susan d.: the covid-19 pandemic one year in. president biden: a year ago we were hit with a virus that was met with silence. susan d.: president biden addresses the nation. marking one year since the novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic. and hours after signing a landmark $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief package. passed along party lines. >> president biden's american rescue plan is a plan to crush the virus. >> this isn't a relief bill. it's pretty much a playoff for pelosi's political allies. susan d.: we discuss a year of horror and hope next. announcer: this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided by --

consumer cellular. kaiser permanente. additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. susan d.: welcome to "washington week." i'm susan davis. it has been one year since the covid-19 pandemic shattered our reality and stopped the world in its tracks. here's dr. anthony fauci and former president trump last year at this time. >> we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now. >> we will be suspending all travel from europe. it goes away. it's going away.

we want it to go away with very, very few deaths. and i'm officially declaring a national emergency to. two very big words. and we're now in very strong shape. susan d.: in his first prime time speech to the nation, president joe biden looked back at one of the deadliest years in american history. and charted a path forward. president biden: we've lost so much over the last year. we've lost family and friends. we've lost businesses and dreams. we spent yearsuilding. but as i stand here tonight, we're proving once again someing i've said time and time again. it's never, ever a good bet to bet against the american people. america's coming back. susan d.: this wednesy, dr. fauci gave a dose of hopto a weary nation. >> things are going much better in the right direction, particularly because of the scientific advances that

allowed us to have now multiple highly he have indication vaccines. -- efficacious vaccines. susan d.: we have invited back a panel of reporters who joined our show during the first terrifying weeks of this crisis. yasmeen abutaleb, for "the washington post." eamon javers, senior washington correspondent for cnbc. toluse olorunnipa, national political reporter for "the washington post." and susan page, washington bureau chief for "usa today." our panelists in march 2020. >> the president has sought to downplay the risk of the virus even as we've seen the number of cases in the u.s. climb over the last week and top up in more than a dozen states. >> president trump's sort of play it by ear, fly by the seat of your pants approach does not work well within a political crisis that stems from a global pandemic. >> this is an existential

threat for president trump in a way impeachment was not. it's already changed the political landscape for 2020. >> the pilot light in the economy could be about to go out. and we might not have the ability to restart that. susan d.: yasmeen, this pandemic pressure tested the country's health care infrastructure like never before. what did we learn about the state of our health care system? yasmeen: i think the pandemic exposed, you know, the many weakness that is we might have known theoretically existed in the health care system or maybe encountered in a sort of less severe way. but this really brought a lot of it to the forefront. the u.s. has an extremely decentralized health care system which i think made it very difficult for different regions and counties and cities to have the surge capacity they needed as they grappled with outbreaks. you saw it happen in n york city, in new orleans, in chicago, and major metropolitan areas all across the area. and also made it very hard to coordinate a federal response. because the federal government can make recommendations but

ultimately decisions fall to state and local leaders. susan d.: toluse, this was not an equal opportunity pandemic. black and latino communities suffered much of the hardship. not just due to the virus but the economic effects of it. and then in the middle of it all, we had this racial justice uprising following the death of george floyd in police custody in minneapolis. in the last year, how has this country's attitude toward racial inequality changed or at least been challenged? toluse: well, you can see the change and the change in adnistrations if you look at how president -- former president trump talked about a lot of these issues compared to how the new president, president biden, and his vice president, the first african-american woman to be vice president talk about these issues. they talk about racial justice every time they talk about policy whether it's health care, whether it's housing, whether it's police reform and accountability. all of these issues are now top of mind and they're now being discussed at a national level in part because of all of these

various issues that you mentioned from the pandemic which we saw had a disproportionate impact on black and brown communities especially on poor americans in particular. and when you talk about the racial justice movement that happened over the summer, we're now seeing that spread not only -- into issues related to policing but if you look at the american rescue plan and joe biden just signed into law, a lot of the issues from poverty to education to health care a lot of these issues are issues that are especially relevant for african-american and hispanic communities that have been left behind as we've seen during this pandemic. so i imagine that that kind of policy making will continue to be what we see from this administration because they've started in this first 50 days really centeri these issues and making them at the forefront of our public policy. susan d.: i'men, fortunately the pilot light -- -- due to the trillions of dollars the government pumped into the economy the last year, at the

same time workers have suffered small businesses have suffered, many have closed their doors forever. what is the state of the u.s. economy and its workers and how healthy is it? eamon: i mean, it's a mixed bag right now, right? economists talk about this k-shaped recovery where one group of people is going up and the other group of people is going down. that sort of what we've seen is this bifurcated response. you've had a lot of white collar workers who through the miracle of technology have been able to shift all of their rk to home in a surprisingly seamless way. it's actually worked. this great experiment that we're in as a nation has really worked. it might not look like it but i'm sitting in my basement right now next to the laundry room machine and the drawing crate right here. and yet i'm able to do my job. that's not the case for a huge number of americans, though, who have to physically go to their jobs and be exposed to the coronavirus in order to do it. so for those people, this has been an economic depression. and that's why we're seeing000 k-shaped recovery and we're starting to turn the corner on it. the freefall in jobs we saw in

april has turned around. we saw more than 300,000 jobs created last month. but we're still about 8 1/2 million jobs in the hole total since this pandemic began. and that's a long, long way to still dig out. hopefully we can start to really begin to increase those numbers on a month to month basis and get a l of people back to work once the vaccinations start to roll out here. susan d.: susan, our politics has changed and the country chose joe biden over donald trump to lead it out of the pandemic. i'm curious of what you made of his speech last night and what you think it tells bus his leadership style going forward in this year? susan p.: you know, i think that joe biden can credit the covid pandemic as the biggest single factor that contributed to president trump's failure to win a second term. it put joe biden in the white house and it gave his presidency a mission. his presidency will be judged by more than -- more than by any other single factor, by how he does in handling this pandemic. and we saw -- such a different

tone, such a different approach between the two presidents remarks that you showed at the beginning of this hour between the kind of defiant tone that president trump -- denying that this was going to be this sort of dreadful experience that it has been in contrast we had a very much more somber tone from president biden as we've heard from -- from the morning and what we've lost. but his first speech to the nation since becoming president, i think he did adopt a more optimtic, more hopeful tone saying we can see the light at the end of this tunnel. let's keep together. let's do what we need to do by the fourth of july things are going to be much better. susan d.: this queek president biden signed a massive $1.9 trillion piece of legislation into law. there's money in there to increase vaccinations. it's going to send a new round of stimulus checks. and extends unemployment benefits. it also creates a tax credit for families with children. a revolutionary expansion of the social safety net similar

to the new deal. here's senator bernie sanders on the impact of this bill. >> this is the most significant legislation for working people that has been passed in decades. we wrote a bill to address the cry crisis facing the working class and low income people. susan d.: the democrats see this stimulus package as so much more than just pandemic relief. what's the big picture goal here that democrats are trying to accomplish with this new law? toluse: they want to show that they are a party that cares about the middle class t cares about working faes as you heard senator sanders talk about. they realize that president trump the former president was able to win over some voters, some low income voters and minority vots by essentially trying to say that he was the populist that he was going to use the government to help people whher it was paying out money to farmers that were hurt by the trade war or, you know, signing his name on

checks that went out to people during the pandemic. and now democrats want to be able to take that mantle and say that we are not going to be the party of the 1% other the party of only college educated voters but work to make sure that poor people that working class americans and middle class americans have a social safety net and that big government if that is a term that can still be used is something that they will completely embrace. because the government can help people in a time of crisis like we're experiencing in this pandemic. so ty want to show that the democratic party is onboard with using the government to help people who are in need, poor people, low income people, working class and middle class americans are all looking to get something out of this bill and the democrats want to be able to take advantage of that and take credit for that. maybe in a way that was different than what happened during the last recession in 2009 when they did pass a relatively big stimulus package but people did not necessarily give them the credit for it. susan d.: eamon, republicans have criticized this bill.

they say it's simply too much and that the economy doesn't need it. especially with mass distribution of vaccines and things turning around. is there an economic criticism there? is it possible that the -- to stimulate the economy too much? eamon: it is possible to stimulate the economy too much. and their argument isn't just that it's too much. it's that it's not tailored enough to the right people. they would like to see a lot more targeted and say it's got a lot of left wing wish list items that the democrats would have wanted to put in any bill that passed and they happened to stuff this one full of those. so their idea -- there are ideological complaints and the complaints about the overall size of it but an argument among some economists that you start to see now that this thing is so big that what you're going to do is flood the economy with dollars and that's going to create inflation. we haven't seen inflation really take off for years now. but it can be a serious economic problem and there are some economists who say this thing is so big that it's going to do exactly that. the biden team is gambling that that is not what's going to happen and we're going to see a

return here to a normalized economy and then maybe blow right past that. you've already got some economists out there on the other side of the argument saying we are feeing ourselves up here for another roaring 20's decade like we saw in the 20th century which happened after a pandemic as well that because of all this stimulus and all of the pent up demand for travel and socializing and doing all the things that we all love to do we're going to see a huge boom as soon as somebody fires the starting gun and says we can get off to the races again. susan d.: susan, how much is at stake for the democrats in this bill? if we're not with our families on the fourth july having small barbecues can the president and rty recover from that? th set a clear metric for success now. susan p.: i think that if the white house and the democrats do not deliver on the -- now the expectation that things are going to look better in the summer and things will be back to some version of normal by the end of the year, they will pay a big price in next year's mid-term elections. the first mid-terms for parties

when they win the white house often involve step-backs and the democrats have no margin in either the hoe or the senate. if they suffer losses next year in the midterms, they will likely lose control of each chamber. but there's a big payoff if they do deliver. because those step-backs in midterm elections they're not inevitable. there are times like in 1998 and in 2002 when the party in power actually gained seats. and i think that the roaring 20's that would be a very happy scenario for democrats to face as they -- as they -- those elections are important because one reason this bill got so big, some democrats think this is the only train in town that by sufinge reconciliation, it's the only thing they're able to get through this congress. that's one reasothey loaded it up. and bigger democratic margins in the midterms they could look at doing more. susan d.: yasmeen, to that end, one of the things inside this bill is the biggest expansion of the affordable care act since it was passed nearly a

decade ago. and one thing that struck me this week as i listened to the debate on capitol hill is that republicans didn't talk with e-about that as must have. especially as obamacare had been such a focus of the party for the last 10 years. and i wonder with this legislation, if maybe the political war over obamacare maybe quietly died a slow death this week. yasmeen: i think it's hard to ever rule it out completely. but i think you did see during the four years of the trump administration this kind of tortured effort over and over to try to repeal the affordable care act and all that did was make the law's popularity increase. so i think you know they learned the hard way, esecially when they lost the house in the 2018 mid midterms because the democrats took advantage of that health care message that they were going to strengthen obamacare and try to make health care more affordable for people. but that's really a losing message. as soon as you -- are trying to take an entitlement away, people don't like that. and the law's popularity reached record levels the more they tried to wage war against

it. susan d.: toluse, the country really likes this bill. even a majority of republicans right now say they really like this bill. yet not a single republican in the house or senate voted in favor of it. how do you explain that disconnect? toluse: well, we live in a very polarized society. and as susan mentioned there's a long history of party in power, the party that has the white house sort of losing out during the midterms. in the last two presidencies during the trump presidency and during the obama presidency we did see the opposition party -- party that was out of power really resist the new president. and they befrnted in the midterms. -- benefited in the midterms. so it has become a political vati to resist whatever the new president supports even if it is popular in the polls to unify around opposing the new president. that seems to be what the republicans are doing this time around. essentially saying we're going to all rally around opposing joe biden with the idea that that will bring us back into power in two years and then we

can have different ideological fights over what's a good policy or bad policy. but for now, it seems like they're all rallying around just opposing anything that biden essentially tries to get into -- into law. because it has -- biden's support behind it. it seems to be a political strategy. we live in a polarized society. where those political strategies have been the norm for the past two presidencies. and the -- now we're seeing republicans get behind it once again. they are really trying to unify saying that if they can brand joe biden as a far left socialist, then mbe some of the gains that they made in the 2020 elections will be able to build on those and win back support when both chamrs gh 2022. -- in 2022. they know that a lot of people are happy that the government is going to be sending them checks and criled credit is going to be expanded. that they're going to have access to vaccines and all of the other things in this bill opening schools and whatnot. but if they can try to brand this bill as something that is negative or that does not do enough to help the economy,

then they can try to ride that into power in two years. susan d.: well, with covid relief on its way to americans, president biden will now turn to his next legislative priorities. with the potential humanitarian crisis at the border, the president could focus on immigration reformr infrastructure. susan, what do we know about what's next on president biden's agenda? susan p.: well, we know the next big thing he would like to do is a huge infrastructure bill. and see the american relief act that would be the american recovery act. that would be again a huge price tag for projects like bridges and roads and other things that have been put off in the united states. that is also something that ey might try to use this parliamentary device called reconciliation. there's a lot of other things that the white house would like to do. climate change legislation. they also have things like the $15 an hour minimum wage that they are committed to pursue. so a big agenda, immigration, though, i think hags the

potential to be quite troublesome for this administration because they're looking at the situation in the -- at the border with some concern. and you ask about republicans, the risk for republicans in opposing this popular bill that covid relief bill, one thing they've done in response is talk more about the situation at the border in an effort to change the subject. susan d.: eamon, do you see any path forward with bipartisanship or do you think that democrats are looking at sort of a lonely road ahead i terms of trying to get legislation passed? eamon: yeah. look, i don't see a lot of bipartisanship happening in washington anytime soon. and the reason is because democrats look at this and they say, hey, wait a second, we've got the house, we've got the senate. we got the white house and we won this election big time. we should be able to pass our agenda. and republicans say what's in it for us to get onboard with the biden initiative and then he's going to hammer us over the head with it in the next election cycle? so i think you're just totally polarized. totally divided. and with the senate at a 50-50

split, the really isn't a lot of hope for a biden agenda if you're a biden supporter beyond what they can get done through that process that susan was talking about a budget reconciliation where you can get down to a 50-vote margin because everything else in the senate these days takes 60 votes with the filibuster. and they can't get there. the democrats can't. so i hear a lot of liberals particularly union people around town really talking about this is the time -- this is the time where we need to break the filibuster and move everything to a 50-vote threshold or a lot more to a 50-vote threshold. so far, though, president biden is not there. and i think that's where you're going to see a potential split between liberals in the democratic party who want to go, go, go and now that they have the opportunity and senator manchin and others say we can't break the senate like that. susan d.: it feels like the country is going to be hearing a lot about the filibuster in the year ahead. toluse, we also heard some news this week from republicans, republican senator roy blunt of missouri announced he's a member of leadership announced that he would not seek re-election next year.

this follows senators like pat toomey of pennsylvania, rob portman of ohio and sort of traditional conservatives choosing to retire. what does this tell you about the ongoing struggle for identity in the republican party and which way it's going? toluse: the party is trying to decide whether it wants to be a party of traditional conservative ideas or a party of trumpist populists and it does seem like trumpism is winning out in that fight because a lot of the traditional conservatives like roy blunt, like rob portman are starting to leave and make their exits. and people who are in favor of trump's style policies, trump style approaches to politics, seem to be on the asendcy in republican politics and seem to be the ones nar raising money, that are getting support, that get to support of the former president who continues to be most popular figure in the party. so i do think that there is this reckoning, there is this civil war within the party and trying to decide what it wants

be and what kind of identity it wants to embrace and right now, with the former president continuing to weigh in on politics and not sore of having that honeymoon period after his presidency where he stays behind the scenes is going to put more pressure on traditional conservatives to show that they are onboard with the trump agenda, with the america first agenda that the president embraced during his four years and if they don't, then they will have to decide to leave office. susan d.: toluse, in the seconds we have left, any incentive for republicans on the hill to vote with joe biden? toluse: well, their constituents may ask them to do that. but i don't expect them to do that just because there's a lot of pressure for them not to. susan d.: al right. well, we'll have to end a little early tonight so that you'll have more time too and support your local pbs station. i want to thank you yasmeen, eamon, toluse, and susan for their time and thank you for joining us. we'll have more discussion on our "washington week" extra. catch it live at 8:30 on our website, on facebook and on

youtube. i'm susan davis. good night from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is proved by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. to learn more, visit consumercellular.tv. announcer: kaiser permanente. additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation,

committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

emergency planning for kids. we can't predict when an emergency will happen. so that's why it's important to make a plan with your parents. here are a few tips to stay safe. know how to get in touch with your family. write down phone numbers for your parents, siblings and neighbors.

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