US-laws Signed Made Easy

Us laws signed

today house speaker nancy pelosi said there's coveted relief momentum on capitol hill with lawmakers coming together on that 900 billion bipartisan proposal it's not text yet it's a framework so as they work on the text we hope it'll take us very close to something we can put into the into the uh omnibus which is at the same time being president-elect biden has said that this package would be just at best just a start and that's how we see it as well coronavirus relief isn't the only c word lawmakers are talking about on the hill today the other one cannabis today the house passed a bill to remove marijuana from the federal controlled substances act this is the first time a full chamber of congress has voted to federally decriminalize cannabis nbc news correspondent leanne caldwell is on capitol hill leanne we will of course get to the coronavirus relief bill in a moment but first let's talk about this historic vote on marijuana legalization why did the house take this up now and what are this bill's chances in the senate does it have any hope at all hey allison so the reason the house brought it up now is because there's already a lot of states around the country that are already doing this and in this past election there are five states that legalized marijuana including red states like south dakota and montana and so what it seems like house speaker nancy pelosi decided to do is just use the momentum that's happening at the states already and make a statement that the federal the federal government is on board too now what happens to it in the senate uh we do not expect the senate to prioritize this before the end of the year there is not much time left they're trying to get out of town before the holidays and if they don't get it done before the end of the year well then they have to start over in the new congress but still alison this was pretty historic this is the first time that a body of congress has voted to decriminalize marijuana leanne top republicans have been criticizing the democrats for voting on this today the bill passing mostly along party lines but republican congressman matt gates had a message for his colleagues what did he say yeah so it's matt gates of a big trump ally and he was the only republican co-sponsor of this legislation along with dozens and dozens of democrats the vote was lopsided only about a handful of democrats voted against it and only a handful of republicans voted for it well one of those republicans obviously is matt gates who is a co-author of the bill let's listen to what he had to say and we'll talk about it on the other side my republican colleagues today will make a number of arguments against this bill but those arguments are overwhelmingly losing with the american people in every state where cannabis reform was on the ballot in this country it passed it passed with overwhelming support matter of fact the only thing that i know that's more popular than getting out of the war on drugs is getting out of the war in afghanistan but if we were measuring the success in the war on drugs it would be hard to conclude anything other than the fact that drugs have won so representative gates a republican from florida is one of the few in his party who is taking this stance but he thinks he's ahead of the game and he thinks that the rest of his party should come along alison leanne let's talk about coronavirus relief now speaker pelosi explaining today why she's backing that 900 billion dollar bipartisan proposal which is far less than the 2 trillion trillion she was initially going for what can you tell us there yeah so remember before the election speaker pelosi was adamant that it has to be comprehensive it has to be a big package well she was asked today at her news conference what gives why did she concede to perhaps supporting something less than a trillion dollars and she said two things have happened she said that president or that joe biden won the election and that he actually has a plan to defeat the coronavirus and she also said there is now a vaccine on the horizon very soon she expects it to get approved from the fda and so she says that those two things are game changers but still allison what's also happened behind the scenes is it seems like the biden team has been really subtly encouraging house and senate democrats to pass something they have he has been saying that anything that passes in this lame deck is going just to be a start and he has been sending a lot of signals that he would like something to get passed in there seem to be listening allison leanne one more question before i let you go you've also got reporting on the government spending bill that needs to pass a week from today to avoid a government shutdown lawmakers hitting some roadblocks there what's going on yeah well there seems to be more optimism actually for a coveted relief bill than there does for the government spending bill but these two things are probably going to be very closely tied together uh one of the big outstanding issues on government funding is once again the border wall the president wants to fund his border wall democrats knowing that there's going to be a new president do not i'm told that there has been lots of progress though just today on that and many other issues and but they continue to say that no issue is finalized until every issue is finalized so there's still hope that things will run smoothly and that no government will close down allison all right we'll keep the hope we'll keep the faith alive leon caldwell thanks a lot thank you hey nbc news viewers thanks for checking out our youtube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching