirus.

Grocery stores are doing great. People with outdoor dining during the summer months and take out business were doing pretty good. Other places that didn't have outdoor dining or didn't have a great takeout business were just crushed, and now with the winter coming. It's just very uneven. The online retail is doing great, but airlines are destroyed. It's just very uneven. In some people nobody got sick, nobody died. Other people, I know families where they lost three people in the family. Three people died in the family.

Brian: I know. Inequality in so many ways, so many professional class people can work from home and their businesses are doing okay. So many essential workers who come from the more Black and brown communities had to go out and gotten hit by the Coronavirus harder as everybody knows. Also, those communities got hit harder with unemployment working at the kinds of businesses that closed down. It's crazy that we're seeing this massive unemployment in America while the stock market is hitting new records. There's no simpler, just symbol of inequality than those two things next to each other. The unemployment rate and the stock market, the Dow

Thomas: This is the expression that's been used frequently. The listener should understand what it is. It's the K-style recovery, is that you see one going straight up. The stock market, for example, going up, going up, going up, but the lower half of the K going down, going down, going down. If you're in a business, if you're an employee at a restaurant that's been with no indoor dining, for example, there's no place to go to work. There's nothing you can do to go back to that job. You're just not recovering. You are decimated by this. If you're the owner of that restaurant, you're decimated by this. While big-box retail and online companies are doing fine. It's just cruelly, cruelly uneven.

It's important that people understand that while they may not be feeling the impacts of it, your neighbor, or the person down the street, or the person in your community is being crushed by it. We've never seen lines like this at food banks. People that have never been to a food bank in their life are now on a food bank line. Like I said, it's cruelly uneven. I lost my father-in-law back in April. He was 92 years old.

Brian: Oh, I'm sorry.

Thomas: Got the Coronavirus, died within 48 hours of being diagnosed. I talked to some of my colleagues down in Washington. Like, "Well, it's not so bad. I've been out spending more time outdoors and doing this." He said, "Why are you guys so excited over in New York?" I said, "Well, we had refrigerator trucks full of bodies. We had people that couldn't bury their loved ones because the morgue and the funeral homes and the-- It was impossible to bury all the bodies we had." So, you understand why we're traumatized.

Brian: Now, that's starting to happen all over the country. Anything in particular for restaurants, you mentioned restaurants? We're always talking about restaurants on this show, so hard hit. Even as the debate goes on over how much they really need to close indoor dining in order to be safe and keep their customers and their workers safe. They're mostly closed. They're devastated, certainly in New York. What if anything is in the bill that's particular to restaurants that wasn't in the previous PPP, anything?

Thomas: There's just some language to better assist independent restaurants as opposed to chain restaurants. I would have liked a much more specific provision specific to restaurants in the bill. That's actually on a bill to propose that but we're dealing with our colleagues in other parts of the country that are saying, "Well, the restaurants are still open." I said, "Well, they're not open everywhere." One of the challenges of bipartisanship is to recognize that the country is very different from place to place, from region to region. There's not an appreciation of what our lives are like in New York versus what it's like in Oklahoma.

That's why trying to foster bipartisanship, where you can get people of goodwill to actually talk to each other, to try and find common ground is such a challenge of our current age. If people are just mad at each other, pointing fingers at each other, you never get to these complicated questions. There's just too much lack of understanding that exists.

Brian: I want to make sure we touch on the MTA piece. They wanted $12 billion.

Thomas: Big win for us.

Brian: They're getting $4 billion. I think this has been under-reported because we're hearing no money for state and local governments. We think of the MTA as part of state and local governments. From what I read, and it sounds like you're confirming it, there is this separate traunch for mass transit around the country, including $4 billion for the MTA. According to the report in the news organization, THE CITY that I cited before, they say that should be enough to hold off those dire service cuts, fare, hikes, and layoffs that they were floating for the near term. Do you agree?

Thomas: I do agree. This was a big win for us. We're going to need a lot more in New York. Again, it's the uneven nature of this pandemic and the effects on New York specifically. This bill is far from perfect because state and local, as you mentioned, is not included. This specific provision regarding mass transit is a big win for New Yorkers.

Brian: The Problem Solvers Caucus, 25 House Democrats including you, plus 25 House Republicans. It's a relatively centrist caucus. I guess we could say you could tell me if you reject that word. It's largely from swing districts where you have to be that way to some degree to get elected and that includes your district. Do you see yourselves as having a new role under President Biden, who talks all the time about being president of all the people?

Thomas: I would like to call it an enhanced role. I think that we got a lot of credibility because nobody was talking about-- This is a disgrace quite frankly that this has taken so long for us to get this COVID relief package. The Democrats, we proposed back in May, a $3 trillion proposal. Then we came down to $2 trillion before the election. Nobody was talking to each other. The Problem Solvers and we got commensurate group in the Senate with four Democrats and four Republican senators to talk. We came up with a framework for trying to put something together for a short-term fix here.

I think that our nation will not move forward if we're controlled just by voices from the far left and the far right just yelling at each other. We will not move forward. You brought the issue of whether we accept the term centrist or not. I'm very progressive on certain issues. When it comes to immigration, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to poverty, when it comes to so many different things, I'm a very progressive person. I recognize after having been in government and public service for 25 years, that you have to try and find common ground, even with the people trying to cut your legs off. You've got to try and move things forward to serve the people.

Let's say we stuck to our position and said, "We're not doing a deal. " Listen, I'm devastated that we don't have state and local. I can't tell you how angry I am. How many literally times I've lost my temper over the issue of state and local with people, but I didn't get it. You know what? We've got to make sure we take care of people who are unemployed. We've got to make sure we get food assistance to people. We have to make sure that we get money for the MTA, as we mentioned. We have to make sure we get money for vaccine distribution. We have to get money for rental assistance. We have to get money for direct payments.

We have to get money for all these different things, for the small businesses. We have to do those things. I'm not getting what I want and the Republicans are not getting things that they want, but we have to get something done. People are just sick and tired. Forget about just being sick and tired, people are suffering so badly. I just gave a speech on the floor a few minutes ago before I came on the show. I said, "This is the darkest day of the year. December 21st is the darkest day of the year." This relief package is just that it's relief. It's not stimulus. It's a relief package to get us through the dark days of winter.

That every day will get a little bit brighter between now and the spring. If we're going to have a spring, we're going to have to keep on working to do more things, especially trying to get money for state and local governments. We've got to try and get people to stop working from fear and anger, to get people of goodwill who will sit across from each other and say, "Listen, I violently disagree with you, but what can we do to find common ground to move forward?" It's the only way our country's going to move forward. I think the President Biden encouraging that

Brian: We'll take some calls in a second. I was looking at the list of Problem Solvers members, and I didn't see any members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Correct me if I'm wrong. The concern this gives me is, do the Problem Solvers have a blind spot of not being strong enough on fighting racial injustice and racial inequality generally to attract these members?

Thomas: No, I don't think that's the reason. It's just a flaw that existed as being rectified. I'm actually trying to recruit members of the Congressional Black Caucus right now to join the Problem Solvers Caucus. There's not enough women on the Problem Solvers Caucus, quite frankly. You start out with the Republicans, they are white men, for the most part. They've got a little more diversity in their people that were elected this year.

The Democrats, which are much more diverse, the people from the swing districts that we won are often not always white. There are men and women, but we need to do a better job of it. It's something that I've been pushing for with my colleagues for this new Congress as we move forward.

Brian: Let's take a phone call.

Thomas: I think that every member of the Problem Solvers Caucus is on the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, for example. Even if people are sympathetic and understand the issues of racial inequality in our country, you can't do a good job on those issues without members of the Black and brown community, people of color sitting at the table with you. They have to be in the room. That's something that I'm trying to rectify personally for the upcoming Congress.

Brian: Let's take a phone call Stephanie in Manhattan; you're on WNYC with Congressman Thomas Suozzi. Hi, Stephanie. Do we have Stephanie? Did I say the right name? All right. We will try that again later. All right, do you have another call already to go? Let's see and listeners, we're having a little bit of a phone glitch. Cindy in Manhattan you're on WNYC. Debra in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi Debra.

Debra: Oh, hi. Good morning, Brian. Good morning Congressman Suozzi, I have a question about something that you didn't mention. It was regarding unemployment insurance. It was on top of the extra $300. It's is an additional $100 per week is what I heard, for workers like myself who are actually called hybrid workers, where we had combined income W-2 and 1099 income. Are you aware of that? Are you familiar with that?

Thomas: I don't have good details for you on that I apologize.

Debra: It's okay. It's okay. All right. That was it.

Brian: Is that for a certain category of working with certain kinds of jobs, Debra?

Debra: Well, it's for people like myself who have combined income, which many self-employed people do. Occasionally, we have a small amount of W-2 income. For PUA, the condition, which is actually in the law, is that you're not eligible for regular unemployment insurance. You are not able to then get streamed into PUA. For that reason, your 1099 income is completely just not considered. Like I'm right now, I've been collecting based on basically 25% of my income. I have appealed and appealed it and it just keeps on being denied.

I was hoping that something would come. This is definitely not adequate. It's something, but it's not adequate for most of us, the extra $100. Anyway, I just want them to get some more details about that.

Brian: Thank you. Sorry, we couldn't help you more with that.

Debra: No, no, no, and thank you. Thank you, Congressman Suozzi.

Thomas: Well, listen, thanks for pointing that issue out. Again, our country is so different. In America, there's 105 million full-time jobs if they were based on the 2016 census. Of 105 million full-time jobs, 89 million people make less than $75,000 a year. If you're making $50,000 a year in Manhattan or $50,000 a year in Long Island, you're not doing that great. You're having a tough time getting by. If you're making $50,000 a year in Oklahoma or in Iowa or in South Dakota, you're doing great. When we're battling with the Republicans and saying, "Listen, we need to have an enhanced unemployment insurance where for $300 a week we want $600 a week."

They're like, "Wow, that's a lot of money." We're like, "No, that's not a lot of money." It's so different from place-to-place in the country. There's certainly some people that are in the Republican Party or the Republican elect officials that are cruelly unfeeling to the plight of the people that we represent. Others is just uneducated about just how different our lives are compared to theirs. $600 a week unemployment insurance additional that we had under the previous bill, that's $30,000 a year.

$30,000 a year is a lot of money in certain places in the country. It's not in New York. It's not in the New York metropolitan region. In other parts of the country, it's like, "Wow, that's a lot, $30,000. What are you talking about? Nobody's going to go back to work if they could get $30,000."

Brian: Even here, there are a lot of New Yorkers don't make $30,000 a year. We have another caller. Cindy in Manhattan. Cindy, you're in WNYC with Congressman Tom Suozzi. Hi there.

Cindy: Hi, thank you. I just had a quick question. I remember the news report that the treasury department was sending checks out of the country to people who didn't need them. I guess these are people in social security who lives out of the country and get their checks there. I'm not sure how that happens. The thing that bothered me was that the treasury department said they could not fix that problem. These people would have to just be honest and send the money back. Hello. [chuckles] I don't think that would work.

Thomas: A lot of these programs are just so massive and so enormous. The first round that we did when the pandemic first hit, the first CARES Act, a lot of things were propped up overnight, relatively quickly. The PPP program, for example, that was a massive undertaking. The distribution of these checks massive undertaking. I just spoke to the Commissioner of the IRS. He said that 140 million of these checks are going to go out right away. There's 330 million people in United States of America. 140 million checks could go out before the end of the year of the $600 in direct payments.

There's always going to be issues that we disagree with and we don't like the way it's been handled, but these are really massive undertaking being accomplished in the midst of an emergency.

Brian: Cindy, thank you. What I did read that if there were overpayments from unemployment insurance, Americans would not now be asked to repay the government. That that was a concern because so much was happening so quickly and were people being given the right amount of unemployment and that kind of thing? Can you confirm that? I read that in one of the accounts, but I didn't see that in others of people who were getting too much money from unemployment because of however the application worked out. I assume unless it's some kind of fraud that they wouldn't be asked to reimburse the government.

Thomas: I can't confirm it for you, but I've heard discussions about that. I don't have the exact details on it. Again, this is an enormous undertaking with so many different details. This will be 600 pages. This is also being done in the context of passing the bill to fund the government for the next year. I apologize; I just don't have the specific details for you.

Brian: Before you go. Let me touch on some of the increasingly outlandish things that President Trump is reportedly considering to try to stay in office. Now that the Electoral College has even voted, the New York Times reported on a heated White House meeting Friday that included discredited aides fired by Trump, like Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell. The most scary of these is that Flynn was on TV advocating that the president declare martial law and rerun the election. I don't think he can actually do that.

If Trump tries and imagine if he had a defense secretary like General Flynn, who was willing to try to order troops to enforce martial law. I don't think many would, but what could that start Congressman, if he did fire his defense secretary because he wasn't compliant enough. How concerned are you?

Thomas: First of all, I'm upset by it. It's disgraceful. The meeting included Rudy Giuliani, Flynn, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others, with people raising their voices and yelling at each other, according to the reports that we read. I want people to take some comfort in the fact that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman Milley, who's a career soldier and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that his responsibility is not to a person, it's not to the president. His responsibility is to the constitution. There've been statements like that already that got Milley in hot water with the president early on when he first said it, but it's very important that he said.

It's a scary, scary thing. We all have anxiety about what could the president try and do to try and undermine things. We heard the president said that he wants to veto the National Defense Authorization Act. He put up a bunch of smoke screens about it being about 230, which is about liability for tech companies and the stuff that they publicize. It's really, I believe because of the renaming of military bases with Confederate generals' names. I think president is really just doing what he's always done, which is he's trying to keep his base. He wants to keep his base in place to make money.

He's got this enormous list of names that he has email addresses of all the people that went to the rallies and contributed online and did all these things to support him. He's got this enormous database. He's going to form a subscription television show, where he's going to have people pay him a monthly fee to watch his show. He's going to bring on his guests in his crazy theories. He's going to have a continued rallies, except he'll call them concerts. He'll have people come. Instead of coming for free, he'll charge people.

He'll go and hold the candidates hostage and say, "Listen, if you want me to deliver my X number of people that I have their lists and their-- These folks adore him. As hard as it is for us to imagine, there are people that follow this guy, that adore him. We've got to figure out, "How is it that he is appealing to these people and that he's getting away with these messages that to us seems so foreign and so corrupt and so wrong?" We have to figure out how to get to those folks and bring them back into the world of working together to help people and solve the problems and respect the constitution and respect our democracy.

I'm hoping that come January 20th, this long national nightmare will be over. He'll be out there continuing to try and get attention, continuing to try to make money, continuing to try and build up his group of people. We have to just be ready for it. We've seen him thwarted at many different stages, certainly in the election. Many times he's tried to do things, he's been thwarted by members of his own administration like Don McGahn when he refused to fire people. We've seen it from the courts.

We've seen it from members of the military. We've seen it from individual people who have values, who've stood up to his efforts to undermine our country and its values. We've survived these four years. Now as sure as spring follows winter, we're hopefully going to get better as time goes forward under the presidency of Joe Biden.

Brian: All right, well, back to normal on one level, hopefully better than normal. There was so much unfinished work as it was. I know you have to leave it there and you got to go.

Thomas: It'll get better.

Brian: We'll have you back on. Congressman Thomas Suozzi, Democrat from the North Shore of Long Island stretching from Eastern Queens through Nassau into Western Suffolk County on the North Shore. Thanks so much. We really appreciate it.

Thomas: Brian thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

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