When You Hear Someone Is Supporting Bernie Sander Again

transcript

transcript

An Unusually Optimistic Conversation With Bernie Sanders

The Vermont senator discusses the Rescue Act, cancel culture, the filibuster and more.

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

I'1000 Ezra Klein and this is "The Ezra Klein Prove."

There were times, so many times during 2022 ballot when I was pretty sure Senator Bernie Sanders was going to win the Democratic principal and then win the presidential, and nosotros were going to have the first Democratic socialist president in this country. He didn't win the primary, but he might take won the Democratic Party. If you await back at the course of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders' careers, the $i.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that simply passed, it looks a lot like the proposal Sanders has fought for forever without much of the compromise or concerns of political viability that you used to run across from Senator Joe Biden. That's not — I want to be existent clear, to take anything away from Biden here. He is the president. This is his program crafted by his assistants and information technology is fully to his credit that he saw what the country needed, he saw with the politics of the moment would support. He saw where his party had moved and he met all of that with total strength. I give Joe Biden full credit here. Just I've wondered what Senator Sanders makes of this moment also. He lost the election, simply in of import ways, he actually did win the argument. Those $1,400 checks at the center of the Rescue Plan, that was in big part driven past a Bernie Sanders proposal which he pushed in concert then with Senator Josh Hawley. The idea of pursuing total employment through a massive light-green investment strategy and a willingness to run the economy really hot, that's been his theory for a decade. So I have Senator Sanders to bring together me on the show to talk about the American Rescue Programme, the changes in the Autonomous and Republican parties, how Democrats should approach voters who agree with them on economics merely fearfulness them on culture, what the next investment programme should include, how his views on the filibuster have changed, and much more than. As always, my e-mail is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Here we go.

And then let's go back. The 2009 stimulus, it was about five.vi percent of the 2008 GDP level, and the Rescue Plan this year, information technology'south nine.1 percent of last twelvemonth's Gdp, so it is much bigger and the individual policies in information technology are, in my view, at least much less compromise downwardly. So why are 50 Senate Democrats in 2022 legislating so much more progressively and ambitiously than 59 did in 2009?

bernie sanders

Well, I think that in that location is a growing understanding that we face up unprecedented crises and nosotros have got to human action in an unprecedented manner. And members of Congress await around this land and they see children who don't have enough food, people facing eviction, people tin can't go health care. We have, plain, the need to crush this terrible pandemic that has taken over 500,000 lives. And I remember the conclusion from the White House and from Congress is, now is the time to practise what the American people demand usa to do. Permit'due south do it. And it turned out to be a $ane.nine trillion bill which, to my heed, was the single near significant slice of legislation for working class people that has been passed since the 1960s.

ezra klein

Let'south say I'g someone on the left who supported you in 2022 and I'm looking at the American Rescue Plan and I see the $15 minimum wage got dropped, paid family unit leave got dropped, the child revenue enhancement credit, which is my favorite role of the bill, it'due south simply temporary. Convince me that I should exist excited about this. Why practice y'all think information technology'southward and then significant?

bernie sanders

I don't accept to convince you. We have already convinced 75 per centum of the American people that this is a very practiced piece of legislation. And I remember progressives out there sympathise that, given a adequately conservative Congress, it is hard to do everything that we want to do. So I was bitterly disappointed, obviously, that we lost the minimum wage in the reconciliation procedure as a issue of decision from the parliamentarian, which I recollect was a wrong conclusion. Simply we're non giving up on that. We're going to come dorsum and we're going to do information technology. Simply in this legislation, let us be clear. We have gotten for a family of four, a working class family unit, struggling to put food on the table for their kids, non get evicted, a check of $5,600. Now, people who have money may not think that's a lot of coin. Just when you are struggling day and dark to pay the bills, to worry almost eviction, that is going to be a lifesend for millions and millions of people. We extended unemployment to September with the $300 supplement. We, as you indicated, expanded the child taxation credit to cutting poverty in America by 50 pct. Now, that's an issue nosotros have not dealt with for a very long time, the disgrace of the U.S. having one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of any major land on Earth. Well, we did it and we hope to brand it permanent. That is a large deal. And obviously, we invested heavily in dealing with the pandemic, getting the vaccines out to the people as quickly as possible to save lives, producing the vaccines that nosotros need. In terms of instruction, billions of dollars going to make sure that we open up our schools every bit apace and every bit safely as nosotros tin. We tripled funding for summertime programs then that kids will accept the opportunity to make upwards the bookish work that they have lost. Tripled funding for after school programs, so when kids come dorsum next fall, in that location will be programs the likes of which nosotros have never seen. And then this is not a perfect bill. Congress does not pass perfect bills. Simply for working class people, this is the well-nigh significant piece of legislation passed since the 1960s and I'm proud of what we have done. However, it is clear to me, and I think the American people, that we accept more to do. What this nib was about, Ezra, is an emergency bill that says, in America, families should not get hungry. People should not be forced out of their homes. That'southward an emergency response. Now nosotros have to deal with the long term structural problems facing our country that have long, long been neglected way earlier the pandemic, and that is the need to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure, the demand to address the existential threat of climate change, the need to create many millions of jobs, decent paying jobs, as we practise that by raising the minimum wage to a living wage. The demand to build the affordable housing, the millions of units of affordable housing that we demand. And that'south just some of the economical issues. In terms of the social issues, the demand to fight structural racism, the need for immigration reform, the need to fight against the growing tendency of authoritarianism. We're living in a nation today where 30 pct or forty percentage of the American people have given up on democracy, a worldwide problem. How do we combat that? That's something we've got to practice. Nosotros've got to bargain with voter suppression and the attempt of Republicans to make it harder and harder for people of colour, lower income people, to vote. So in that location is a huge number of issues out there and some of them are existential. They have to exist dealt with, and I intend to practise everything that I tin every bit chairman of the upkeep committee to brand sure that we continue to move forrard.

ezra klein

So this beak, every bit you lot mentioned, passed through upkeep reconciliation, the things that couldn't get through Budget Reconciliation, then the things that would take had to pass over a filibuster got dropped from information technology. But a bunch of the dissimilar policy measures you just mentioned, they can't go through Budget Reconciliation. You can't exercise clearing reform there. You can't exercise HR one, the For the People Deed or HR iv voting rights act.

bernie sanders

Well, I'thousand not and then certain.

ezra klein

Tell me why. You're upkeep chairman. Tell me why.

bernie sanders

I don't want to bore the American people with the rules of the U.s.a. Senate.

ezra klein

Diameter me.

bernie sanders

If you have insomnia, if you're having issues sleeping, pick up the dominion volume. Yous'll be asleep in nearly five minutes. Information technology is enormously complicated. It is enormously undemocratic. It is designed to move very, very slowly, which nosotros cannot afford to do given the crises that we face today. And so look, this is the way I expect at information technology. Nosotros have a set of literally unprecedented crises. We accept got to bargain with climatic change. We accept got to protect the American democracy. Real unemployment is x percent. Nosotros've got to create millions of skillful paying jobs. We're the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health intendance to all people. You lot know, nosotros've got 500,000 people who are homeless today. We've got to deal with the housing crisis, et cetera, et cetera. So to my mind, I'll tell you my staff is doing right now. We're looking at these bug and we're proverb, in one way or another, we have got to address. Now, ideally, it would be prissy that nosotros could work in a bipartisan mode with our Republican colleagues, and possibly in some areas we can. But the major goal is to address these crises. That is what the American people want. And if nosotros can't exercise it in a bipartisan way with threescore votes, we're going to figure out a fashion that nosotros tin go information technology done with 50 votes or it must pass legislation.

ezra klein

Simply diameter me me with the rules here for a infinitesimal because the parliamentarian said y'all couldn't practice the minimum wage through Budget Reconciliation. It seems very — I have never heard a theory under which you could do democracy reform bills like the John Lewis Voting Rights Deed or sort of a major immigration reform pecker. A lot of climate things become axed. Do you see a way effectually that or are you lot talking about the Democrats changing reconciliation or irresolute the filibuster?

bernie sanders

Well, obviously, I believe that we should do away with the filibuster. I remember the filibuster is an impediment to addressing the needs of this country and particularly working class people. So I believe that at this moment, we should go rid of the filibuster and I volition work as difficult every bit I can to do that. But as I said, I'm not going to lay out all of our strategy that nosotros're working on right at present. Simply what I echo is that this land faces huge problems. The American people desire united states of america to address those problems and we cannot allow a minority to end u.s.a. from going forward.

ezra klein

There'due south a lot of coverage, equally at that place e'er is, almost potential friction in the Autonomous caucus in the Senate. Differences between, say, a Senator Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and others. Do you detect the caucus to be united on strategy more or less than in the past?

bernie sanders

Well, obviously, we've got 50 people. And when you lot have l people, the crazy situation is that any ane person could prevent us from moving forrard. But I think and I hope that in that location is an understanding that despite our differences, and some of these differences are pregnant, we have got to piece of work with the President of the United states of america, who I think is prepared to go forrad aggressively in a number of issues, that we cannot demolition the needs of the American people. So any one person actually has enormous power. But I would hope that by definition, when y'all are a fellow member of a caucus, you fight for what your views are within the caucus. But at the finish of the day, nobody is going to get everything they desire. I did non get everything that I want in the American Rescue Programme. Others did non go everything they wanted. But at the terminate of the day, we have got to go forrard together considering we need to be united, and I call back in that location is a widespread understanding almost the importance of that.

ezra klein

Allow'southward talk about the dynamics between the parties right now. You mentioned the preference for bipartisanship. A few months ago, you were working with Senator Josh Hawley on bigger stimulus checks. That was a very effective projection. It ended upwards pushing in Georgia and potentially winning Democrats Georgia. Just so Senator Hawley votes confronting certifying the election. He raised his fist to the mob that'due south from the Capitol. How have your relationships with Republicans changed in the aftermath of January six?

bernie sanders

Well, I don't want to get into personalities here, just this is what I would say and I think it'south a very sad country of affairs. Patently in the last many years, but accelerated by Donald Trump, the Republican Party has moved not only very far to the correct, but moved in the direction of absolutism. When you have a president of the United States saying a month before the ballot that the simply way he could lose that ballot is if it was stolen from him, and when later the election, and he lost the election, he says, manifestly, it was stolen. And you have now a very significant bulk of Republicans who believe that that election was stolen. Then you have a very, very difficult issue of large numbers of Americans who have given upwardly, I think, on republic. That is where many Republicans are. During the impeachment trial, I asked the attorney for Trump a simple question. I said, did Trump win the election? And he got all upset nigh that. But you've got a lot of Republican senators, members of the Business firm, who are refusing, fifty-fifty today, to say that Joe Biden won a off-white and square election. So you've got a whole lot of problems, and that's on my mind, and it'south one of the issues that as a nation, equally a Democratic party, we've got to accost.

ezra klein

Practice yous think a byproduct of the Republican Party has changed is that it's less unified and puts this accent on economical issues than information technology used to? I was struck by how much more energized Republicans were the week that the American Rescue Plan passed by the debate over Dr. Seuss's than by this $i.nine trillion spending bill.

bernie sanders

Await. What y'all accept is the energy in the Republican Party. Their grassroots support has nothing to do with tax breaks to the rich. People are not Republicans. They're not going into the streets. The Trump Republicans saying, nosotros need more taxation breaks for the rich. We need more deregulation. Nosotros need to finish the Affordable Care Act and throw 30 million people off the wellness care. That'due south not what they're talking about. What Trump understood, every bit demagogues often do, and he'due south not unique, information technology'south going on all over the earth, is we are living in a very apace changing world and there are many people, most ofttimes older white males, but non exclusively, who experience that they're losing control of the world that they used to dominate. And that has to do with patriarchy. It has to do with sexism. Information technology has to do with racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. And that is where the free energy is. The energy essentially is somebody like Donald Trump says, we are going to preserve the old mode of life, where older white males dominated American society. We're not going to let them accept that away from us. And that is where their free energy is. One of the gratifying things — I don't know if you saw this, Ezra, but in terms of polling on the American Rescue Program, very interesting. It had a good number, a decent amount of Republican support. I don't know, what it 35 pct, forty percent? But amongst what they chosen lower income working class Republicans, that number was 63 percent. So I recall that our political goal in the coming months and years is to exercise everything we can, and nosotros saw how great the people in Georgia did in this respect. Reach out to immature people. Reach out to people of color. Reach out to all people who believe in economic and social justice. Simply too reach out aggressively to working grade Republicans and tell them, no, nosotros're non going to throw 30 million people off the health care that they had. We're not going to give taxation breaks the rich. You lot know what we are going to do? Nosotros're going to make certain that you lot and your children volition have a decent standard of living. We're going to enhance the minimum wage for you. We're going to make information technology easier for you to join a matrimony. We're going to brand certain that health care in America is a human being right. We're going to make sure that if we exercise revenue enhancement breaks, you're going to become them and not the billionaire form. And I call back nosotros have a existent opportunity to pick up support in that area. And if we can exercise that, if yous can become 10 percentage of Trump's support and abound our support past addressing the real problems that our people experience are important, you're going to put together a coalition that is not going to lose a lot of elections.

ezra klein

Let me pick upwardly on that. So the Republican strategy right now, to your exact bespeak, is to go to these people and say, the Democrats, the liberals, they want to have away things that are culturally important to you. One version is accept abroad your power, but some other version is take away your Dr. Seuss books. Liberals have become too censorious. They suppress ideas and products that offend them. They look down on you civilisation. They want to take away your guns. They desire to brand it and then your kids can't go to religious school. In that location's the strategy of emphasizing economical issues, just how practise yous talk to voters who are actually worried about those direct questions, who may agree with Democrats on the economic side just are worried the Democrats are going to have things they culturally care about?

bernie sanders

It's a adept question and no one that I know has a magical answer to it. I do think that addressing economical issues is helpful. It'south non the 100 pct solution. As you lot know, you've got the QAnon people who are telling their supporters that Democrats — I'k not sure what the latest particular thing is, kill babies and eat their brains or something. Is not the latest thing that we're supposed to exist doing? I don't know. Simply when people who are in problem suddenly receive a bank check for $five,600 for a family of iv, when their unemployment is extended, when they get a health care that they previously did not take, when they're better able to raise their kid, it'south not going to solve all of these cultural bug by a long shot, but information technology begins perchance to open the door and say, well, you know what? This is skillful. Trump didn't do this for united states and maybe these Democrats are not as bad as nosotros idea that they were. And I think information technology's going to take a lot of piece of work. These cultural bug, I don't know how y'all bridge the gap. Y'all have people who are fervently antichoice and I'm not sure that you are going to win many of them over. But I remember what we have got to do is do what I'1000 agape of the Democrats take non always done in the past, and that is treat people with respect. I come from one of the about rural states in America and I lived in a town of 200 people for a couple of years, and I think there is non an appreciation of rural America or the values of rural America, the sense of customs that exists in rural America. And somehow enough, the intellectual elite does take, in some cases, a antipathy for the people who live in rural America, work hard. And I call back we've got to change that attitude and start focusing on the needs of people in rural America, care for them with respect, and understand there are areas there are going to be disagreements, but we can't treat people with contempt. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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ezra klein

Do y'all remember there is truth to the noun critique of contemporary liberalism here, that liberals have get also censorious and as well willing to use their cultural, and corporate, and political power to censor or suppress ideas and products that offend them?

bernie sanders

Expect, you have a former president in Trump, who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn't believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy. Only if you're asking me, practise I experience particularly comfortable that the president, the and so president of the United States could non express his views on Twitter? I don't feel comfy about it. Now, I don't know what the respond is. Exercise you lot want to hate speech and conspiracy theories traveling all over this country? No. Do you want the net to be used for authoritarian purposes and coup, if you like? No, you don't. Then how do y'all remainder that? I don't know, simply information technology is an issue that we have got to be thinking nearly. Because of anybody who thinks yesterday information technology was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow information technology could exist somebody else who has a very different point of view. So I don't like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people, just the devil is plain in the details and it's something we're going to take to recollect long and difficult on, and that is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories.

ezra klein

You lot talked a fleck about how well the American Rescue Programme has polled among detail lower income Republicans and y'all know better than anybody how at that place'south a way in which these cultural ideas and signals infuse economic policy. Do yous remember Joe Biden is having an easier time selling an ambitious progressive agenda than Barack Obama did partly considering, or at least to these audiences, partly because he's an older white human rather than a young Blackness human?

bernie sanders

I don't know the answer to that. I hateful, let'south non forget that Barack Obama, afterward four years, was re-elected with a pretty good majority. He was a popular president and is a very popular figure today. Joe Biden has his way, but I think yous can't look at Biden or Obama without looking into the moment in which they are living. I think in the last number of years since Obama, political consciousness in this state has inverse. And I call back to a significant degree the progressive movement has been successful in saying to the American people that, in the richest country in the history of the globe, you know what? You lot're entitled to wellness intendance as a right. Yous're entitled to a decent paying job. Your kid is entitled to get to a public higher or University tuition gratuitous, that it is absolutely imperative that we have the courage to have on the fossil fuel industry and save this planet by transforming our free energy system away from fossil fuels. That it is a moral issue that we finally deal in a comprehensive way with 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, et cetera, et cetera. And I think Biden is in a position where this state has moved forwards, I think, at the grassroots level in a much more progressive fashion. It is non an accident that today, the House of Representatives is far more progressive than information technology was when I was there in the House, and you have some great new people, progressives, and the progressive caucus who are transforming that body. And I recollect the moment was fix and then you had a president who, to his credit, as everybody knows, was a moderate Democrat throughout his time in the Senate, who had the courage to expect at the moment and say, yous know what? I have got to act boldly. The future of American democracy is at stake. Tens of millions of people are struggling economically. They're really in hurting. Our kids are pain. Seniors are pain. I've got to deed in a assuming kind of way, and Biden deserves credit for that. Only what I hope very much is that agreement of the need to act bold goes beyond the American Rescue Plan and that is the path that Biden continues during his administration.

ezra klein

Let's talk about those generational differences for a minute. You're no spring chicken, but you lot were the overwhelming choice, the overwhelming choice of young voters in 2020. How are the politics of younger voters different and why are they unlike?

bernie sanders

I love the younger generation, I really do. And it's not only considering they supported me. People say, how did yous get the support of the younger people? Did you poll, did you — we didn't practice that at all. Nosotros treated them with respect and we talked well-nigh the issues to them in the same way nosotros talked about the issues to every other generation that'due south out at that place. I think you lot've got a couple of factors, though. Number one, for a variety of reasons, the younger generation today is the most progressive generation in the modern history of this country. This is a generation that is firmly antiracist, antisexist, antihomophobia, antixenophobia, a very compassionate generation that believes in economic and social and ecology justice. So you've got that. And then the second matter you've got is, let's not child ourselves. We don't talk virtually it plenty. This is a generation of immature people that is really hurting economically. This is the first generation in the modern history of this country where, everything being equal, they're going to have a lower standard of living than their parents, and that's even earlier the pandemic, which has fabricated a bad situation worse. This is a generation where, on average, immature workers are making less coin than their parents. They're having a much harder time ownership a home or paying the rent. This is a generation stuck with a huge amount of student debt. And I was surprised when we first raised this result of student debt back in 2016, how it actually caught on because people were proverb, you know what? What law-breaking did I commit that I have to be $50,000 or $100,000 in debt? All I wanted to exercise, I was told over and over again, become an education. I got an education. I went to a country academy. I went to a private school. I went to school for four years and now I'm stuck with a $50,000, $100,000 debt? I went to graduate school. I went to medical schoolhouse, got $300,000 in debt. That'south insane. So I retrieve if yous look at the young generation from an idealistic indicate of view, it's a generation that has expectations and views that are much more progressive than their parents and grandparents, but it is also a generation that wants the government to address the economic pain that they are feeling.

ezra klein

It was a hit moment when President Biden released a video pretty explicitly backing the workers trying to unionize at Amazon's Alabama warehouse. What could Congress do to assistance? What do you want to do to help reverse the decline of unionization in the U.Southward.?

bernie sanders

I'm chairman of the Upkeep Commission and nosotros just had a hearing which touched on that issue yesterday. We had a immature adult female from a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, the Amazon plant there, and she was talking about why they demand a union. I invited Jeff Bezos to attend the hearing to tell me why a guy who was worth $182 billion, that's a B, $182 billion thinks he has to spend millions of dollars to fight workers who are trying to form a union to improve their wages and working weather condition. Then what I have believed for a long fourth dimension Joe Biden believes. Nosotros need to laissez passer legislation to make information technology easier for workers to bring together unions because if workers are in unions and can negotiate decent contracts, their wages volition get up. Their working conditions and their benefits will improve. So we are working hard on that outcome and something I know the House has passed and I desire to see it passed here in the Senate as well.

ezra klein

Should Democrats be pushing for something bigger similar sectoral bargaining?

bernie sanders

Yeah, I believe then. I campaigned on that, yep. But I think — lesser line is that, I mean, the Democrats have got to take a deep breath and to brand the determination of whether or non they're going to become the party of the American working class. A course, by the way, which has suffered really terribly in the last 40 or l years where today, workers are barely, in real wages, making whatsoever more than than they did 40 or 50 years ago despite huge increases in technology and productivity. And I think we've got to do that. And I think when we do that, when we take the courage to accept on powerful special interest, taking on Wall Street, taking on the drug companies, taking on the wellness care industry, taking on large campaign contributors who want to maintain the condition quo, when we do that, I call back not only are we going to be able to transform this country and create an economy and a regime that works for all, I think Democrats are going to take very good political success equally well.

ezra klein

Permit's cease on this question. The Rescue Plan volition exist followed up by a big jobs and investment package. What needs to be in that parcel for it to win your back up?

bernie sanders

Well, a lot. And as chairman of the Budget Committee, again, that's exactly what we're working on every bit we speak. The elementary stuff and obvious stuff is you've got an infrastructure which is crumbling. It'southward roads, and bridges, and h2o systems, wastewater plants. I would add together affordable and low income housing to whatsoever word of infrastructure. So you've got to deal with the infrastructure. And when you do that, you can create millions of good paying jobs. But obviously also, you have to deal with the existential threat of climate modify. So we've got to go big in climate to the degree that we tin deal with health intendance. We've got to guarantee health care for all people equally a correct. Yous've got to deal with immigration reform. Y'all've got to bargain with criminal justice and systemic racism. And then those are some of the large issues that are out there.

ezra klein

Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you very much.

bernie sanders

Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

Thank you to Senator Sanders for beingness here. Thank y'all to all of y'all for being here and tuning in to the prove. If you desire to support the prove, you can ship this episode to somebody you know who you lot think might like it or please take a moment and give us a rating in whatever podcast app you're currently using. Sounds ridiculous, actually actually helps with the show'southward discoverability. "The Ezra Klein Testify" is a production of New York Times Stance. It is produced by Roge Karma and Jeff Geld, fact checked by Michelle Harris, original music past Isaac Jones and mixing by Jeff Geld. [MUSIC PLAYING]

More episodes of The Ezra Klein Bear witness

Bernie Sanders didn't win the 2022 election. But he may have won its backwash.

If you look dorsum at Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders's careers, the $1.nine trillion stimulus package, the American Rescue Program, looks a lot similar the proposals Sanders has fought for forever, without much of the compromise or concerns that you used to see from Senator Joe Biden. That'due south not to take anything away from Biden. He's the president. This is his plan. And it is to his credit that he saw what the country needed, what the politics of the moment would support and where his party had moved, and met it with full force.

[You can listen to this episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" on Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

But Sanders'southward two presidential campaigns are part of the reason that the Democratic Party had moved, and the politics of the moment had inverse. And then I've wondered what Sanders makes of this moment. Is it a triumph? A disappointment? A beginning?

And I've wondered about his have on some of the other questions swirling around the Democratic Political party: Are liberals alienating people who agree with them on economics by being too censorious on civilisation? Is there room to work with populist Republicans who might exist open to new economic ideas fifty-fifty equally they turn against liberal commonwealth itself?

You can listen to our whole conversation by post-obit "The Ezra Klein Show" on Apple tree, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. An edited transcript follows.

The 2009 stimulus was 5.vi percentage of the G.D.P. in 2008. The Rescue Program this twelvemonth is ix.one per centum of last yr's G.D.P. And then information technology's merely much bigger. And the private policies in it are, in my view, much less compromised. And so why are 50 Democrats in 2022 legislating so much more progressively than 59 Democrats did in 2009?

Well, I recollect that at that place is a growing understanding that we confront unprecedented crises, and nosotros accept got to act in an unprecedented way. Members of Congress look effectually this country, and they see children who don't accept enough nutrient, people facing eviction. People can't become health care. We have, obviously, the need to crush this terrible pandemic that has taken over 500,000 lives.

And I recollect the conclusion from the White House and from Congress is, now is the fourth dimension to do what the American people need u.s. to do. And it turned out to be a $1.9 trillion pecker, which, to my mind, was the single virtually significant slice of legislation for working-course people that has been passed since the 1960s.

Let'south say I'm someone on the left who supported you in 2020. I'1000 looking at the American Rescue Programme and I see the $15 minimum wage got dropped, paid family leave got dropped. The child tax credit, which is my favorite function of the bill, information technology'south but temporary. Convince me that I should be excited nigh this. Why practise you lot remember it'southward and then significant?

I don't have to convince you. Nosotros have already convinced 75 percent of the American people that this is a very good piece of legislation. And I think progressives out there understand that given a fairly conservative Congress, it is difficult to do everything that we want to do.

I was bitterly disappointed that we lost the minimum wage in the reconciliation process as a issue of a decision from the parliamentarian, which I think was a incorrect decision. But nosotros're non giving up on that. We're going to come up back, and nosotros're going to practise it.

But in this legislation, let us be clear we take gotten for a family of iv — a working-form family unit struggling to put food on the table for their kids — a check of $5,600. At present people who have coin may not think that's a lot of money. But when y'all are struggling mean solar day and dark to pay the bills, to worry about eviction, that is going to be a lifesend for millions and millions of people.

We extended unemployment to September with the $300 supplement. We expanded the child tax credit to cut child poverty in America by 50 percent. Now, that's an issue we accept non dealt with for a very long time — the disgrace of the U.S. having one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of whatsoever major country on Earth. Well, nosotros did it, and we hope to make information technology permanent. That is a big deal.

And plainly, we invested heavily in dealing with the pandemic, getting the vaccines out to the people as chop-chop as possible to save lives. In terms of education, billions of dollars are going to brand certain that we open our schools as quickly and equally safely as we can. We tripled funding for summer programs so the kids will take the opportunity to make up the academic piece of work that they accept lost. Tripled funding for after-schoolhouse programs so when kids come back next fall, there will be programs the likes of which nosotros have never seen.

So this is not a perfect bill. Congress does non pass perfect bills. But for working-class people, this is the most significant slice of legislation passed since the 1960s. And I'm proud of what we accept washed.

However, it is clear to me — and I call up the American people — that we have more to do. This is an emergency bill that says, in America families should not go hungry. People should not be forced out of their homes.

Now we have to deal with the long-term structural bug facing our country that accept long, long been neglected manner before the pandemic: rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, address the existential threat of climate modify, create many millions of decent-paying jobs, build the millions of units of affordable housing that we need.

Opinion Contend Volition the Democrats face up a midterm wipeout?

• Marking Penn and Andrew Stein write that "merely a broader form correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond.
• Kyle Kondik asks how likely a Democratic comeback volition exist in an ballot yr where the odds, and history, are not in their favor.
• Christopher Caldwell writes that a contempo poll shows the depths of the party's troubles, and that "Democrats have been led astray by their Trump obsession."
• Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face balloter ending unless they shift their messaging.

In terms of the social issues: fight structural racism, immigration reform, fight against the growing trend of authoritarianism. We're living in a nation today where xxx per centum or forty per centum of the American people have given upwardly on democracy — a worldwide problem. How do nosotros combat that? Nosotros got to deal with voter suppression and the effort of Republicans to brand information technology harder and harder for people of color, lower-income people, to vote.

There are a huge number of issues out in that location. Some of them are existential — they have to be dealt with. And I intend to exercise everything that I can every bit chairman of the Budget Commission to brand sure that we keep to move forward.

This bill, as you mentioned, passed through budget reconciliation. The things that couldn't become through budget reconciliation got dropped from it. But a bunch of the dissimilar policy measures you merely mentioned tin't go through upkeep reconciliation. You can't exercise immigration reform at that place. You can't do H. R. 1, the For the People Act, or H.R. iv, the Voting Rights Act.

Well, I'chiliad not so sure.

Y'all're budget chairman. Tell me why.

I don't want to bore the American people with the rules of the United States.

Diameter me. [LAUGHS]

If you accept indisposition, pick up the dominion volume. You'll exist asleep in almost five minutes. It is enormously complicated. It is enormously undemocratic. Information technology is designed to motion very, very slowly, which we cannot afford to do, given the crises that we confront today.

This is the way I look at information technology: We have a set of literally unprecedented crises. Ideally, information technology would be nice that we could work in a bipartisan way with our Republican colleagues — and maybe in some areas, we tin can. But the major goal is to accost these crises. That is what the American people desire. And if we can't do information technology in a bipartisan manner with lx votes, we're going to figure out a way that we get it washed with l votes.

I take never heard a theory under which you lot could practise democracy reform bills similar the John Lewis Voting Rights Human action or a major immigration reform bill through budget reconciliation. Practise you see a way effectually that? Are you talking nigh the Democrats changing reconciliation or changing the filibuster?

Well, apparently, I believe that we should do away with the filibuster. I call back the filibuster is an impediment to addressing the needs of this country, and especially of working-class people. Then I believe that at this moment we should get rid of the filibuster, and I will work every bit hard as I tin to do that.

I'one thousand not going to lay out all of our strategy that we're working on right at present. Only what I repeat is that this country faces huge problems. The American people want us to address those problems. And we cannot permit a minority to cease us from going forward.

At that place'due south a lot of coverage, as in that location always is, well-nigh potential friction in the Democratic conclave in the Senate — differences between, say, a Senator Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and others. Practise you detect the caucus to be united on strategy more, or less than in the past?

Plain, you've got 50 people. And when you have l people, the crazy situation is that any one person could prevent usa from moving forward. But I think and promise that there is an understanding that despite our differences — and some of these differences are significant — we have got to work with the president of the The states, who I retrieve is prepared to go forrad aggressively in a number of issues. We cannot sabotage the needs of the American people.

Then any one person really has enormous power. Only I would hope that by definition, when you are a member of a conclave, yous fight for what your views are within the conclave. Simply at the end of the day, nobody is going to go everything they want. I did not get everything that I want in the American Rescue Plan. Others did not get everything they wanted.

Merely at the end of the day, nosotros have got to get forward together because we demand to be united. And I think there is a widespread agreement virtually the importance of that.

Let'due south talk about the dynamics between the parties correct at present. A few months ago, yous were working with Senator Josh Hawley on bigger stimulus checks. That was a very effective project. But then Senator Hawley votes against certifying the election. He raised his fist to the mob from the Capitol. How have your relationships with Republicans changed in the backwash of Jan. half-dozen?

Well, all in all, I don't want to get into personalities here. Simply this is what I would say. And I think information technology'due south a very sad country of affairs.

Obviously, in the last many years, but accelerated by Donald Trump, the Republican Party has moved not but very far to the right, but moved in the direction of authoritarianism. You take a president of the Us saying a month before the election that the only way he could lose that election is if information technology was stolen from him. After he lost the election, he says, patently, it was stolen. And you have now a very pregnant bulk of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen.

That is where many Republicans are. You lot got a lot of Republican senators, members of the Business firm, who are refusing even today to say that Joe Biden won a fair and square election. So yous've got a whole lot of problems. That'southward one of the bug that as a nation, every bit a Autonomous Party, we have got to address.

Do you call back a byproduct of how the Republican Party has changed is that it puts less emphasis on economical issues than information technology used to? I was struck by how much more energized Republicans were the week that the American Rescue Program passed by the debate over Dr. Seuss'south books than by this $i.9 billion spending bill.

Look, the energy in the Republican Political party has zip to do with tax breaks to the rich. Republicans are non going into the streets, the Trump Republicans, saying: We need more than tax breaks for the rich, we demand more deregulation, we demand to finish the Affordable Care Act and throw 30 million people off their health care. That's not what they're talking about.

What Trump understood is we are living in a very rapidly changing earth. And there are many people — nearly often older white males, but non exclusively — who feel that they're losing control of the world that they used to boss. And somebody like Donald Trump says: "We are going to preserve the old mode of life, where older white males dominated American society. We're not going to permit them take that abroad from u.s.." That is where their energy is.

One of the gratifying things is the American Rescue Plan had a decent corporeality of Republican support — 35 percentage, forty percentage. But among lower-income Republicans, that number was 63 percent.

And so I think that our political goal in the coming months and years is to do everything we can to reach out to young people, reach out to people of color, reach out to all people who believe in economic and social justice, simply also reach out aggressively to working-class Republicans and tell them we're going to make certain that you and your children will have a decent standard of living. We're going to raise the minimum wage for you. Nosotros're going to brand information technology easier for you to bring together a wedlock. We're going to make sure that health care in America is a human right. We're going to make sure that if we do taxation breaks, you lot're going to get them and non the billionaire class.

I think we have a real opportunity to selection up support in that area. And if we tin can do that — if you can go 10 per centum of Trump's support and abound our support by addressing the real issues that our people experience are important — you're going to put together a coalition that is not going to lose a lot of elections.

The Republican strategy right at present, to your verbal point, is to go to these people and say, the Democrats desire to take away things that are culturally important to you. They desire to take away your Dr. Seuss books. They desire to take away your guns. They desire to make it so your kids can't get to religious school.

How exercise you talk to voters who are actually worried about those directly questions — who may agree with Democrats on the economic side, but are worried the Democrats are going to take things they culturally care virtually?

It's a good question, and no 1 that I know has a magical answer to it. I practice retrieve that addressing economic issues is helpful. Information technology's not the 100 percent solution. As you know, you lot've got the QAnon people telling their supporters that Democrats — I'm not sure what the latest particular matter is, killed babies and eat their brains or something. Is that the latest thing that we're supposed to be doing? I don't know.

But when people who are in trouble all of a sudden receive a check for $5,600 for a family unit of four, when their unemployment is extended, when they get wellness care that they previously did not have, when they're better able to raise their child, it's not going to solve all of these cultural problems by a long shot, but it begins peradventure to open the door and say, well, you know what? This is adept. Trump didn't do this for us. And maybe these Democrats are non every bit bad as we thought that they were.

I think it's going to have a lot of work. These cultural issues, I don't know how y'all bridge the gap. Y'all have people who are fervently anti-pick, and I'm not sure that you are going to win many of them over. Just I retrieve what nosotros have got to practice is do what I'm agape the Democrats accept not e'er done in the past. And that is care for people with respect.

I come up from one of the most rural states in America, and I lived in a town of 200 people for a couple of years. And I call up there is not an appreciation of rural America or the values of rural America, the sense of community that exists in rural America. And somehow or some other, the intellectual elite does have, in some cases, a antipathy for the people who alive in rural America. I think we've got to alter that attitude and start focusing on the needs of people in rural America, treat them with respect, and understand in that location are areas there are going to exist disagreements, but we tin can't care for people with antipathy.

Do y'all think there is truth to the critique that liberals have become too censorious and too willing to use their cultural and corporate and political ability to censor or suppress ideas and products that offend them?

Expect, you take a one-time president in Trump, who was a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an disciplinarian, somebody who doesn't believe in the dominion of law. This is a bad-news guy. But if you're request me, do I experience particularly comfy that the then-president of the Us could not express his views on Twitter? I don't experience comfortable almost that.

Now, I don't know what the reply is. Do yous desire hate spoken communication and conspiracy theories traveling all over this land? No. Do you lot want the cyberspace to be used for disciplinarian purposes and an insurrection, if you like? No, you lot don't. And so how do y'all balance that? I don't know, but it is an issue that we have got to be thinking about. Because yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow, information technology could exist somebody else who has a very different point of view.

I don't like giving that much ability to a scattering of high-tech people. But the devil is manifestly in the details, and it's something we're going to have to think long and hard on.

Do you lot think Joe Biden is having an easier time selling an ambitious progressive agenda than Barack Obama did, at least to these audiences, partly because he's an older white homo, rather than a immature Black human being?

I don't know the answer to that. Permit'south not forget that Barack Obama, after four years, was re-elected with a pretty good bulk. He was a popular president and a very popular effigy today. Merely I think you can't look at Biden or Obama without looking into the moment in which they are living. I recall in the last number of years since Obama, political consciousness in this country has inverse.

I call back to a significant degree, the progressive motion has been successful in proverb to the American people that are in the richest country in the history of the earth, you know what? Y'all're entitled to health care as a right. You're entitled to a decent-paying job. Your kid is entitled to become to a public college or academy tuition-free. That it is absolutely imperative that we have the backbone to have on the fossil-fuel industry and save this planet past transforming our free energy system away from fossil fuels. That it is a moral issue that we finally bargain in a comprehensive way with 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country.

I retrieve Biden is in a position where this state has moved frontwards at the grass-roots level in a much more than progressive style. Information technology is non an accident that today the Firm of Representatives is far more than progressive than it was when I was there in the Firm.

And then you lot had a president who was a moderate Democrat throughout his time in the Senate, who had the courage to await at the moment and say, you know what? The future of American commonwealth is at stake, tens of millions of people are struggling economically. They're really in pain. Our kids are hurting. Seniors are pain. I've got to human action boldly. And Biden deserves credit for that.

But what I promise very much is that agreement of the demand to deed assuming goes beyond the American Rescue Programme and is the path that Biden continues during his assistants.

Let's talk most those generational differences. Y'all're no spring chicken, only you were the overwhelming option of young voters in 2020. How are the politics of younger voters dissimilar, and why are they different?

I love the younger generation. I actually practise. And it's not just because they supported me. People say, how did yous get the support of the younger people? We treated them with respect and we talked about the issues to them in the same way nosotros talked about the issues to every other generation that's out there. I think you've got a couple of factors, though.

No. 1, for a multifariousness of reasons, the younger generation today is the most progressive generation in the modern history of this country. This is the generation that is firmly anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobia, anti-xenophobia — a very compassionate generation that believes in economical and social and environmental justice. So you lot've got that.

And and then the 2d thing yous've got is, this is a generation of immature people that is actually hurting economically. This is the first generation in the mod history of this country where, everything existence equal, they're going to take a lower standard of living than their parents. And that's fifty-fifty before the pandemic, which has made a bad situation worse.

This is a generation where, on average, young workers are making less money than their parents. They're having a much harder time buying a home or paying the rent. This is a generation stuck with a huge amount of educatee debt. And I was surprised, when we kickoff raised this issue of educatee debt dorsum in 2016, how it really caught on.

Considering people are maxim, you lot know what? What criminal offence did I commit that I take to be $fifty,000 or $100,000 in debt? I was told over and over once again, get an teaching. I got an education. I went to a land academy. I went to a private schoolhouse. I went to schoolhouse for four years, and now I'one thousand stuck with a $50,000, $100,000 debt. I went to graduate school. I went to medical school. I got $300,000 in debt. That's insane.

I think if you look at the young generation from an idealistic indicate of view, it'southward a generation that has expectations and views that are much more than progressive than their parents and grandparents. But information technology is also a generation that wants the government to accost the economic pain that they are feeling.

It was a hit moment when President Biden released a video pretty explicitly backing the workers trying to unionize at Amazon's Alabama warehouse. What could Congress exercise to assist? What do you desire to practise to assistance contrary the decline of unionization in the U.South.?

I'thousand chairman of the Upkeep Committee, and nosotros just had a hearing which touched on that issue. We had a immature woman from a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., the Amazon plant there, and she was talking about why they need a wedlock. I invited Jeff Bezos to attend the hearing to tell me why a guy who was worth $182 billion thinks he has to spend millions of dollars to fight workers who are trying to form a union to improve their wages and working weather.

What I accept believed for a long time, what Joe Biden believes, is nosotros need to pass legislation to make information technology easier for workers to join unions. Because if workers are in unions and can negotiate decent contracts, their wages will go upward. Their working weather and their benefits volition meliorate. And so we are working hard on that issue, and something I know the House has passed. I desire to see it passed here in the Senate too.

Should Democrats be pushing for something bigger, like sectoral bargaining?

I believe so. I campaigned on that. But I think bottom line is that Democrats got to accept a deep jiff and to brand the conclusion of whether or not they're going to get the party of the American working course — a class, past the way, which has suffered really terribly in the terminal 40 or 50 years, where today, workers are barely in existent wages making any more than they did twoscore or 50 years agone, despite huge increases in applied science and productivity. I remember nosotros got to do that.

And I think when we do that — when we accept the courage to accept on powerful special interests, taking on Wall Street, taking on the drug companies, taking on the health care industry, taking on big campaign contributors who want to maintain the status quo — we are going to be able to transform this country and create an economy and a government that works for all. And I recollect Democrats are going to have very good political success also.

The Rescue Plan will exist followed up by a large jobs and investment package. What needs to be in that package for it to win your back up?

The uncomplicated stuff and obvious stuff is, you've got an infrastructure which is crumbling and roads and bridges and water systems and wastewater plants. I would add together affordable and depression-income housing to whatever discussion of infrastructure. So you lot've got to bargain with infrastructure, and when you do that, you lot tin can create millions of practiced-paying jobs.

But manifestly, also, you lot have to deal with the existential threat of climatic change. We've got to guarantee wellness intendance to all people as a right. You got to deal with clearing reform. You lot've got to deal with criminal justice and systemic racism. So those are some of the big, big bug that are out there.

[You tin mind to this episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" on Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever yous get your podcasts .]

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Credit... Illustration past The New York Times; photograph by Allison Farrand for The New York Times

"The Ezra Klein Testify" is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-bernie-sanders.html

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