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From LeverNews.com — Lever Time is the flagship podcast from the investigative news outlet The Lever. Hosted by award-winning journalist, Oscar-nominated writer, and Bernie Sanders' 2020 speechwriter David Sirota, Lever Time features exclusive reporting from The Lever’s newsroom, high-profile guest interviews, and expert analysis from the sharpest minds in media and politics.
[AUTO GENERATED TRANSCRIPT]
[00:00:00] David Sirota: Hey there, and welcome to another episode of Lever Time, the flagship podcast from The Lever, an independent investigative news outlet. I'm your host, David Cerro On today's show, remember this time last week when there was that thing that had the US economy on the edge of catastrophe and apocalypse, maybe a vague memory of something called the debt ceiling and all the negotiations around it.
[00:00:32] If it's already been wiped from your mind, don't feel bad. Because this is what the media and political news industry does to our psyches. Well, as the Biden administration is now running campaigns, spinning this as a huge win. We're not gonna forget what really happened with this debt ceiling deal. Today's guest is gonna be David Dayon, the executive editor of the American Prospect.
[00:00:55] He's gonna help us further unpack. The details of what actually happened here and what got traded away in the latest hostage taking. So if you wanna listen to one thing that's gonna tell you everything you need to know about what actually happened, and cuts through all of the bullshit, that's what this episode is gonna be for.
[00:01:15] And we're gonna ask the big question. Have Democrats actually in a perverse way learned to accept what happened? And do they even. Actually want what happened? Was this actually a victory for them? Was this already pre-scripted, a pre-ordained outcome? That's what we're gonna be discussing later on in the show for our paid subscribers.
[00:01:38] This week on the premium podcast feed Dave and Josh of the Audit podcast, they have an extended interview with the acclaimed author and climate activist, my Powell, Naomi Klein. And they're talking about how Prager University a subject they've been covering on the audit podcast, how Prager University has become an engine.
[00:01:58] Of climate change misinformation. They discuss how fossil fuel funded groups have shifted their tactics in recent years from. What you might call hard denialism to the rhetoric of personal freedom, so a softer but more insidious kind of climate denialism. And speaking of climate change, coming up next week, we're gonna have a bonus episode focusing on the many shocking climate change developments in California and the American West that touch on everything from the.
[00:02:29] Ocean carbon dioxide increases to insurance companies pulling out of the state to legislation around financial disclosure and whether companies who operate in California are gonna have to start telling us. How much they are contributing to the climate emergency.
[00:02:46] So look for that in the Lever Premium Podcast feed next week, as well as a special bonus episode of Lever Time. If you wanna access our premium content, head over to lever news.com and click the subscribe button in the top right to become a supporting subscriber.
[00:03:00] as we always say, the only way independent media grows and thrives is because of passionate supporters and word of mouth. We need all the help we can get to spread the word and combat the Inan bullshit.
[00:03:12] That is corporate media
[00:03:14] producer Frank is out on vacation this week, so in his place to talk about a couple of other news items before we get to the debt ceiling discussion.
[00:03:21] we have Lucy, Dean Stockton, the Levers news editor. How's it going, Lucy?
[00:03:26] Lucy Dean Stockton: Hey, really happy to be here. I am reporting live from New York City.
[00:03:32] David Sirota: It's good to have you here. So, so some of the other big news this week on top of the debt ceiling, a story that kind of flew under the radar, even though it's it should be on everybody's radar, is that the federal government this week said that we now have the largest amount of carbon dioxide in the.
[00:03:55] Livable atmosphere at any other than any other time in recorded history. And that amount of CO2 increased at among the greatest clips year over year that we have ever seen. So that's some pretty catastrophic and terrible and terrifying news. And unfortunately it's barely anywhere in the news.
[00:04:19] When you turn on the news, when you. Click around the internet, like it sort of, it barely made a blip. So I've been kind of bummed out about it. I've been kind of, scared about it. But we actually have some, a little bit of good news on some climate issues that the lever has been reporting,
[00:04:37] Lucy Dean Stockton: Yeah, that's right. There actually has been something that I think should be much more notable in the news which is that last week the California Senate passed a bill to divest the country's two largest public pensions from fossil fuels, and they've had incredible support. I think over 140 organizations, including unions representing 470,000 members.
[00:05:01] The bill would move to the assembly and then would have to be signed by the governor, but it could actually take effect by January, 2024. And I believe it would divest. 44 billion in fossil fuels that the two impacted funds hold. California is on the brink of becoming the world's fourth largest economy, so it would have a global impact to divest that much from fossil fuels at a really a global scale.
[00:05:29] I've seen not very much reporting on it but I have been proud to see it in our own weekly edition of you. Love to see it where we send good news to subscribers.
[00:05:38] David Sirota: That's every Saturday. If you, for folks who haven't heard of it, it's as Lucy just said, our product called, you'd love to see it. We do a roundup of things that you don't have to feel shitty about things that are actually going fairly well in the world. Now. Look I don't think we should overstate this 44 billion.
[00:05:54] It's a lot, but it's not a lot. In some ways, I mean, it's obviously 44 billion is a lot of money, but in a multi-trillion dollar economy and a multi-trillion dollar global economy, it's still a drop in the ocean. But here's why I think this is more important than just the amount of money at issue in this bill, pensions.
[00:06:20] Are about five or 6 trillion. They're some of the largest pools of capital in the whole world. And California's pension funds are kind of trendsetters, industry setters in in that world. So if a. Pension fund as large as California's actually divests from fossil fuels and fossil fuel investments that is not just one or two random pension funds doing that.
[00:06:49] That is the industry standard pension funds in a pool of capital that the fossil fuel industry desperately relies on.
[00:07:00] Now, there was another piece of good news on the climate situation also, at least in and around California. Tell us about that.
[00:07:10] Lucy Dean Stockton: Right. there has been a bill proposed in California that would require transparency companies to report their carbon emissions. So it is currently being fought by pretty enormous companies, meta Exxon, in and out, the ones that you would assume I mean, it's a transparency measure, so I think it wouldn't necessarily have any sort of compliance punitive effect, but it would force companies at a national level to report how many emissions that they're truly making and also report them at a comprehensive level in what's called Scope three emissions.
[00:07:46] So these are the kinds of emissions that often get left out of the supply chain. let's say for a company like in and Out 90% of their emissions are actually coming from cattle and dairy that's being produced much further up the supply chain. Or, and that they aren't necessarily being reflected in the Scope one and two emissions.
[00:08:03] That they, that in and out reports like that they spend on electricity to power their stores. But if they were forced to include Scope three emissions, their actual emissions would probably be four to five times higher. It's actually the same thing that Exxon does, which I think is. Truly shocking and actually all of the oil companies only report scope one and two emissions.
[00:08:26] So the kinds of emissions that they use when they're making and managing their refinement centers, but they don't include the oil that they burn
[00:08:37] David Sirota: Well, why would you include that? I mean, why would you include the oil that you burned? That, that doesn't count That doesn't count obviously that
[00:08:43] Lucy Dean Stockton: that doesn't count. That just gets pushed to the consumer and actually Exxon doesn't have to report all of the oil that they are producing and burning. They only.
[00:08:53] David Sirota: that makes total sense. It makes total sense. I mean, oil burning oil doesn't actually do anything to the climate. That makes total sense. I mean, this is how insane all of this is. We're gonna be talking a lot more about all of this stuff on our next bonus episode. So folks folks who, who are super interested in what's going on climate stuff and there is a.
[00:09:13] Ton going on in the American West. That's coming up in our next bonus segment, which will be out on the premium podcast feed on Monday. One more quick story before we get to to our discussion about the death ceiling. The lever this week reported yet another story about. Leonard, Leo Leonard Leo, the conservative operative who has marshaled hundreds of millions of dollars to take over the American court system.
[00:09:41] Tell us a little bit about
[00:09:42] Lucy Dean Stockton: Yeah, absolutely. So last year thousands of voters in Kansas were voting on a ballot measure that would've outlawed abortion in the state. during that time, There was a lot of the same misinformation you could assume would happen. But to their shock, they actually lost the ballot.
[00:10:01] And this was, I think, an extra surprising win because thousands of voters had received these really deceptive text messages that sort of were, they were extremely misleading. They called the ballot measure, basically a woman's choice. And they told people to vote no on the measure or they told people to vote against it.
[00:10:27] But they were funded by anti-abortion groups, and we knew that those anti-abortion groups were trying to trick voters into basically outlawing abortion in the state. What we didn't know is that Leonard Leo, the same guy who was responsible for architecting the conservative Supreme Court majority that we have today has.
[00:10:52] In the past, per our reporting received the largest dark money transfer in history. He was the one who was also funding these groups and basically pushing these anti-abortion fights on a state level.
[00:11:05] David Sirota: I mean, I've always I've said this before. I'll say it again. When it comes to the financial world, you don't have to open too many doors to find a private equity billionaire behind almost everything in American financial life. In everything in American business. It's kind of the same thing with Leonard Leo.
[00:11:27] I mean, it really is a good rule of thumb. That if something shitty and deceptive and horrible is happening in politics, somewhere in some piece of that, Leonard Leo or Leonard Leo's network probably has some of its fingerprints on it. And look, it's our job to, to report that, to spotlight that, to, to show who's really pulling the levers of power when it comes to these things
[00:11:54] Lucy Dean Stockton: Again and
[00:11:55] David Sirota: and.
[00:11:56] Lucy Dean Stockton: again, it's Leonard Leo. It's actually really shocking and I mean, it's amazing I think to have Andrew Perez on staff because he's probably the Leonard Leo expert in the country. But he, Leonard Leo has his hands on basically every bad thing you can find in this country, working at a federal and also a state level from like organizations like the Foundation for Government Accountability and also the same organization that was pushing to dismantle child labor laws all over the country.
[00:12:31] I mean, those have all been campaigns funded and in some way managed by Leonard Leo.
[00:12:37] David Sirota: He really is ubiquitous. And you're right to, to call out Andrew Perez. He really is probably the country's the American Media's major expert on it. He just digs and digs. And just a reminder, you can find all of Andrew's work@levernews.com. Lucy, thanks so much for.
[00:12:55] Taking some time with us today. We're gonna stop there because we're gonna get to now our main interview about Yes, the death ceiling. I know you may be bored about it, you may, it may, you know, may all seem like noise, but this is the one podcast episode where we're gonna break all of it down. So basically, if you listen to one thing about what actually happened in the death ceiling, what the Democratic leaders and the Republican leaders are celebrating, Stay tuned for this interview with David Day and the American Prospect.
[00:13:27] We break it all down. That's coming up after a quick break.
[00:13:31] Welcome back to Lever Time, June 3rd. Could have been X date. That's the term for the day. The US government could have defaulted on its debts. In today's main story, president Biden and Congress averted that catastrophic outcome that experts say would've crippled the US economy. And now Democrats and Republicans are hailing this debt deal as some sort of huge win.
[00:13:57] Leaving corporate media to try to memory hole all the details. It'll be a distant memory. Except for millions of Americans who are gonna be economically crushed by those details. Today I'm joined by David Day, an investigative journalist and the executive editor of the American Prospect, because we refuse to forget the debt ceiling fiasco just yet.
[00:14:20] David Day and I, David, Dan, and I explore. Dave and I explore the bill's details, the history of the debt limit becoming a political tool, and why Democrats missed the chance to fix this problem before it could be used as a weapon against the working class. We look at why the Biden administration is celebrating all of this as a win.
[00:14:44] Literally, the DNC is now doing ads touting this debt deal. We look at how all of that seems to scream the quiet part out loud, admitting that the budget cuts, the student debt payments, the fossil fuel giveaways, and all of the rest of the mess in this bill. Admitting that that may actually be. What the Democratic Party always wanted.
[00:15:09] David Day writes frequently about the intersection of politics and economics, and his latest book is called Monopolized Life in the Age of Corporate Power. He's been tracking the debt ceiling negotiations from the very beginning. Here's that interview.
[00:15:25] Hey Dave. How you doing? How did you survive X date?
[00:15:28] David Dayen: You know, X date is getting so commercial. I mean, even in May, I was seeing all the decorations up in the stores. So, you know I got through it, but it's always a tough time with family.
[00:15:43] David Sirota: X date of course, refers to the day that we were supposed to default on our debts had there not been a debt deal. And it was the name, by the way, of the newsletter of the American Prospect that was covering the debt deal. Okay. Let's take a step back here and I, I don't want to just start this story just in the, like, last few weeks because I think that's a way to lie about what happened.
[00:16:08] There's this idea that, oh we had to pass this particular debt deal because it was the only choice in front of us. And basically you in my view you have to be a goldfish who forgets your entire world every 15 minutes to accept that as a storyline. And I think a lot of liberals accept that as a storyline because I think, frankly, a lot of liberals have been taught to have goldfish brain by places like M S N B C.
[00:16:32] So I, I refuse to start this story. Like two weeks ago, I wanna start this story. Back in the fall after the the midterm
[00:16:42] David Dayen: wanna start it, well, before that,
[00:16:45] David Sirota: Okay. Okay. Okay, great. So, okay, so
[00:16:48] let, okay, so let's really take a moment here to talk about where does the story of the debt deal begin.
[00:16:58] David Dayen: really begins in 2011. So, prior to 2011, the debt ceiling. Was a annoying, yet necessary kind of functionary thing that the government did every so often. Prior to 1917, anytime the government wanted to borrow money, That bond deal had to be AF approved by Congress, which can you imagine today, like every single bond would have to be approved by Congress.
[00:17:31] So in 1917, they came up with a time saver, which was called the debt ceiling, and what they said is okay. Congress will still say how much you can borrow, but then you can do whatever bond deals you want up to that point. And they would set this arbitrary figure, you can only raise this much money in debt.
[00:17:52] And then it would be increased. Routinely 80 times, I think between 1917 and 2011. Then what happened? In 2011, Barack Obama was president and the tea party had controlled the house. So similar situation as now. Republicans only had one branch of of Congress and they sort of intimated that they were going to take hostage this routine thing called the dead limit to get some ideological priorities for their base.
[00:18:30] And Barack Obama was into it. He thought it was a good idea to use the debt ceiling as. A lever to to put together a grand bargain on deficits, to cut the deficit in a way that no one party would be responsible. You know, we can throw Medicare in there, we can throw social security in there. We can throw spending cuts in there and no, everybody could point to everybody else and say, this is what we had to do, and we all take the leap together.
[00:19:02] And that process ended up being kind of a failure because Republicans wouldn't go along with the tax increases. That was kind of the only reason that it failed. Barack Obama was, All together, ready to cut Medicare, raise the eligibility, age cut, social security, all of that. But what happened in 2011, which ended up with a debt commission that failed, and then they did these arbitrary cuts at the federal budget called the sequester.
[00:19:33] What that did is it taught Republicans something. Oh, we can take this hostage and get things that we wouldn't otherwise have been able to get. And because it was validated by even Barack Obama, even the liberal socialist Marxist Barack Obama then we you know, we have cover to continue to do this and the media.
[00:20:01] Decided that this was a normal thing that that that parties do. You always get a concession for the debt limit. It never happened before 2011, but now it was normal that you can only, you always get something for the debt limit. And so that brings us. To where we are today in 2023. When Joe Biden said, I'm not gonna negotiate over this.
[00:20:27] And then as soon as Republicans in the house passed something, he started negotiating
[00:20:32] David Sirota: Okay, so, so there's the history of something that was supposed to be a shortcut, becoming metastasizing into a hostage tool, a hostage taking tool. I wanna start. Now in the, in this latest iteration of that, I wanna start in the lame duck session of Congress because I, one thing that's been very annoying to me throughout this whole thing has been, well, we have to pass this deal now because that was the only choice that we could possibly ever have.
[00:21:09] And I keep going back to right after the election. The midterm election 2022. Bernie Sanders says we should pass a clean death ceiling right now. Janet Yellen. Says we should pass a clean death ceiling right now. And Dick Durbin coming out and essentially saying, we don't feel like making time on the calendar for this.
[00:21:33] I mean, he literally said There isn't enough time and worth mentioning it could have been done through reconciliation. You didn't need the 60 votes. Now, whether the votes were there or not to do it that's a question, and it's a question I will ask you.
[00:21:51] Why didn't they do a clean debt ceiling in the lame duck session of Congress?
[00:21:57] And is it fair to look at them not doing that and assume that they didn't actually want to do that?
[00:22:05] David Dayen: Well, again, I think I have to go back a little earlier because although I will answer your question eventually. It was known for years after the 2011 experience that when republicans got half a chance, they would. Try this gambit again. In fact, they were extremely open before the election and said, oh yeah, we're gonna take that debt limit hostage.
[00:22:27] We're gonna, we're gonna try to get some concessions for it. So everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew what would happen if Republicans got any kind of leverage. And in Indeed, it was known at the very beginning. Of the Biden administration. You know, interestingly, there was a debt ceiling increase in the Obama stimulus package.
[00:22:49] He just threw that in and just to get it out of the way. The American rescue plan was at the height of the honeymoon period of the Biden administration. It was in reconciliation. They could have thrown it in the American Rescue plan and they could have raised it to an absurd height so that we would never have to deal with this ever again if they really wanted to.
[00:23:13] But they could have done it. And they could have done it at every step along the way. You could even argue that during the Trump administration when Democrats had control of the house, they could have said, okay our, we're taking the debt ceiling hostage, and the only thing that you can do is get rid of the debt ceiling.
[00:23:33] Like, like, we will give you a clean debt ceiling if it's never a thing again, they could have done that in 20 19, 20 18, 20 20. So, there were many missed opportunities, including the opportunity you talk about in, in at the in the lame duck session when you know what the circumstance is going to be in a matter of months.
[00:23:55] Republicans are gonna be in control of the house, and they have stated as their objective to take the debt ceiling hostage. So, you know, Dick Durbin says, we don't have time. What also I heard both privately and publicly is, oh, Joe Manchin's not gonna do this. Kirsten Sinema is not gonna do this. We don't have the votes to do a clean debt ceiling.
[00:24:17] And the question is, you know, you're going to be negotiating with someone either way. You're either gonna be negotiating with Kevin McCarthy in 2023, or you're gonna be negotiating with Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema in 2022. And you know, you'll have to decide what is the easier negotiation. You know, what is the negotiation that you can live with?
[00:24:39] They're the one where republicans wouldn't be involved at all, although, you know, you can call Kirsten Cinnamon, Joe Manchin, whatever you want. But it would on, they would be the right most poll. In, in, in the negotiation or one where the Freedom Caucus is the right most poll in the negotiation. I know what I think probably would've gotten a better deal and that would've been doing it in 2022.
[00:25:02] 2022
[00:25:04] David Sirota: Okay, so I don't feel like I'm crazy for looking at this fact pattern and saying, okay, like, Democrats didn't wanna do that. They now I think there is a, it depends on how you look at politics. Is politics, house of cards, where everything is, you know, gamed or is politics veep?
[00:25:22] Did they just, you know, sort of screw it up, not think it through. I have trouble believing that they haven't thought it through. Over and over again. In in, in the context that
[00:25:34] David Dayen: Well, I mean, I, look I think back to your goldfish analogy. And I think that the debt ceiling is really a circumstance of out of sight, out of mind. When people get through it, they breathe a sigh of relief. I mean, we're talking about this a week after the debt limit passed, and you wouldn't even know that there was such a thing as a debt limit.
[00:25:56] If you read the news if you listen to politicians I think that they breathe this sigh of relief and they just move on and they see it as annoying. They see it as something for some reason that's gonna affect their reelection, even though there's no history of this whatsoever, of any candidate in history losing because they voted for a debt ceiling increase.
[00:26:19] They, they see it as painful and they want to put off the pain. As long as they can. So I think it's as much veep as it is house of cards, but you can't discount that. The fact that failing to deal with this had serious consequences and, you know, I don't have to, I don't have to choose, I feel like, between stupid or evil when you're talking about that.
[00:26:43] David Sirota: Well, okay, so let's get into the details of what happened here. Joe Biden is running out and presenting this as an incredible victory that we should all be cheering about and celebrating. And we'll talk more about that framing in a second. But before we get to that, let's talk about what are the major tenants here of this agreement?
[00:27:09] What do Democrats say they got out of it, what do Republicans say they got out of it and. Where do you come down on what this thing is?
[00:27:19] David Dayen: So, building back together, which is Joe Biden's like, campaign hype team. For reelection put out an ad thanking Joe Biden for the debt ceiling deal, and they mentioned actually four specific things that like, thank you for A, B, C, and D and A, B, and C are things that are, that were left out of the debt deal.
[00:27:47] Right. They're like, social security was protected, Medicare was protected, Medicaid was protected. They're literally, they're not in the debt deal and that's what they're celebrating. So if your pitch that you gotta a win is that we didn't touch these other things, then you didn't get a win, right?
[00:28:07] Because you can't name one thing that's in the deal that, that you can point to and say that's a victory. So what is in this deal? The biggest thing obviously is a spending cap. It's for two years. It freezes spending for non-defense discretionary programs at last year's level, fiscal year 2023, but that's a very misleading term.
[00:28:33] Freezing right? Because we are in a world of 5% inflation right now. So anytime you keep the nominal figure of the budget constant, You're actually cutting it by 5% in real terms, it just costs more to do the things, the same things that you have to do year over year. And so there's a, there's that 5% cut in the first year, and then the cap allows for a 1% increase.
[00:29:02] In year two. So that's a, not that's a real cut of a another few percent depending on where you think inflation's gonna land. So, this is, this is a cut to real resources. It's a cut to government capacity. It's only a cut to a 13% of the total budget cuz they did leave Medicare out Social security out the defense budget gets to grow because that's magical spending.
[00:29:26] That has nothing to do with with, with our budget. Defense spending gets to grow veterans programs. That was the one thing in that building back together ad they could point to. We protected our veterans programs continue to grow even though. It's growing into a pot of privatization. We can talk about that.
[00:29:44] Like, like what's actually happening with the VA is pretty bad, but but that, that nominal sort of pot of money gets to grow. But everything else, Talking about housing vouchers, talking about Meals on Wheels, we're talking about the Women Infants and Children Nutrition program. We're talking about food safety.
[00:30:06] We're talking about, you know, the budgets for the Department of Labor, the Department of the Interior, the Department of State. All of those other things are getting a real cut in real terms. That is the biggest thing in this deal. And of course, it sets. What is called a baseline. So if your spending is frozen and then only goes up 1% that next year, it's unlikely you're gonna take it up 20% to make up for those that frozen spending previously.
[00:30:37] So it's just gonna be lower across the board. And there are, there are some estimates, I don't really buy the estimates, but there are some estimates out there that say as much as a trillion dollars would be cut from the baseline. Of what it would be if we didn't free spending in those two years.
[00:30:54] So that's the big thing. And then there are a bunch of other smaller but just as consequential things,
[00:30:59] David Sirota: Yeah, mean there there's the Mountain Valley Pipeline which the e expediting Joe Manchin's massive fossil fuel pipeline. Something that progressives thought they had won a victory on by keeping out of the inflation reduction act the, the student debt stuff. Let's talk a little bit about that.
[00:31:17] You have some reporting that's gonna be coming out this week, a about that. Tell us a
[00:31:21] David Dayen: Sure. And we'll come back to the pipeline because I think there's a larger story too. But as far as student debt what this. Deal says is that in 90 days, essentially by September 1st the payment pause, which has been going on for three and a half years borrowers have not paid their student loan payments.
[00:31:43] And by the way, the sky has not fallen in those three and a half years. Like, like things have gone on in America without student students having to pay $400 a month and in, in, in really and often being abused by that system. That's going to have to restart. The Biden administration said, oh, we were gonna restart it anyway on September 1st, but now they have no flexibility whatsoever.
[00:32:10] We're waiting for the outcome of a court case at the spring court on whether biden's cancellation program will be allowed to go forward. But whether it does or not, whether 20. Whether 40 million people see a cut of between 10 and $20,000 to their debt, which would be the total figure for about half of those people.
[00:32:32] So it would, 20 million people would get their loans completely eradicated. Whether that happens or not, tens of millions of people are gonna start having to repay their debts on on September 1st. And the way this was described to me by one advocate is that. We have never seen in American history a loan portfolio of 40 million borrowers start overnight to have to restart, and everybody starts paying again.
[00:33:04] We've never seen it in the finance world, let alone in the government world. It is going to be prone to an absolute nightmare in terms of first of all, The way that we pay student loans is there are these private companies called servicers who are then contracted to do the day-to-day operations on loans.
[00:33:27] So they end up getting the payments half, more than half of those servicers have changed during since 2020 when the payment pause came in. Some left the business, they moved the servicing to other companies, and so, Sometime in the next few months, a student borrower is gonna get a piece of paper probably more often than not from a company that they've never heard of saying, you owe us money on a loan that's been dormant for three and a half years.
[00:34:02] Do you really think that there's going to, that's going to be a perfectly smooth process? What I've learned also is that, The last major study of a servicing company who are you know, some of the biggest bottom feeders in this entire economy. The last time we've seen a, saw a major transfer of servicing rights from one company to another, it was about two and a half million loans.
[00:34:29] And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that one out of every five of those accounts was screwed up in one way or another. Either it was the wrong balance or that missed that certain payments were made. It, it was just messed up in one way or another. And this amount of transferring is.
[00:34:52] Probably four or five times that, and so we're going to see major errors. These companies have no capacity to talk to. Every one of those 40 million borrowers you're gonna see hold times of hours and hours
[00:35:08] David Sirota: Right. So we're just to be clear, you're talking about, it's like a double whammy. It's like we're gonna restart your debt payment and bury you in. Impossible, Byzantine clerical errors and paperwork. I mean, just like misery on top of misery. And, and this is what was baked into, in, into this bill, which is horrifying.
[00:35:35] I, I do want to go back to the pipeline. Okay. Let's go back to the pipeline because that isn't a small thing. So here we are. In a week in which the the federal government has admitted that there is the largest increase, or at least one of the largest increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, at a time when climate scientists are warning that we're about to make the 1.5 degree targets impossible.
[00:36:01] Here we are. That's where we are, and the federal government is. Expediting a fossil fuel pipeline and shielding it, or at least trying to shield it in this legislation from any kind of court challenge at all. And it just so happens that one of the companies behind the pipeline is not only one of Joe Manchin's biggest donors, but is also one of its, its executives are a, among collectively some of the biggest donors to senate majority leader.
[00:36:32] Chuck Schumer and the company just dumped 150 plus thousand dollars into the coffers of three key swing democratic senators in the months leading up to this. So,
[00:36:44] David Dayen: there's
[00:36:45] where a mystery purchaser of stock in this company four days before the surprise announcement, that the pipeline would be expedited in this bill. Madoff with a huge payday by selling stock or by buying stock, I believe. It, it's the, the corruption is very thick with this.
[00:37:09] And and there's another dimension to it actually. Because, you there's been talk in Washington about this bargain on permitting. Right. It's called permitting reform. You hear about this a lot. Joe Manchin put out a bill last year that was a permitting reform bill. It included expediting his pipeline, but it also included some other things.
[00:37:33] And there's this supposed to be this give and take in it. So yes, we're going to be, make it easier to permit, you know, fossil fuel projects, infrastructure projects. Energy projects, but also we're gonna make it easier to connect renewable energy to the grid, and we're gonna make it easier to build transmission lines so that renewable energy can go all across the country.
[00:37:56] And so that's supposed to be the bargain, right? So, so, pro climate activists get something and pro fossil fuel interest get something. Well, here's what happened in this bill. Only the pro fossil fuel interest got something. They got the pipeline and they also got this change to the permitting rules around deadlines on for writing environmental impact statements.
[00:38:20] The transmission part of this, which was apparently originally in the bill, but after monopoly utilities got done with the bill all they could did on transmission was create. A study that can take up to two and a half years to conduct. So in this time where we're saying, oh, there are these long timelines and there's all these studies and we gotta get rid of these studies, they added a two and a half year study for transmission.
[00:38:48] And, and what this means is that if down the road we actually do a permitting bill, which you're still talking about in Washington, No longer is the Mountain Valley pipeline a bargaining chip in that no longer is, are these changes in the timelines for environmental impact statements? A bargaining chip for that.
[00:39:09] You have to give much bigger stuff now to the fossil fuel side of the equation in order to get that transmission reform that is actually desperately needed to connect renewable energy to the grid. So this is now a worse deal. Potentially down the road because of the really bad deal that we got into this bill.
[00:39:34] David Sirota: Okay, so. Everybody who's listened this far thus far is probably super angry maybe depressed feeling sort of an impulse for self harm knowing that
[00:39:49] David Dayen: David.
[00:39:51] David Sirota: okay, so, but they're also hearing a much different message. From the Democratic Party. Th there are ads that the D N C has just launched.
[00:40:07] Let's play a clip of the ad.
[00:40:09] When MAGA Republicans threatened to wreck the US economy, president Biden took charge, secured a bipartisan agreement, and prevented chaos.
[00:40:17] All while protecting Social Security, healthcare and other critical programs, president Biden delivers for us again.
[00:40:24] David Sirota: So, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are portraying this as a giant win.
[00:40:34] So, I guess explain how you think Joe Biden is portraying what you've just laid out as a win and whether we can, I mean, I think we can take away something from that, that if you put two and two together, it seems to be that the Democratic party, that at least the Democratic leadership is declaring victory and sees as a win.
[00:41:03] All of the things you just laid out is that a fair takeaway?
[00:41:07] David Dayen: So, I mean, the way that they're framing it, the way I've heard it directly from White House officials is. You know, I mean, the biggest win is that it could have been worse, right? That's the number one thing that they say. Like, you know, they say that this. With Republicans in charge of one branch of Congress, there was always going to be a budget negotiation, and that this turned out pretty much like a normal budget negotiation that we would have in a world without a debt limit.
[00:41:36] That's their pitch. I mean, let's just lay it out at least to be somewhat fair to them. I don't know that's entirely true. First of all, why would the Mountain Valley Pipeline be in a normal budget negotiation? Why would work requirements, which we haven't even talked about in the T N F program, which is welfare and snap, which is food stamps.
[00:42:00] Why would that be in a normal budget negotiation? By the way, the defenders of, of Biden say, oh, well, but we got. This exemption. And if you look at the CBO score, the CBO says, we're gonna have more people collecting food stamps under this deal. Let's demystify that a little bit because it's important because it shows a way that, that, you know, people think and the way that they're spinning this.
[00:42:27] There are two things that were changed as far as snap food stamps and work requirements. One is an actual. Work requirement change, which says that right now if you're able-bodied, you don't have any dependents, you don't have any children and you have to work for a minimum of 20 hours a week to get food stamps for more than three months.
[00:42:49] And that. That lasts until you're age 49. And they added that up. They extended it to age 54. So now people between the ages of 50 and 54 have to go out and look for work if they want to keep their very meager $6 a day food stamp benefit. For more than three months. The second thing that they did was they said, okay if you're homeless, you're a veteran, or you're just out of the foster care system up to age 24, we're gonna eliminate that work requirement for you entirely.
[00:43:28] So the theory that CBO has put out and that the Biden defenders have put out is that, well, there will be more people helped by the, those, that new exemption. On homeless individuals and veterans and so on then will be hurt by by the extension to age 54. So first of all, you're saying, well, you know, some people will get this meager food out of it and some people will lose it.
[00:43:55] So it's a net good thing, which is, you know, kind of, kind of cruel in its own right. The second thing is, doesn't take into account how hard it is to sign up homeless individuals. For a food stamp program, you don't have to have an address, but if there's ever a change in the program, like there just was, you need to contact them so that they fill out the new form that shows what you know they're doing.
[00:44:19] You, you still have to pass an income test. And so they need like pay stubs or something, or an ir you know, a tax return that, that, that isn't in abundance. You need people who are on the ground signing up individuals who are newly exempt, which by the way, Chronic homeless individuals are supposed to already be exempt.
[00:44:44] The fact that they had to make a new exemption shows you that it's really hard to get these people into this federal program. And when we talked to anti-hunger advocates, social workers, people on the ground, they said There is no way. We're going to sign up a lot of people, not without a lot more resources that we don't currently have.
[00:45:06] So this is so sophistry. I mean, the idea that the CBO can spit out numbers from a model and say, oh, we're gonna have more people on food stamps. It's just not true. It's it. It just does not face reality. And it's that kind of meager thinking, that kind of uncritical thinking that has characterized the entire process by which the White House and their defenders have said this is a big victory for them.
[00:45:38] them
[00:45:38] David Sirota: And obviously there's politics here in, in the they're trying to say that anything that passes through Congress is a win. They're, they, it's almost like we're supposed to forget about all the details that you just laid out. Oh, something happened. It wasn't as bad as it could have been.
[00:45:57] Thus, and so this is a huge victory, but I think if you're looking at all that you just laid out and you see democratic leaders celebrating it as a great victory, I don't think it's wrongheaded to say, this must be what at least some of them wanted or at the absolute minimum. Clearly something that many of them were absolutely willing to tolerate, were willing to simply accept there, there was no fight here.
[00:46:29] I guess I, I just wanna end on one other set of questions which came up, which is the
[00:46:36] even.
[00:46:37] Towards the 11th hour or x date as it were, there were folks pushing for the president to use the 14th amendment. It popped up and then it got sort of swatted back down. Talk to us a little bit about what that would've looked like.
[00:46:54] Was that in your view, a realistic possibility? I mean, it sounds like something that I could imagine Donald Trump doing because I can imagine a Republican president actually fighting for things they purport to believe in, and it's hard for me, and I don't credit them for that. I'm just saying that like they seem to not be governed by only a respect for norms.
[00:47:16] But I just want to hear from you whether you think that was a legitimate
[00:47:19] David Dayen: So, I mean, parenthetically by the way, it's not that Democrats are just celebrating this, this deal. More Democrats voted for this bill than Republicans in the house and in the Senate. And in fact, at the moment when the bill was actually imperiled, With something called the rule, which, you know, as you worked in Congress it never happens that there's a bipartisan rule that usually the majority party in the house has to pass something called the rule, which sets the terms for debate.
[00:47:51] And it's always a party line vote, always a party line vote. And there's usually nobody on the majority party side that dissents. Well, you know, the Freedom Caucus voted against the rule, which means that McCarthy did not have enough votes, and Democrats came to the rescue of the bill by supplying 50 votes for the rule, which never ever happens.
[00:48:17] There was talk that there was some kind of side deal that Democrats were gonna get something out of that. Hakeem Jeffries was the Democratic leader in the house denied that. He said, no, there was no deal. We were just doing our duty, is what he said. So and there are other members who are furious about that.
[00:48:36] The fact that you would help on the rule without getting something is crazy. So I just wanted to put that in, into that context.
[00:48:43]
[00:48:43] David Sirota: See that's the tell. That is to me, yet another tell that this is what the Democratic leaders wanted and the most charitable possible view. If you don't buy that, this is clearly what democratic leaders were. Willing to, if not happy to accept all of the the things that you've laid out here. All of the things that you and the great reporting team at the American Prospect has been reporting.
[00:49:11] David Day is the executive editor of the American Prospect. I encourage you to follow him on Twitter, follow his work, sign up for the American Prospect, get its emails. I rely on it. We at the lever rely on it all the time. And Dave, I, I feel like I'm, we're gonna be back here in two years. When the next debt
[00:49:29] David Dayen: that's the crazy thing, right? Like we, this was a hostage situation. They, Democrats paid a ransom and Republicans didn't let go of the hostage. They allowed Democrats to rent the hostage for two years, and then they're gonna get a back up a truck and kidnap the hostage again. And put 'em in the bank and say you have to give us more ransom money.
[00:49:54] That's what we did.
[00:49:55] David Sirota: I. I feel like we're gonna be back here in another For date
[00:49:59] X X date.
[00:50:01] David Dayen: We,
[00:50:02] we
[00:50:02] David Sirota: right? X date, two electric boogaloo. That'll be next, two years from now. Yes. XD date ending. That, that perfect. David Day. Thank you so much.
[00:50:13] That's it for today's show. As a reminder, our paid subscribers who get lever time premium, you get to hear next week's bonus episode. That's a big deep dive on how the climate crisis is getting super real and super scary in the American West, and how new fights over climate legislation in the American West could determine climate policy in this entire country.
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[00:51:13] Until next time, I'm David Cerda. Rock the Boat. The Lever Time Podcast is a production of The Lever and the Lever Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, David Cerro. Our producer is Frank Capello, with help from the Lever's lead producer Jared Jang Mayor.