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he is the editor-in-chief here crooked and host of the show rubicon please welcome brian boiler good to see you good to see you too so episode uh two season two of rubicon is out right now i really urge everybody to check it out it's a show about the conversations democrats are having about the best way to use the power we have won that we fought so hard to win and so i wanted to start i want to talk about biden i want to talk about congress let's start with biden we are recording this after two weeks of a fast-moving series of executive orders meant to undo some of the worst damage of the trump administration biden came out with a 1.9 trillion dollar rescue package that included raising the minimum wage uh fourteen hundred dollars to get the checks up to two thousand dollars unemployment and uh benefits uh 350 billion dollars for state and local aid something democrats uh have said we needed uh for a long time how do you feel about how joe biden and the bite administration has come out of the gate i think that where biden can act alone um everything's going very well i mean and it's not really a surprise i don't think because his team is filled with people who have very recent experience uh running the government um and does and it's what they've devoted their lives to so we're lucky in a sense for many reasons i guess that trump didn't get an extra four years but uh democrats including many of the people in the biden administration were only out of government for four years and you can i i think you can kind of see that the muscle memory is still there they uh they didn't lose any time because they knew what they were doing and then they also had the added benefit that trump was a fairly lazy president and did a lot of things unilaterally which made them fairly easy to undo so on the um on the relief front there has been this debate going this week basically the debate is what is the most likely and quickest way to get as much relief and help to as much people and places in need uh what is the best way to do that um there are basically i think you know three paths one is budget reconciliation which would be a budget bill that only requires 51 votes but is a process that has some complications there is regular order where you would require 60 votes and you would have to get 10 republicans to go along and then there's the combo approach which has been floated a lot today as we're recording this which basically says okay you want to get 1.9 trillion dollars of relief out into the world senate republicans you can maybe get 10 who would go along with at most half of that probably less but you could do that quickly with them get that money out the door with them show that you're open to bipartisan compromise and then pass the rest through budget reconciliation what do you think about the three different approaches uh so the way i sort of would think about it if i were biden or chuck schumer and i think the way both of them do think about it and they've been saying this very publicly is that they want the need in the country and i think also their political need to improve people's economic fortunes and get the public health crisis under control to determine the process and so 10 days in the fact that they're still engaged in bipartisan negotiations that we think are very likely to fail is not necessarily an omen of things to come that everything is going to get bogged down in bad faith negotiations with republicans who just want to drag things out and shrink things um that given that the congress passed a you know 900 billion dollar bill just around christmas time uh and vaccines are just getting distributed out into the states that there's maybe a little bit of window to to try your hand at something at least make a good faith attempt to get republican buy-in to um to these plans but at some point that's going to run out and you need to make sure that not only do you have enough vaccine to get into people's arm but you have the infrastructure in place to deliver it to deliver it in a way that isn't completely chaotic or just unpleasant for people to do it so that it discourages them from getting vaccinated and makes them think that you know the government under biden is is failing you you don't want to pass too little aid so that um so that you uh the economy doesn't recover quickly assuming we get the virus under control um one of the one of the provisions in in biden's bill which i think is great is it's called automatic stabilizers it's meant to increase the amount of unemployment insurance that flows out to people uh automatically when the economy is is in tough shape and then to to scale that back down only when the economy is healthy so that biden doesn't have to keep going back to congress to get um to get more bills passed to get more aid out to people i think if you add that all up it shows that they understand that that what the country needs is really what's going to ultimately drive the strategy that they adopt uh the white house came out today um i guess we're recording this on thursday so it came out thursday and said that um that they're not interested in splitting up his relief bill and i i think that that's good i think that that's good mostly as a sign that they are saying they are not going to let this get bogged down in a senate process that will cause things to be delayed and to uh to be shrunk in a way that isn't helpful in theory if you could do it that way you know pass a minimum wage increase or something like that through regular order and then pass some other things to reconciliation it all ends up the same in the final analysis as long as the provisions are good but the provisions have to be good and the process can't be used to dilute them well the but the white house has to say they only want to do one package because if they say they're going to do two packages you immediately give up your you immediately lower the the amount that you could possibly get out of the republicans right like if you say we're going to split this in half all of a sudden you're negotiating with republicans over half if you say this is the bill is there any hope that you get that number up and then whatever you put through reconciliation you don't call it the other half of this thing but it is the other half of this thing is there any i mean i'm just i'm just thinking about how this is actually playing out in terms of a negotiation i think that's what they're worried about what i mean is that if you decide that you're going to like agree to pass what republicans will pass and then pass the rest of reconciliation and it adds up to a good package okay that's fine but i think that they have made the correct analysis that that's not likely to be how it plays out if they go down that route and then what do you think so this is maybe two in the weeds but i i'm interested in it so minimum wage so the way budget reconciliation works and this is what uh um is what you don't with the filibuster can't stop it is a process that allows budget-related laws to pass with uh 51 votes in the senate as opposed to 60 but there are all these other rules there's amendments that everybody's allowed to put forward there's limits on what you can do it has to impact the budget do you think that you can get a minimum wage increase through bucket budget reconciliation by calling it an offset for some other spending in the bill what do you think right now about that so i think the way i think you could make a good faith argument and back it up that a minimum wage increase meets the the weird rules of of reconciliation right um it has to be principally about the the budget well if you increase the minimum wage you um you both increase tax revenues because people's wages go up and you reduce spending because people's need for social programs goes down so you do have like a very direct impact on uh on the federal budget particularly the parts of the federal budget that are permanent and that's what reconciliation is meant to deal with that being said the i think the conventional wisdom for a long time has been that since it's really a regulation and it's not itself a tax increase or a reduction or increase in spending that it isn't really a budget change it's it's not uh something that you change in the budget line it's it's a it's a rule that you impose on businesses um that uh the parliamentarian of the senate who is the person who kind of makes the final call might not agree with the argument um and we can't bribe that person we can't send that person to votes and stuff you can fire that person you can fire that person you could overrule that person um uh the the you know i think the dirty little secret to reconciliation is that if democrats wanted to use it as a full end run around the filibuster they could um but in in principle not in principle in practice uh both democrats and republicans have kind of treated reconciliation as like okay we get one shot to avoid the filibuster but we're gonna stick to the respect it we're gonna respect it yeah to the strict rules make sure it's it's budgetary it's um you know it doesn't touch social security they they they haven't in practice really gone too far out of like out of the confines of of the rules itself and so far i haven't seen any sign that democrats want to um but i think they could and i think that they could make pretty good arguments for it and in a way that allows them to say they're preserving the filibuster so actually that brings us to this topic let's talk about what we do about the filibuster oh no brian i'm very sorry it's me the filibuster brian the filibuster has been interrupting us all all for this entire episode interrupted the game i know you're in the middle of a very important conversation but brian what are your thoughts on being dead oh no oh no this is what the filibuster does it comes in and it tries to slow our progress make it unable for us to have a conversation was it a teaching moment being it was not a teaching moment filibuster shame on you filibuster yeah look it you'll never get rid of me i'm the filibuster i've been around since forever i'm like you know all those songs on albums that aren't the hit song that's me like you know batman forever yeah no nobody wants to listen to that weird youtube song people want kids we want steel we want seal god damn it baby i want all those other songs what are some other things that you like uh filibuster let me see oh i'm every company ryan reynolds has invested it you know not surprising you know i mean it's like it's just like why like what do you need what do you mean what do you think about ian's summer holders summer holders whiskey i mean it's perfect it's ex it's like why also ian summer holding general you are he's a filler buster he's a filibuster he's a fighter buster hey do you know i hid under chuck schumer's bed for six days i did you know that i just hid under his bed and i didn't do anything i enjoyed him not knowing i was there that's how twisted i am i'm like every joker combined well listen all right this is the last time i'm gonna deal with you today filibuster listen we are going to find a way to get out of the promise kirsten sin i'm a maid all right joe mansion's open and inedible all right we we're gonna get we're gonna we're gonna minimize you at the very least hey how about this filibuster what if we require the republicans actually stand up and talk none of these cloture motions that'll be the day get out of here get out of here remarkable uh anyway brian here's where we were at um back to the conversation so i actually did want to talk to you about the filibuster so you know we just had this strange week where basically mitch mcconnell used the filibuster to try to extract a promise that the democrats wouldn't get rid of the filibuster uh and at the beginning of the week i think a lot of people were saying oh mitch over played his hand mitch over played his hand and then by the end of the week joe manchin basically promised not to get rid of the filibuster eliminate you can you can parse it there's some space but joe manchin seems to have at least affirmed that he would like to keep the filibuster in place cinema went even further saying she's not even open to eliminating the filibuster what do you make of those concessions and how does that change the filibuster debate in congress going forward so to me to me i think two things are important one is that mitch mcconnell isn't really acting like he got much out of this right if if he had gotten what he was asking for which was like uh essentially like a a vote on saying we're not going to eliminate the filibuster this year but who gives a it's that's just as not that would be a 50 well because it's the same thing if a rule that says throw the filibuster is just what we have which is a rule that says we won't get rid of the filibuster unless 51 people say so i think if i think if 51 people vote to say they won't get rid of the filibuster the chance that they're going to renag on the basis of future events is lower than two people saying i'm not gonna kill the filibuster you know if i'm not open to changing my mind about it now right that's basically all you got and then mitch mcconnell is out there saying if you guys kill the filibuster i'm gonna make your lives hell which is like well if you if you really thought that you had an ironclad promise that wasn't gonna happen you you wouldn't be out there pretending like or acting worried that it might um so i i don't think he thinks that this story is over and i think that that's good uh and i think he's right he's right to worry the fact that in the face of a threat which was basically unless you let me say which pieces of biden biden's agenda are good to go or not i'm not gonna let you take over the senate after you won the election the fact that the the answer that wasn't immediately like we are going to nuke the filibuster immediately um is it's tough to swallow because that's basically saying like i'm i'm going to mount a coup through the legislature and uh come on he said well look he's using what he's got he knows that joe manchin cinema tester they don't want to do it on an organizing resolution they want to they don't want to do it they don't want to be the ones to kill it right what was but but like that's not a that's mitch mcconnell basically daring them and knowing that schumer doesn't have the votes schumer would love to kill it on the organized resolution a lot of democrats would they don't have the votes the reason i found the fact that they wouldn't do it on this sort of basic question of like joe manchin was like going to surrender his chairmanship to mitch mcconnell um and so if if that wasn't enough to convince joe manchin that republicans aren't going to use the filibuster power in a constructive way then it's going to take a lot of pressure i think a lot of time a lot of like repeated evidence that basic you know popular simple things like the minimum wage increase are going to fail before you might get joe manchin and kristen cinema to change their minds and if and when they do i think that what you were what you were hinting at earlier is correct that you're not going to see them get rid of the filibuster altogether but they'll establish yeah press a precedent in the senate to either lower the number of votes it takes to end debate or to make uh if somebody's going to say you know i don't i don't wanna vote up or down on this they have to hold the floor and as soon as they stop holding the floor then you get to your final vote there's something in that neighborhood um but what i took away from the last week's uh you know shenanigans is that it's gonna it's gonna be a slow burn and it's gonna i think chuck schumer would be wise to set up a whole lot of votes for republicans to filibuster so that mansion and cinema feel like okay like he's right there they're not using the filibuster to constructive ends or just trying to stop us from doing anything we got to do something about it right i mean it seems like look you know mansion is not up for four more years uh uh you know cinema is not up for four years she's in a state that's turning more and more blue uh they gotta want to do it they have to want to they have to actually think it's the right thing to do it doesn't it you know i don't know what pressure i mean it has to be a mix of pressure but it does seem like especially with with manchin that he's like um he's like a panda you gotta coax out you know yeah i i think biden would have to get involved and i think at some level it hasn't dawned on everybody in the senate even people who are more amenable to abolishing the filibuster because they just want to legislate that refusing to abolish the filibuster while maintaining membership in the one party that is like the last bastion of hope for american democracy is a position that is incongruous right and and it's going to end poorly one at some point i don't know if it'll be in 2022 or 2024 or or after that but if the people who uh you know do the work to turn out the vote their votes count they win the election nothing changes um meanwhile the other party in state legislatures is out there making it harder to vote um and you know just responding to their defeats by by trying to sort of win by cheating uh eventually that is that's going to unravel itself um and joe manchin and kristen cinema maybe an appeal to their own sense that they will have a harder time winning elections if they don't do what it takes to make voting fair and you can't do that without getting rid of the filibuster i mean if all they're thinking about in terms of making this calculation is what effect it's going to have on their re-electability several years down the line that seems like a pretty straightforward way to make the case to them like this there's the principle of you know the the majority gets to govern and there's also the like do you want your voters to be able to cast ballots for you easily uh and maybe somewhere in there they'll uh they'll get a sense of more is on the line than just like whether they'll be blowback in arizona because of ads mitch mcconnell runs or whatever yeah does tm2 we have to make a policy argument about basically like a system where there is no cause and effect between vote and outcome is one that has rewarded cynicism it's rewarded a sense that nothing matters it is rewarded the kind of politics that led to somebody like trump like i like at some point like yeah if republicans gain full control and there's no filibuster there's more damage that they can do but let's let's bet on our program let's not bet on how quarter of our program let's not bet on a third of our program let's bet on our program our ability to use our program to win i i so i think it's the substance you know if you abolish the filibuster what are you gonna pass what are the details of those bills that's important and those you know they should be they should be good laws and they should help people and that will i think feed the cause of helping democrats continue to win elections so that this authoritarian party doesn't get rewarded with more power but i think that the question of like whether they govern at all is going to matter almost as much that the people who put in all the work over the last four years including the people who who listen to this show and and are our supporters of crooked media if if they come to see that all that work cannot be transmitted into the ability for you know decent people to govern then what is their incentive to get involved in the next election and the election after that and that's really ultimately what i worry about less is every program that they pass going to be super popular implemented well thus redown to their political benefit in two four six or eight years and just do people get the sense that when they vote for the party that they support that the party that they support will get to you know get their govern yeah to get their fingers in it you know yeah yeah brian boiler it's good to talk to you thank you for being here so sorry about uh phil a buster that was appropriate interruption everybody check out rubicon season two it's awesome it's a great way into some of these conversations and the intro left debates that are defining uh how democrats fight moving forward he talked to uh fashakir who was bernie's campaign manager he worked on the hill the new episode has chris hayes they're both worth listening to check it out thanks joe [Music]