Congressional News Roundup: Voting Rights and the State of the Infrastructure Bill

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we turn to Congress where, last night, Republicans blocked the For the People Act, what's been referred to as the most ambitious voting rights legislation to come before Congress in a generation. The Republicans, all 50 of them, used the Senate's filibuster rules, that 60-vote requirement to advance a bill, in order to put the legislation on what's called indefinite hold before it could even be debated. The move added fuel to a debate among Democrats, is it time to get rid of the filibuster once and for all? Meanwhile, President Biden still has his eye on what is shaping up to be a possible bipartisan infrastructure bill. What does the failure to pass the voting rights bill signal for infrastructure and more? Joining me now to discuss this and more is Nicholas Wu congressional reporter for Politico. Hi, Nicolas, welcome to WNYC.

Nicholas Wu: Hi Brian. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get into what happened last night, let's start with a refresher on the Democrats' bill. What is in the For The People Act?

Nicholas Wu: Well, this is a huge piece of legislation. They are touching like many, many aspects of elections as multiple allies have pointed out. This would have been one of the largest expansions of federal voting rights since the 60s. It would have tackled gerrymandering. It would have addressed money in elections for super PACS to disclose their donors, created a federal campaign financing system. This is an incredibly sprawling piece of legislation.

Brian Lehrer: The vote came down 50-50 right along party lines. Can you take us through the mechanics of this? How did the Republican minority, minority because the vice president can break ties, how did it wield so much power yesterday?

Nicholas Wu: This all comes down to the filibuster, that procedural roadblock in the Senate that requires at least 60 votes to advance any legislation. Like you mentioned, the vote came down 50-50, but on a party-line vote like that, you still need at least 10 Republicans to break with the rest of the party and join all Democrats to advancing any legislation, and that just didn't happen yesterday. Republicans uniformly opposed this bill.

Brian Lehrer: The New York Times report Senate Republicans particularly savaged provisions restructuring the Federal Election Commission to avoid deadlocks and the proposed creation of a public campaign financing system for congressional campaigns. Before the vote yesterday, Senator McConnell address the Republican's concerns. Let's take a listen.

Senator McConnell: These time-rotten proposals have sometimes been called a massive overhaul for a broken democracy. Sometimes, just a modest package of tweaks or a democracy that's working perfectly. Sometimes a response to state auctions, which this bill actually predates by many years. Whichever label Democrats slap on the bill, the substance remains the same.

Brian Lehrer: Can you walk us through some of the Republicans' arguments against this bill and the biggest differences as you see them as specifically as you can get without going down 55 different measures?

Nicholas Wu: Sure. Like leader McConnell just said in that clip, Republicans saw this bill as what they call the federal takeover of elections. It's worth remembering that unlike a lot of other countries, the United States has a very decentralized election system. By and large, it is still state and local election authorities that are running everything. This would actually have been a large federal expansion into the voting rights space. Now that being said, back to the Democrats, the whole reason for this bill is to create federal safeguards and to prevent a lot of the laws introduced in more Republican-leaning states that, in many cases, do restrict the franchise. This was a big part of it.

Republicans also very strongly opposed this public financing for elections saying that if you were a taxpayer in Iowa, you might be funding Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's campaign, for example. This really comes down to the ideological differences between the parties on the role of money in our political system.

Brian Lehrer: I think just as importantly, there's a voting rights compromise being floated that I believe has gotten even Stacey Abrams to agree to a voter ID provision but Mitch McConnell has stomped on that too. This is Joe Manchin and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. A centrist Democrat and a centrist Republican with a version of what's known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which might be the next move for Democrats. Can you talk about this compromise legislation and how it would be a compromise from the bill that we were just discussing that got defeated last night in the Senate?

Nicholas Wu: Right. There's the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, which you mentioned, which would restore parts of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme court a few years ago. Democrats were aiming to wrap up their work on drafting a new version of the bill that they think can withstand legal scrutiny by the summer, and then potentially vote on it by the fall. Even then, the problem is this might be too late to really have any effect, especially as states start to draw new districts for Congress. Also, it doesn't address a lot of the major issues that Democrats have talked about with elections. These Republican, generally Republican-led laws that do, in many cases, restrict the franchise. While this might be a middle ground, it's still very much an uphill climb here.

Brian Lehrer: I'm looking at some news clips. CNN, "Why Stacey Abrams is open to Joe Manchin's voting rights proposal." New York Post, "Manchin backs election bill: show vote after Abrams backs voter ID." People who follow the voting rights issue and follow Stacey Abrams' voting rights career might think, "Wait, Stacey Abrams back some compromise that includes a national voter ID requirement?" Can you explain her position on that and why Mitch McConnell would close the door on even a compromise that includes that major Republican priority for so-called election security so quickly?

Nicholas Wu: The interesting thing here is that, for a while, Democrats have actually been somehow unhappy with Senator Manchin's opposition to this bill, which they saw as a broader opposition without naming specific details that you liked in the bill and didn't like, and without any recommendation. When he rolled out this compromise, this was actually met with some, if not prayed, but all of this, the paper to show where exactly he stood. When Stacy Abrams then came out and endorsed this compromise proposal, that helped push things even further. Again, to Republicans, this bill, no matter which form it takes, is still something that they oppose. As Leader McConnell put it, the minute Stacey Abrams endorsed this bill, this is now Stacey Abrams's bill, and that is anathema to a lot of the Republican Party.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is Nicholas Wu, Congressional reporter for Politico, as we talk for another few minutes about some goings-on in Congress that have to do with compromises, really much more with not compromises between the Democrats and the Republicans there, and voting rights, yes, voting rights centrally. We'll also get into infrastructure a little bit before we run out of time. If anybody has a question or a comment, we can sneak in a few phone calls at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Staying on voting rights and the politics within the Democratic Party. On CNN's website today, White House reporter, Stephen Collinson wrote this, "Biden was hardly throwing everything he had at passing the legislation in the Senate. He didn't tour the nation to drum up support." The president and vice president were, of course, backing this voting rights bill before the people bill, but did they support it enough? It seems like they're getting knocked from the left.

Nicholas Wu: This is definitely something that Progressives have talked about in the last few days, but other Democrats I've talked to have pointed out that, at the end of the day, when Republicans have dug in like this against something like H.R.1 S1, and many of these other Progressive priorities, the math of the Senate and of the Democrats margin in the House is the way it is. You have a 50-50 split in the Senate. Push as you may, it's tricky to get 10 Republicans on board for stuff, let alone the Democrats' handful of seats that gives them the majority in the House, keeping everyone on board there. It's a very tricky balancing act.

Brian Lehrer: I guess this battle is really state by state. So many Republican states now, based on President Trump's big lie about having actually won the election, are setting out to pass new laws that limit early voting, that limit absentee voting, that give this really threatening thing in Georgia where, rather than the Secretary of State, the legislature would have an easier time overturning what seemed to be the electoral votes in the presidential election.

Those things seem really threatening and they're slightly different state by state, though. They tend to do some of the things I just mentioned and some other things that would seem to suppress turnout overall. For whatever reason, those things seem to have more of an effect on Democratic turnout than Republican turnout. If the Senate is deadlocked in gridlock, these things are going to have to be fought state by state. Right?

Nicholas Wu: Yes. This is something that's going to come down to state-level politics. Barring any federal action, it'll be up to state legislatures to figure out how they want to approach this issue. Again, of course, that comes down to math. Democrats did not really make many inroads in state legislatures in the last cycle, and they're seeing the consequences of that now.

Brian Lehrer: That's why Democrats might actually go for, what they call in Washington, the nuclear option of voting to abandon the filibuster, to abolish the filibuster. Funny enough, the filibuster requires 60 votes to pass most pieces of legislation, but you can abolish the filibuster at 51 votes. The Democrats could do that by themselves right now if everybody was on board. Two of them, Senator Kyrsten Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin are not on board, so they couldn't actually do it this afternoon if they wanted to. The reason that the filibuster conversation is back in play is that the issue of voting rights is considered so central, not just to their party's interests, which Mitch McConnell was right, it is in the Democrats' interest to pass these things but also in the interest of democracy.

Presumably, anything that limits voter turnout without an actual threat of fraud, and nobody's demonstrated an actual threat of fraud that would be prevented by these things, it's so central to democracy, in an electoral democracy, that the Democrats feel so strongly that they may take the very drastic step, and risky step, frankly, even from the Democratic party standpoint, of abolishing the filibuster. That's why everybody's talking about the filibuster again right now. Yes?

Nicholas Wu: Yes, exactly. The fact that all 50 Democrats voted, at the very least, to advance the legislation yesterday, even though it was a failed vote, this still puts a lot more pressure on senators then to figure out what they're going to do about the filibuster. As you mentioned here, Senator Sinema wrote that op-ed. There is a very real concern among Democrats that if they do away with this now, the next time they're in the minority, Republicans could do the same to them and pass legislation on this very simple majority threshold and get through things that Democrats were able to prevent in the past.

Brian Lehrer: Corina Bushwick, you're on WNYC. Hello, Corina.

Corina Busjwick: Hi. My question is why are we not making it a national requirement for all citizens to vote? It would seem to eliminate a lot of these local-state shenanigans, gerrymandering, and all this other stuff. I think our country asked very little of us, so why not ask us to vote?

Brian Lehrer: What a great question. Very few countries in the world have mandatory voting. Australia does, I don't know who else. Does anybody in Washington ever bring this up for you as a Congressional reporter?

Nicholas Wu: It's not a proposal that's talked about all that much. It is worth remembering. With the levers of power that the federal government has, actually, it's hard to mandate people to do things. However, an idea that you see kicked around every now and then, including in Senator Manchin's compromise proposal for H.R.1 and S.1 was to create some national holiday on election day to encourage people to go and vote, since it can be tricky for a lot of people to take time off to go to the polls and stand in line. That would be one way to get at the same issue without necessarily mandating it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go on to infrastructure. There is a $2.3 trillion Biden infrastructure proposal on the table. Now, there's something like a $1 trillion infrastructure compromise taking shape. What can you tell us about that?

Nicholas Wu: That is all very much up in the air. There's this bipartisan group of 21 senators or so that's currently trying to hammer out some compromise on infrastructure. The problem is they're really getting hung up on the same issues that tend to trip up any major Washington negotiation, and that is how to pay for the package. Republican senators want a lot of this package paid for, but the problem is how do you do that? One option that they floated, for example, was raising the gas tax, something that the Biden administration and a lot of Democrats don't want to do because they see it as a regressive tax on less wealthy Americans. I will be closely watching to see exactly how that debate plays out.

Brian Lehrer: Well, taxes are a reason, on a few levels, that this bill is stalled. I think that President Biden had originally wanted to reverse a number of President Trump's 2017 tax cuts, but seems to be willing to compromise on some of these tax proposals. The New York Times reported a few days ago that Biden would exclude several of his proposed tax increases, including raising the corporate income tax rate to 28%. How clearly has Biden expressed that he's willing to compromise by keeping taxes roughly where they were?

Nicholas Wu: It's very much in flux right now. That bipartisan group is still sorting out its proposals. Then, at the same time, Senate Democrats are prepping a perhaps $6 trillion package that would include everything that they couldn't get in that smaller bipartisan one. Now, tax increases are something that gets thrown around every now and then, but it was a major Biden campaign promise, and something that he's reiterated that he doesn't want to raise taxes on most Americans. It's going to be a tricky balancing act of figuring out how to pay for all this and also not raising taxes on Americans.

Brian Lehrer: You know what I'm surprised about, but you can correct me if I'm misreading this; since you are a Congressional reporter for Politico. It seems to me that Biden and the Democrats have something potentially transformative and potentially hugely popular on their hands, but lie the voting rights bill, they're not touring the country to make it clear to everybody what they would get, and that's the human infrastructure portions of these two, Part 1 and Part 2 infrastructure bills. One that would provide almost universal young childcare, like baby and toddler care in the United States prior to pre-K, and another one that would provide almost universal elder care, help with taking care of very elderly or infirm relatives.

I would think that that human infrastructure challenge that we have in this country right now disadvantages so many people, and women more than men, and all families across America. This is in the infrastructure bills, what they call the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. Again this is a little bit Democratic-Socialist, if you want to use that label. They have it in some countries in Europe, things that look a little bit like this, we don't really have it in the United States. I would imagine it's the kind of thing that could get a lot of Republican families from around the country supporting it if they made a big enough deal about it. What's happening with those things?

Nicholas Wu: Well, this is the same argent you're hearing from several Progressive lawmakers right now who are wondering where is the Biden administration on these issues. The White House has taken somewhat of a lower profile approach to negotiating a lot of this, preferring more to try to gauge exactly where senators are and then taking meetings with them all along. I think, at least from the perspective on the Hill, the White House can say whatever they want about the package that they want to see passed, but it is ultimately up to Congress to do something.

Again it comes down to math, you have a 50-50 Senate, and the slimmest of majorities in the House. Any kind of package you come up with here is going to be the product of a lot of compromise. I think if the White House were to be out promoting more elements of these factors, that could potentially alienate the very people that they're trying to negotiate with.

Brian Lehrer: Nicholas Wu, Congressional reporter for Politico. Thanks so much.

Nicholas Wu: Thanks so much for having me on.

 

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