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Soon: Biden Gives Major Economic Speech; House Expected To Vote On Senate Budget Resolution Today; State Passes Key Procedural Step To Allow Democrats To Pass COVID-19 Relief Without Threat To GOP Filibuster; Marjorie Taylor Greene: House Stripped My District Of Representation On Committees; Joe Biden Talks Economy As Congress Moves Forward On COVID Bill. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 05, 2021 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Yes john, thank you so much for that perspective. We are standing by john all of us together to hear from President Biden kind of his groundwork for where things move forward from here when it comes to this huge massive package that is very much at least some portion of it, needed in the economy. Thanks for joining me. John King picks up our coverage right now.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Top of the hour. Hello everybody and welcome to "Inside Politics." I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing your Friday with us, an important Friday. President Biden just moments from now will give a major economic speech. We will take you there live when it happens.

The president in the White House this morning warning the economy is stuck in a very sluggish recovery and their poverty, hunger and eviction are now persistent, pandemic risks. The president says going big is the only option.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: President Obama put me in charge of the recovery act, and it was hard as hell to get the votes to begin with and then it was hard as hell to get even the numbers we got. But one thing we learned is we can't do too much here. We can do too little and do too little sputter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The speech you'll hear in minutes follows the very weak jobs report; first jobs reported the Biden presidency this morning. Yes, the unemployment rate is down, but only 49,000 jobs were added last month to the American economy. That makes clear the pandemic impacted economy is still very much in trouble.

The Senate all night is ended early this morning with Democrats passing a budget resolution. This hour the House will take up that resolution and passage will clear the runway for both House and Senate Democrats to most likely go it alone on a big Coronavirus relief deal that is at the very top of the Biden administration wish list. House Democrats met with you saw some pictures of their meeting with the president this morning at the White House. And the House speaker emerge from that saying her committee chairs will start writing details of the budget plan next week.

With us to share their reporting and their insights as we wait for the president CNN's Phil Mattingly, Christine Romans and Seung Min Kim from the "Washington Post." Christine, I want to start with you in the argument the president made again today this time with those fresh jobs numbers.

Unemployment rate is down a little bit. Last month we lost jobs, two months ago we lost jobs last month 49,000 jobs are heading in the right direction, but why is pretty weak.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's pretty weak and we're down 9.9 million jobs since the pandemic began. And when you look at - a job creation, it's not even a - and trying to claw out of that hole anymore, this is like a reverse square root recovery. It's just sort of stalled here for jobs.

And that's a real, real problem because you got some 40 percent of people who are out of work, have been out of work for at least six months. That's a real danger signal in the economy. That can show permanent scarring for those workers and for the jobs market.

You don't want to be in a situation where it takes nine years to get out of this like it did after the great recession. And this is historically there is really no precedent for what we have here right now either. I mean, 5 million women who dropped out of the labor market over the past year.

That's one of the reasons why the jobless rate fell. It fell for a bad reason. The jobless rate fell because people are leaving the economy, leaving the job market. They can't find a job, or they can't look for a job because they're home taking care of family in the COVID environment.

KING: And so Sung Min, you see the president now, he had - the Senators down the other day. Yes, his first meeting was a bipartisan meeting, but since then it seems pretty clear. His plan is go with the Democratic votes and if Republicans come along in the end, that would be fine.

What was the significance of this morning meeting? Now the House will pass the reconciliation resolution today, but the hard part comes next week when you have to put the details together.

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Right and a significant with the key House Democrats this morning was similar to the objective that we had when President Biden met with key Senate Democratic leaders earlier this week is to show that the Democratic Party, despite president Biden's overtures to Republican that the Democratic Party are united on the Biden administration package and is ready to go at it alone. Biden, no matter what his inclinations are to be bipartisan and to negotiate acknowledges a right again this morning. And perhaps in his economic speech in a few minutes, that his plan is the right one for this time that there is a full need for that $1.9 trillion relief package that he wants.

And there are only certain that he's willing to compromise on, whether it's targeting those stimulus checks, so they don't go to very wealthy individuals and Households and perhaps a few other places. But the Democrats are really going full throttle ahead.

It does seem like Republicans; those ten Republican Senators who have been communicating with the administrations are getting left behind a little bit. They sent a response late yesterday to the White House in continuing those conversations.

But it does seem like no matter what they try to offer to the administration or what the administration offers them that Democrats are going to go it alone on pretty much the entire $1.9 trillion package.

KING: Unless the Republicans are willing to move up dramatically and there is no evidence of that Phil Mattingly at the moment. It's interesting to read the body language. When Speaker Pelosi would go to the White House in the Trump days, it was always combat and afterwards always insults to be honest. She walked out today, and she said it was a joy.

[12:05:00]

KING: She talked about how the president's presentation was knowledge based and strategic. So, she says what she does. And whether you like her or not, she does it well from a communications standpoint. But to Seung Min's point here in the Democratic discipline, she has only four votes to spare in the House.

The Democrats have no votes to spare. In the Senate we saw Kamala Harris having to break, Vice President Harris having a break the tie at 5'o clock this morning to pass that resolution.

Some changes were made right to the point Seung Min was just making about targeting stimulus money more to lower and middle income not to more affluent people any significant changes in the framework so far.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You know I think if you look, that's a non-binding vote. But I think they can't kind of give you a pathway of what's going to happen going forward. And you make the point there is no room for error. They're operating without a net in terms of the votes if they are going to go Democrat only.

And Seung Min is right; there is no chance right now the Republicans are going to get on board given where they are. I think there are a couple of things you need to look at. Obviously, the targeting of the checks which President Biden has said has made clear he's willing to negotiate on. Democrats are working on a proposal to drop down the thresholds for who qualifies for the highest-level checks. I think you also need to pay attention in the minimal wage and Joe Manchin is very uncomfortable with the $15 minimum wage.

I think there is some belief that Senate rules will basically render it not possible for this package to begin with. I think that's kind of where the White House is on this even though it's in their proposal.

But what it kind of underscores here and you saw it in the vote last night is the minimum wage piece is probably not going to end up in there, despite Bernie Sanders being a key proponent of it.

But it also underscores that Joe Biden be all ends all right now. And I think while there are progressives, I want the package do higher, while there might be changes on the edges to what the Biden administration put out over the course of the next couple of weeks as House and Senate Democrats craft their package, all eyes are going to be on Joe Manchin on Christine Cinema.

Because they are 50, they are 49 and they are 50. And that's what they need. And so if Joe Manchin says out of the blue 1.9 is not enough, then it's not going to be 1.9. He hasn't said that yet, he has made clear and he is kind of bolstered by his governor go big where I am OK with that.

But he also said he wants it targeted. And so, I think everybody is paying very close attention to everything he says. But I think we've spent a lot of time on the bipartisan piece of this. This is going Democrats only and if it's Democrats only, then those are the individuals you need to watch.

KING: Right. And it would be very hard to see Senator Manchin voting no on the first big initiative of the Biden Democratic presidency. They will work this out beforehand. Then I could bring something to the floor --.

MATTINGLY: And he's been very clear, he doesn't want to vote no, he doesn't want to vote no. And the administration has cleaned up some things and they are in communication with him same as leadership. So that's not the way it's probably going to end. But what he wants, he will likely get.

KING: And Christine when you go into the weeds of this latest jobs report, you heard the president again saying the mistake would be to go too small. If we go too big, we go too big, but that's the way to go, go big.

When you look at the report, Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary Democratic administrations writing an op-ed piece saying he thinks it is too big where it is. It is clear the current Treasury Secretary disagrees, it's clear the president disagrees.

When you look at other jobs report, not just about the month-to-month tumult in the economy but you mentioned we only got about half of the jobs lost in this pandemic back. And we focused every week on the first-time unemployment claim filing.

ROMANS: Yes.

KING: But there is a boatload of people on persistent long-term unemployment that tells you the economy is in a ditch.

ROMANS: I mean yes. Every month I get more concerned about the internals of all of these monthly numbers and the high frequently numbers to be honest. It just doesn't look good. You have millions of Americans who are not working and don't have a job.

You have 18, almost 18 million Americans who are surviving on some sort of jobless benefit. So, there's a government is replacing income, there are whole industries that have been sidelined and that's something that the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen often points out.

We've never been something like this before. We have to sustain those people and those industries and tell we get to the other side of the health crisis. And all the economists I talk to this morning were all saying this has to do with the vaccine and the virus right now, right.

This isn't about shutdowns as much as it is about the vaccine and the virus and getting the American people and the job market to the other side of this. And that's going to take more help. The back and forth between summers and then some of the people close to the president, the president's economic advisers, it's been interesting to watch.

I can't imagine they thought that was helpful for him to weigh in on financial stability, inflationary pressures and the value of the dollar when you have millions of Americans who are hungry.

KING: All right. And some of it's been around washed in for long time, some of that might be what Larry Summers believes, some of that is a little ego competition stuff between some of the players you are mentioning there. I'll leave it at that because that's a Washington conversation.

The more important conversations for people out in the country and Seung Min to that point, the president seems confident not only that he has the Democrats with him, but that he has despite maybe not Republican votes in congress, enough support out in the country that he can call this bipartisan that Americans need this. Never mind whether you are d or r, red or blue that Americans need this.

KIM: Definitely. I mean you've seen that talking point and that argument emerge from key members of the administration. Obviously, President Biden, the Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, Press Secretary Jen Psaki, you see Democrats on Capitol Hill echo this as well as they point deploying that shows Republican voters do support the broad contours of this package.

[12:10:00]

KIM: And you've heard Jen Psaki make this point before as well that it's not just Democrats who want widespread vaccine distribution, it's not just Democrats on unemployment insurance right now. And it's not just Democrats who want money that so schools can reopen safely.

So that's their definition of bipartisanship right now. It's not necessarily getting Republican votes in congress because I think they note it down that despite the - again the overtures that President Biden is making that it's very unlikely, they're highly unlikely that you'll see Republican votes at the end of the day with the process that were going.

And I think they are also keeping in mind that when it comes to a crisis, voters are looking for direct, tangible benefits in their bank accounts and at home. We talk a lot here in Washington about process.

But I'm not sure voters care about the process by which they get their benefits, especially if they are suffering through the economic and health pandemic right now. And I think that's a calculation that the Biden administration and the Democrats are making as well.

KING: Right and as I make that calculation, Phil as we close this conversation and wait for the president, what is the timetable there? Their main point has been by mid-March because that's when some existing programs expire. Is there any possibility they get it done sooner or is that the comfortable thought for them?

MATTINGLY: The reality is they need to, right. While mid-March might be the "cliff" particularly on unemployment benefits, the way states actually distribute the unemployment benefits. We've seen that's over the course of several COVID packages where if you let them expire, you get too close to that deadline; it will take states a while to get it back online.

So, you heard Speaker Pelosi just a short while ago and she walked at the White House seem the House wants this done in two weeks. The Senate will then presumably move quickly to pass it as well.

I think they recognized mid-March isn't the deadline, probably end of February as a deadline. But one thing to keep in mind here, the easy part is the budget resolution. The difficult part is putting together now the actual in the weeds, nuts and bolts, their $9.1 trillion package when you have a lot of interest and people who know their single vote carries a lot of power, given the slim majorities here. It's going to be hard, but they want to move as fast as possible.

KING: The first fascinating test of these three pieces all Democratic but president, House and Senate all Democratic, but different interests. As you know as we go through it's going to be fascinating to watch. Appreciate Phil, Seung Min, Christine with the reporting and the insights.

We're still waiting to hear the president give his take on all of this to bring that to a moment so up for us though Marjorie Taylor Greene stripped of her House committees. She says this morning she feels empowered and she says she is a proud member of the party of Trump. As we go to break, we mention that all-nighter in the Senate last night. What a vote-a-rama looks like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to begin the vote-a-rama process.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Senator has two seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vote yes on this amendment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would help speed things along if we could have sediment, you keep handing us new sheets, and that's OK. But let's see the total amount of amendments and then we can try to move the time as quickly as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senators time has expired.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have two minutes, don't I?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One minute.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was told two. Anyway--

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay in your seats. We're not holding the vote open. Not exactly, says Gary. But close enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Brown, no. Mr. Blumenthal, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We now come to the end of a debate that has gone on for over 14 hours.

KAMAL HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The ayes are 50; the nays are 50, the Senate being equally divided. The vice president votes in the affirmative and the concurrent resolution as amended is adopted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: We heard it from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene last hour. She says she now views her official punishment by House colleagues as liberation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Going forward I've been freed, I do, I feel freed because she knows what's happening on these committees. You see we have basically a tyrannically controlled government right now, the Democrat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: 11 Republicans you see them there, joined Democrats in stripping Greene of her committee post yesterday. That a rebuke for conspiracy theory and other controversial out of bound views. In that morning gaggle with reporters, Greene did express some regret but at time she also was quite defiant and scornful. And she said she hopes the Republican leadership holds accountable. Those are 11s who voted against her. She says - she knows she is part of a bigger Republican feud now, but she says the Republican Party has one leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREENE: And I want to tell you Republican voters support him still. The party is his. It doesn't belong to anybody else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That would be Donald J. Trump. Our Washington Correspondent Jessica Dean was there for that event and joins us now live from Capitol Hill. Defiant I think when was, I list the part, I could listen to and then reading the rest of it was what strikes me the most.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes John, certainly defiant. She came out. It was a group of reporters. And she gave some remarks off the top there and she talked about how she felt freed by being taken off these committees.

And she went through what she hopes to achieve here. But she also said that - I pressed her, I asked her when she started taking questions, I asked her if she stood by her comment specifically from 2019 about violence against House speaker Nancy Pelosi and she refused to answer me.

And she went back and forth asking if I had watched her speech on the House floor yesterday, which I certainly did. But she didn't talk about specifics on the House floor yesterday. And so, she would not answer me specifically on that if she still stood by those comments.

And so, John, it was interesting to see her kind of go back and forth between - she was trying to kind of be friendly and wanted to talk.

[12:20:00]

DEAN: But then if pressed on anything she didn't want to talk about, she turned very combative about it.

KING: That's fascinating to watch this one play out. Jessica Dean, I appreciate that. CNN's Phil Mattingly and Seung Min Kim of the "Washington Post" are still with us. I want to say we are waiting for President Biden to come in. So, I may have to interrupt you.

Seung Min to start with you first, you heard the defiance there. The Republican leadership refused to do this itself. So, the Democrats had to do it. She now views this as a war. This is not over, I guess. This is the way I am trying to put this. This is still going to be a continuing problem for the House Republicans.

KIM: Certainly, because obviously the Democrats are very eager to make Marjorie Taylor Greene the face of the party. And since House minority leader Kevin McCarthy didn't take steps to kind of keep the dirty laundry within his own conference and kind of made his ranks take this tough vote pushed by Democrats, it certainly is going to be an issue that faces House Republicans for some time.

I would be really interested in the coming weeks and months to see how much her losing her committees really does affect her standing back at home with her voters, which obviously the voters in her districts are the ones who matter the most here.

Because we've been frequently making the parallel between her and former congressman Steve King from Iowa who also had been notorious for very racist and offensive remarks.

And it was really when he was stripped of his committee assignments that his political downfall began, that Iowa or Iowa Republicans organized against him and he lost the support of the party's leadership.

But right now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has the support of her party's leadership; McCarthy hasn't kicked her out of the conference or really reprimanded her. So, it will be interesting to see just how much her influence or her voice does rise when, like she said, she is going to have more free time to speak out more.

KING: Right if she had any gratitude, Phil for that Republican support, she would just bite her tongue and just say I'm sorry and not talk about other people. Instead she's beating up Democrats, raising money off this and she said there were 11 that voted against me yesterday, meaning Republicans.

There were 11 that voted against me yesterday and that is something that our leader should be very upset about. That is exactly the opposite of what Kevin McCarthy the Republican, I am going to put in quotes "leader" wants to hear from her on this day after he stood by her.

MATTINGLY: Yes, as one senior Republican lawmaker put it to me yesterday, we're basically in surviving advance mode right now or reference to the - where they were just trying to get through the day or the series of days with full recognition that this isn't going away anytime soon. This is the reality now. This is the reality particularly in the House conference, to some degree--

KING: Sorry to interrupt you. We have to take you to the White House, the President of the United States talking about the economy.

BIDEN: Chairpersons and the House Representatives in the Oval went a little longer, thank you all for being here. I'm accompanied by the vice president and the Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen and I want to talk today about our plan.

And the January job numbers came out today. And while we are grateful for everyone who found work and is earning a paycheck, it's very clear our economy is still in trouble. We added just 6,000 private sector jobs in the country last month.

Overall, we added 49,000 jobs. And this at a time when we have more than 10 million people out of work. 4 million people have been out of work for six months or longer and 2.5 million women have been driven from the work force. 15 million Americans are behind in their rental payments.

24 million adults and 12 million children literally don't have enough food to eat. These aren't Democrats or Republicans, they're Americans. And they're suffering. They're suffering not because of anything they did. Through no fault of their own, they're suffering.

Once in a century virus has decimated our economy and it's still wreaking havoc on our economy today. And so much of it is still about the virus. We're still in the teeth of this pandemic. In fact, January was the single deadliest month of the whole pandemic.

We lost nearly 100,000 lives. I know some in congress think we've already done enough to deal with the crisis in the country. Others think that things are getting better and we can afford to sit back and either do little or do nothing at all. That's not what I see. I see enormous pain in this country.

A lot of folks out of work. A lot of folks going hungry, staring at the ceiling tonight wondering, what am I going to do tomorrow? A lot of folks trying to figure out how to keep their jobs and take care of their children. A lot of folks reaching the breaking point.

[12:25:00]

BIDEN: Suicides are up, mental health needs are increasing, violence against women and children is increasing. A lot of folks are losing hope. And I believe the American people are looking right now to their government for help to do our job, to not let them down.

So I'm going to act, I'm going to act fast. I'd like to be doing it with the support of Republicans. I've met Republicans or some really find people want to get something done. But they're just not willing to go as far as I think we have to go.

I've told both Republicans and Democrats, that's my preference to work together. But if I have to choose between getting help right now to Americans who are hurting so badly and getting bogged down in a lengthy negotiation or compromising on a bill that's up to the crisis, that's an easy choice.

I'm going to help the American people who are hurting now. That's why I'm so grateful to the House and the Senate for moving so fast on the American rescue plan. Here's what's in that plan.

First, it puts $160 billion into our national COVID-19 strategy, which includes more money for manufacturing, distribution and setting up vaccine sites, everything that's needed to get the vaccines into people's arms.

There's simply nothing more important than us getting the resources we need to vaccinate the people in this country as soon, as quickly as possible. So job number 1 of the American rescue plan is vaccines, vaccines. The second, the American rescue plan is going to keep the commitment of $2,000, 600 has already gone out, $1400 checks to people who need it.

This is money directly in people's pockets. They need it. We need to target that money. So folks making $300,000 don't get any windfall. But if you're a family that's a wage earner, each of the parents, one making 30 grand, one making 40 or 50, maybe that's a little more than - yes, they need the money. And they're going to get it.

And here's what I won't do. I'm not cutting the size of the checks. They're going to be $1400 period. That's what the American people were promised. Very quickly here's the rest of my plan. It has money for food and nutrition so that folks don't go hungry.

I think our Republican friends are going to support that. It extends unemployment insurance which is going to run out on March 13th of this year to the end of September of this year because we're still going to have high unemployment. It helps small businesses, thousands of whom have had to go out of business.

It has money to help folks pay their health insurance. It has rental assistance to keep people in their homes rather than be thrown out in the street. It's got money to help us open our schools safely. It has money for child care for paid leave.

It gets needed resources to state and local government to prevent layoffs of essential personnel, firefighters, nurses, folks who are schoolteachers, sanitation workers. It raises the minimum wage. It's big and it's bold and it's a real answer to the crisis we're in.

That's one more thing and I want to say it very clearly on this point. It's better economics. It not only addresses the immediate crisis we're in, it's better for the long-term economic health of our nation and our competitiveness. My plan creates more jobs, creates more economic growth and does more to make us competitive with the rest of the world than any other plan.

Don't take my word for it, just look at what leading economists across the nation have said in the world and across the ocean have said. Wall Street investments firm Moody says if we pass the American rescue plan, it will lead to 4 million more jobs than otherwise would be created.

The nonpartisan Brookings institution has looked at the American rescue plan and said the GDP will reach pre-pandemic projections by 2021, meaning we'll have recovered by 2021much sooner by the way than if we do nothing.

Look, just this week the congressional budget office projected that if we don't take action, it would take until the year 2025 to return to full employment.