 Fourth, 2021. And we're here on Coronaville, what's next? And while you may think that we're gonna talk about vaccines and variants and the like, we're gonna talk about the real heart of it today, a strange journey of the COVID relief bill, how strange it is. With our panel, Tim Appichella, Winston Welch, Stephanie Dalton, and Cynthia Sinclair, here on Coronaville. Welcome to the show, you guys. Thank you, Aloha. Thank you, Aloha. It's a strange journey. And we've been talking for years about distractions and how Trump has been distracting us. And that's still going on. And we've been talking about the dysfunction in the Congress and during the Trump years. And sorry to say that's still going on. So Joe Biden has identified four or five areas. Of his primary initiatives. And the first one, the most important one is the COVID relief bill for $1.9 trillion. And today we should analyze that bill, where it is, and why it hasn't been passed already. It's the most important thing in the country. So Tim, can you tell us why it's important and where it is? Well, good morning, Jay. It's important because there are so many Americans that need financial relief. It's just that simple. This was to be passed a month, two months ago and politics played and ruled the day and it got put off. 600 billion were passed, but not nearly enough. And so it's politics, Jay. It's the old game of politics. And here we are again. It's the power quest. It's Republicans in the Senate that have 50 votes and it's the Democrats in the Senate that have 50 votes. And of course the deciding vote is with Vice President Kamala Harris. But it's grasping for that last straw power. And that's why this thing's being dragged out. And that's why what was fine a year ago for multi-trillion dollar budget and COVID relief, now $1.9 trillion is asking for the moon. And so they're staking out their territory as the GOP party is. This is now too much. And all of a sudden they're concerned about budget deficits again. Give me a break. Yeah, so Winston, a year ago, the Congress was able to pass a multi-trillion dollar COVID package. And I have to say that was impressive. They got together on it. But now the Republicans won't do it. What has changed? Why won't they do it? What is the reason that we have such a fantastic, identifiable change in their willingness to go along? You got me, Jay. It's impossible to fathom why leaders of this nation would not want maximum sustained relief effort to get us out of this economic mess that we're in. And it's not based on any principled economics on the side of the Republican party either. As we saw, our GDP, our debt last year was larger than our GDP has nothing to do with wanting a smaller government or anything like that. Like you said, last year, these bills were passed. It's all about the political optics of letting Joe Biden have a win here. It's gonna go through anyway, one way or another. I saw, and there's breaks. I saw Mitt Romney was proposing 3,000 for every kid in the country. I think to the tune maybe of like 300 a month subsidy type of thing. There's different things that are gonna be coming out. They have to. We're gonna face a cliff here at the end of March when the rent moratorium and eviction moratorium ends. Sovereign articles on business rents not being paid, not just personal rents. We are having, we're facing a massive drop off here in about 60 days. And we haven't begun to understand what that cliff is yet. So you got me. I can't understand why they can't pull together and just say, just do it for America. Well, let's go to Cynthia. Maybe she's had some really smart ideas about why the Republicans were opposing them. I mean, maybe they have something in their agenda now that is simply more important than saving Americans. I mean, for example, you know, they have to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene and spend time about her. And before I go to that, I wanna ask our friend, Alexa, about Marjorie. Alexa, who is Marjorie Taylor Greene? According to Wikipedia, Marjorie Taylor Greene is an American far right politician, businesswoman and conspiracy theorist serving as a US representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district. A member of the Republican Party and a supporter of Donald Trump, Greene was elected to Congress in November, 2020 and sworn into office on January 3rd, 2021. Well, I don't know if that's helpful, but at least it gives us a sort of environmental background on who she is. Thank you, Alexa. Alexa, I love you for Valentine's Day. No response, no response. Alexa, I love you. That's so nice of you to say. What did she tell you? She said it was nice of me to say that. Well, I'm a requireded love. Same thing, so, you know, there's this Greene and then there's so many other things that the Republicans are fascinated with. They spent most of yesterday in a secret meeting. I'm sure it's very important. How important is it? What are they doing to be so distracted here? Nothing, they're not doing anything. They didn't really do anything about Marjorie Greene either. They left it to the Democrats to do it. And I don't know if everybody has seen the video where she's going after David Hogg, who is one of the victims from the Parkland shooting. And he now has, he was just on CNN, that's your own goal, and he said, you can text RESIGN to 954954, that's RESIGN to 954954 to sign a petition to have Marjorie Taylor Greene removed, not just removed from her committee appointments, but removed from Congress, because really there's just no place for somebody like that. But Mark, I mean, Kevin McCarthy didn't have the guts to actually follow through and take her out of her appointments. He just gave her a stern talking to, and she apologized without really apologizing. It was all of that same double speak like we heard for the last four years where she says it was the media's fault. She blames everything on the media. So I think that the Republicans are not going forward to help with the bill for COVID simply because they're not going to do anything that the Democrats want, period. And it doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter if it's something great, it doesn't matter if it benefits them and everybody, they still won't do it because the Democrats want it. And you didn't mention, of course, that when she made her quote apology and quote, the Republicans gave her a standing ovation. I didn't understand the psychology of that myself, but there you have it. But there are other things, Stephanie, we're getting now into the mode of setting up for the impeachment trial in the Senate. And I suggest to you that that's another distraction that somehow is sucking up all the oxygen. And of course, granted that the Democrats are initiating that and pushing for it, where does that fit with respect to the COVID relief bill, the most important initiative in the country? Well, they say they can do many things at one time. And I'm grateful as a taxpayer. I think most of them have been doing nothing for many years, especially our former president. So I'm fine with them marching to a much faster tune. Let's go, and they can. And they've promised that they can do many things. I think that as we all know, if you try to extinguish behavior, modify somebody's way of acting, that usually it mostly gets much, much worse before it ever gets better. So I'm still very, very hopeful that as everybody's on vibrate, that's a Republican in the House and Senate trying to figure out what's going on, what they're gonna do, and that it's all gonna get much worse. But as we move into the trial, we are all gonna get the same script, okay? So we're gonna put the whole country on the same script without any interruption. Of course, it'll be translated by whoever's are the media that are gonna do that. But anyway, we all have the same script. And perhaps with that and making a decision based on that, whichever decision that it will be by them, hopefully it will indict him, or I mean, it will punish him. But I think that it might be coming out of the tunnel because we've got Biden and the administration continuing to model a reasoned way and not doing the kinds of things that Republicans have done because it has to change. I don't know what we're supposed to do as a country if this oppositional thing from the Republicans continues. We're gonna break down. So it won't be what it has looked like. It would be an insurrection. It's gonna just break down if we just keep going. And God forbid that McCarthy gets replaced by Jim Jordan. I mean, there's lots of bad things that can still happen to make it worse. And they probably will. But I think the arc towards the better eventually because we have this fabulous administration modeling competence and real patriotism. Yeah, and he's great. He's Biden's great. He was in the State Department this morning giving a speech where he told them that he had their back and he loved them and appreciated them and wanted to recreate all our alliances. It was really a heart-rending speech he gave and I was touched by it. But Tim, let's go to Wednesday. You have thoughts. You wanna respond to Stephanie first, eh? Yeah, I just wanna amend my answer about why the GOP is fighting so hard on this COVID relief bill. And if you really think about it, they need 60 votes, right? And so what better way of making the Democrats use up one of their budget reconciliation chips? Than to fight this and then that forces them to use it and get a 51-50 vote to pass it. So I think that's maybe one of the reasons why the GOP is fighting this, just to make them use it up so that they only will have one left from last year. Yeah, and remember that he identified a number that is Joe Biden identified a number of other areas. Let me try to remember them. There was immigration reform, which we need badly. There was infrastructure, which is falling down around the country. There is election reform is the big one. Election reform, gun control reform, climate change. And these all need money. And if they need money, they need legislation. And to do legislation, he's got to go through the same process. If he uses up his shit, he's gonna have trouble doing those other things. He can nibble away at it with proclamations. Don't be able to get money through legislation. What'd you say, Stephanie? I was just gonna ask you, can you explain the chip situation? There's a limit. What are the chips about? There's a limit to- Tim is gonna explain that to you now. Yeah, each year you get one, what is called a budget reconciliation. And it's kind of like a mulligan. You get to pass something with a budget impact with a simple majority versus a 60 vote majority in the Senate. And so they didn't use one last year for whatever reason. And so now the Biden administration has two of them, one for this year and one for last year. So he could get two very important things passed and use those budget reconciliation chits, if you will. And it'd be wonderful. But I think this is a wasted one. I think that Joe Biden in the administration can come up with a COVID relief package that isn't everything they demanded and want, but not use those valuable budget reconciliation options. That's if they move up the stage. Winston, does this remind you of what was going on with the Republicans in Obama? How they just wanted to make them look bad and stop all this legislation? Absolutely. Do you say Winston? I did. It does, but there's a different quality to it now. I mean, for him it was more obvious. This one, we're sliding sideways and lifted. It's like trying to stand up on a greased floor. The Republicans are in disarray. They're trying to find some focus or something. Meanwhile, we have this epidemic that's raging. We're approaching half a million dead in this country alone. We've got serious, serious questions while they're trying to figure out whether or not they're going to be a party of QAnon and that Marjorie Green is actually the head of the party and or are we going back? And Mitch McConnell, it's hard to figure out but he seems to be going back. They did a, you know, Liz Janie got a pat on the back. You saw the secret vote yesterday. It was like 150 to 50 or whatever it was keeping her in her position of power. That was the secret vote, the open vote where they say, oh, we can't impeach the president which she called for, which is basically a referendum on that was 45 to five or was it 40 to 10, whatever it was with the Republicans. So their heart is like, we need to get away from this as soon as we can but they're terrified of the base. And so they vote the opposite way of what they're really feeling. That was, could not have been clearer to me when I saw that. But, you know, at the end of the day, Americans, we've got to just buck up and grow up and act maturely if it's sad to see this. But the heartening news is, we have an adult in the White House. We have an adult vice president. We have adult cabinet members. We have, I don't, I'm not following what Joe Biden is signing or doing or not doing because I know he's got things under control. I don't have to worry about every single thing that he's doing something out of pettiness or vindictiveness or just because he saw it on the TV two minutes earlier. So there's a lot of good news, but there's some scary... Well, you know, somebody said, I think it was Stephanie, Tim, said that, you know, yes, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. But as we ramp up to that impeachment, it's much sexier than a bill that has been lingering this way. And that, you know, you lose interest after a while. I say, oh, a pox on both of them. But in the case of impeachment, that's pretty exciting. That's a legal proceeding live. That's a, may I say, a reality show representing all of Trump's influence. I mean, yesterday there was a letter to Trump asking him to testify next Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday at the impeachment trial. I mean, as we go forward on this, it's gonna suck up all the airwaves. Isn't it? And it is going to get directly in front of the COVID relief bill, isn't it? What do you think is gonna happen here? And will the impeachment trial succeed? Will Trump be, despite all the evidence, will Trump be convicted? Or will the Republicans who seem to be still Trumpers stick together and exonerate him? I think it's unlikely that he will be convicted. Unfortunately, I think, if not this, then what? But, you know, they're gonna hang in tight because they fear Donald Trump still. Donald Trump still is in charge of this party, whether he's in the Oval Office like you are or not. The bottom line is, it's gonna suck the oxygen out of the room, but they'll quietly work behind the scenes. Again, I do believe it's a theory of mine that the GOP wants them to use up that budget reconciliation option. And, but they'll come up with something relatively soon because both parties are on the line and both parties knows that financial relief is, even if it's a token gesture of $1,400, that it's absolutely required for those families that need it the most. It'll be interesting to see whether or not they reduce the means testing for who's eligible for the stimulus versus who's not. And they may reduce the annual cap down to a hundred thousand for a couple versus 150,000 a year for a couple. We'll see if that happens or not. They're discussing it. You know, everybody says the Republicans have been recalculating about the COVID relief bill because, you know, they're doing it for their base. Does their base care about COVID relief? Does their base still think that COVID relief is a hoax? I saw a piece on television yesterday where some guy in, I think he was a bar owner in Texas, who hired a bus. He admitted that he went to the insurrection. He hired a bus to take a hundred people to Washington for the insurrection. And he didn't care about masks. He didn't care about COVID. And he joined something 24% of the people in the country have no interest in a vaccine, believe it or not. So, you know, the base, does the base care about COVID? Is this because the Republicans are responding to their base and the base simply doesn't care about COVID? Is this possible? Jay, I think the base are the major recipients for this COVID stimulus. They're the ones that need it. Donald Trump's base is not the bar owner that you saw that interview with. I saw the same interview. I think the majority of his base are, you know, people who are barely struggling to put food on their table for their families, though they're unemployed or at risk of being thrown out of their homes by not paying the rent. I don't believe that the Donald Trump's base is the rich, the 1%, I mean, they're a part of it, but there's so much more to Donald Trump's base and the GOP's base that desperately need this stimulus money. Stephanie, what are your thoughts about that? Oh, this is my query. Who is this base? These guys that ran up to the Capitol the other day, that they're not having any trouble. I mean, they're having a great time. They need most of them. And do any of them have jobs? I mean, they did take Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday or maybe longer to get in and out of there. I mean, who are these people that went up to the Capitol? Is that the base? If that is the base, then why are they so getting so much attention? What percentage of the base are they? I don't think we have enough info or data to inform us about just who exactly is this base? What is their condition? What's their economic welfare and what are they contributing? In fact, I did see some data on the contributions made to the economy by people like in that base, Republican people and Democrats. And the difference in the contribution to the productivity of the economy is enormous in the way of paying taxes and being productive in industry and business. I don't have the specifics on that data, but watch for it because it is something that is out there. And maybe we're gonna get more attention. I'm watching for COVID. So Winston, give us a thumbnail on how COVID is doing. We hear all this talk about the vaccine or shall I say vaccines with more coming online and variants. We hear more about distributing the vaccines through the pharmacies of the country. I think it was a really good idea that Biden had. But how are we doing? It seems like the charts are showing a kind of improvement or at least not so much of an increase in COVID. How confident are you that we'll be out of this by the summer or the end of the year? Lest we forget, you know, there's always a dynamic. It goes up or it goes down. It doesn't say the same. Well, yeah. You know, I think that one thing that I want to bring up is that it's just, you know, a report on CBS. Mental illness will be the biggest non-COVID public health issue after the pandemic. I think we need to acknowledge that we have that now. We read an article about what you're feeling is grief. We have a, for people that are going through this, our entire world is being affected at the same time. We've lost jobs, family members, lifestyles, being able to go to the supermarket without freaking out. We've lost graduations and Christmases. And if you're feeling heavy, there's a reason why. But even if we do well with this vaccine and everybody gets vaccinated, by the way, interesting article in The New Yorker, Yale, New Haven Hospital, 90% of medical residents are getting the vaccine immediately, but only 42% of the environmental services workers and 33% of the food service workers did. Nursing homes in Ohio, 60% of the state's nursing home staff declined the vaccine. North Carolina, it's about 50%. So we're really running into an educational problem. This is not just about Donald Trump's base, which by the way is half the nation. And that's not going anywhere. But these folks aren't all Donald Trump supporters. They don't trust the basic science. I think it's too fast. More frightening, I think there was an article in Washington Post by Megan McArdle on the February 2nd called the COVID questions we don't wanna face, which is what if this gets more contagious and more lethal, like the 1918 flu? So we have a lot of variants that are coming out. Manaus in Brazil is being completely overrun after it was supposedly had herd immunity in the spring. We don't know where this virus is actually gonna go. They're gonna come out with new vaccines, but let's assume we vaccinate everyone. We get to 75, 80%. What's after that? And we had a question last week, maybe two weeks ago. How about the third world, fourth world, so-called? I saw there was a plan to get 200 million doses or two billion doses it was, but two billion doses does not seven billion make. And so we have to absolutely do this around the world. It's like polio or any other disease. If you don't take care of it everywhere, it's gonna pop up again. So we got a road in front of us, but in this country, if we can get some education and right thinking out there, I think we could be back to some semblance of normal by the fall and that seems to be the consensus out there assuming all of the things are equal, which they're not. Yeah, that's something I wanted to ask you about, Cynthia. Trump lied over and over and over again. And at first, it was a bath of cold water or everybody said that's a lie, but then he kept on repeating it and other people around him kept on repeating it. And after a while, people believed it. For one reason or another, that's a question of mental illness, I think. But then, okay, and this is interesting, there's a kind of momentum thing going on. So if you believed, and Tim and I have discussed this, if you believed back in, I don't know, you came to the conclusion back in April or May last year that COVID was a hoax, you stuck with that. And you'd have new information which you would reject. It was a kind of delayed reaction on public opinion. And I guess I wanna ask you about your observations of that phenomenon and ask you whether the fact that Biden is now in office and he's rational and he's saying rational things and he's reversing what Trump did, is that gonna be the same thing where, it takes a little while and people can sort of get away from the Trump lies, sort of the delayed reaction effect or will Trump's lies continue and undermine our country and our electorate on into the future? Do you have a sense of that? I do, I actually have a personal experience with that. My first husband told me I was fat and ugly. So many times that I looked in the mirror and I saw fat and ugly. I had a completely distorted view of the reality of things. I had a good friend that was a photographer who wanted to show me what I really looked like and talked me into modeling for him, for this one thing he was doing. And I changed my life. I kind of saw who I was and had the chance to hand the pictures to my ex-husband and say, you can call me fat and ugly until the day you die but I'll never believe you again. So there's gotta be some sort of major shift in the thinking of the people that are believing these lies. There is a really good article right now that I recommend people to read. It's in the Scientific American. It was written by Tracy Lewis, no. Can't remember her name now. Tracy, I think it is Lewis, is right. And it's called the shared psychosis of Donald Trump and his loyalists came out on January 11th. And I really recommend reading that article. It's very informative. It really goes into depth into this whole thing. And it talks about the connection between the base and the maniac and how you stay connected to that. And it takes intention. It's going to take, I mean, it's possible, obviously because I don't look in the mirror anymore and see fat and ugly. So it is possible, but it takes intentional work. So Biden and his administration are going to have to be intentional about reaching out to the base over and over and over, because they won't hear it the first time or maybe even the fifth time or maybe even the 20th time, but you've gotta be intentional. The photographer asked me to model for him multiple times before I find he said yes. So it's an intentional combination of things that have to come together in order to change their mind. I think we have something like that going on here. But ultimately, Kim, when you talk about getting one shit or two shits a year, talking about going through all these mechanics to get a bill passed and then you have trouble getting any reasonable initiative passed through the Senate and the Republicans. Isn't what's gonna happen here is that Biden is gonna have to go to the public? I think he's starting to do that. Isn't that his best option going forward? That he's trying to convince the public and of course it's an easy sell as far as I'm concerned that the COVID bill is the most important thing. He's gonna have to do that with other bills too, isn't he? In the end, the way you break the loop, okay, should go out and make your case to the people. Isn't that true? It is true and no one used the bully pulpit better than the bully in chief, Donald Trump. He was a master at using the bully pulpit better than any president I've ever seen to sway the population's way of thinking. It's incredibly how well he used it. And I think Biden will use an ethical approach, an honest approach to that precious thing called the bully pulpit. And he'll use it to bring the country together, not separate them and break them apart. He'll use it to convince the public that we're all in this together and this big stew of COVID and it's gonna take all of us to get ourselves out of it. And I think he'll use the bully pulpit effectively and honestly and I think eventually we are gonna get out of this. Unfortunately, it's gonna probably be late summer. Yeah, and Trump is gonna be working against that because he wants chaos. He feels that serves his personal pathological needs. Okay, let's make final comments. Briefly then, Stephanie, final comments about where we are, where we're going on this bill in the context of all the other issues we've discussed. It's a bill that will bring Biden great plays. Praise, I think it will also launch the economy, the rock, it's gonna fire the rocket here for America. And I think it will turn out to be in Biden's great interest, it's a good start. So even if we have to use up the chip, it's really important that he get this lighted now and then we go on. But it's gonna take a generation to get any of these things changed. Remember they burned people at the stake, they chopped their heads up, they boiled them a lot, didn't make any difference, they never changed. It takes a generation. So unfortunately we've been inflicted and all of this has been brought to the surface. So, and they've had power. So it's gonna be a generational shift to get back to it. Why do I say that our generation Winston has actually lost time? We've paid a price here. We had a good life, but now it's oppressive in so many ways. What do you also us about this bill and where it fits in the historical context? The bill is just part and parcel of all of it. I just say just God bless Joe Biden and this new administration. And this nation because we were, we have been saved at the beginning. We have a chance to get it right. We will get it right. I have faith in us. We've been boosted and battered. But you know what? Back again, let them do their jobs. We've got our jobs, personal responsibility, double masking, don't share your air and you know, share a lo-ha. Okay. Check on others. Can you share your air with us just for a moment? Yes, but I'd like to take the little detour. We've been watching the services for Officer Sicknick in that Capitol building, which I think is the first real honoring of our Capitol policemen. And I am, and I have been absolutely angry, angry about the fact that they sent those poor boys out to die. They hung them out to dry. They knew that there was going to be violence. They didn't give them any backup to begin with. They didn't send it until what? Two hours after the whole thing had been going. They literally hung those boys out to dry and that just makes me so angry. That includes Trump who did nothing while he sat and watched it all happen. Trump was in the beginning, part of it, planning it to keep all those officers away so that those guys would be the only line of defense. So you're making me angry again. You're infuriating me, Cynthia. Okay, we're almost out of time here. We have to go to Tim for a close. Can you close, please, Tim? One more thing, please. Just one more thing, because I think it's important that most people don't really know, public doesn't know these statistics. More than a hundred officers were injured. Some were serious brain injuries. NPR put out something that said there was 140 officers that were injured and that's the notice by according to the US Capitol Police. So 15 of these guys were seriously injured and needed hospitalization and then two committed suicide after the fact. And I don't mean to make you so mad, but I would like that our public, the people that are watching to get angry, say something to your senators, say something to your congressmen, make sure your voice is heard, that those guys need to be really honored for what they did and they saved democracy. That line, that single line of defense saved us from having a coup that would have been successful and would have overturned democracy. Okay, thanks for letting me talk. Okay, we live in strange times, don't we, Tim? We do. And I agree with Cynthia that they were highly not prepared to take on that crowd and it's a shame to see what has happened to them and I agree with Cynthia, I'm upset about it too. As far as the COVID bill, it will pass. It might look different than what the Democrats initially wanted. I think it's in their best interest to negotiate and work with the GOP to try to get this thing passed relatively soon and save the option, but that's just my personal feeling. It will pass, but remember in the final scheme of things, $1,400 is nothing. We have big economic problems in this country and $1,400 is really not gonna do a whole lot for the people that really need financial help and get back on their feet. So that's gonna take structural changes to the economy and the employment and the stimulus is the stimulus, but it's really not gonna be all that helpful. You're right. Great points today, you guys. Thank you so much. Cynthia Sinclair, Tim Epilez, Stephanie Dalton, Winston Welch. He shows these discussions get better and better and it impresses me more and more. Thank you so much. Aloha.