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Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has been working from his Washington, D.C., home as much as possible. But negotiations and votes on key bills responding to the coronavirus outbreak have repeatedly brought him back to the Capitol.
Leahy was a lead negotiator on the $8.3 billion emergency appropriations package passed last week, and he supported the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a bill that includes enhancements for paid sick leave, unemployment and nutrition programs.
Both measures passed with bipartisan support. But the third congressional response effort — a Republican-led trillion-dollar stimulus package — is likely to face resistance. “That’s where the big fight’s going to be,” Leahy said.
GOP leaders have said they expect to vote on the stimulus by this weekend. But Leahy said that as of Thursday afternoon, Democrats had yet to see the actual proposal, which is rumored to include sending $1,200 checks to individual taxpayers and at least $2,400 to families.
Leahy and other Democrats fear the relief package could also include payments to corporations like cruise companies and airlines, reducing the potential benefit to workers. “I want to make sure … that the Republican plan is not just a huge corporate bailout,” Leahy said Thursday.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the logistics like in the Capitol right now? What are you seeing on the ground there?
It’s been interesting. We had the first piece of legislation — when you recall the president said, ‘we should have $2 billion, take a billion dollars out of LIHEAP and put it elsewhere,’ and we said that doesn’t even work. We made $8 billion in appropriations, which made a lot of sense, and got that through. But that took a lot of negotiation. That’s why it passed overwhelmingly.
You’re referring to the bill that includes paid sick leave, enhancements to unemployment, nutrition programs—
Yeah, but now we’ve got this big one coming in. That’s where the big fight’s going to be.
This is over the potential stimulus — this idea of sending money directly to American families.
Yes, the trillion dollars and so on. With the last major one that we did, we were able to keep in the small-state minimum, which was absolutely central to us in Vermont. We do better under that than any state in the union. There’s a certain amount that has to go to every state [that has a population] under several million people.
I’ve been getting feedback from Vermont about, ‘we need this and we need that.’ Most of it I’ve been able to keep in just by being at the table. But now we are coming to the much, much greater one. The president, who was unfortunately far too slow reacting to what’s happening, is now realizing we have to do something.
But now we have to figure out where we go from here. Everything else, we’ve done in a bipartisan way, and that’s why it’s gone through quickly. My concern, and I’ve expressed this to Sen. McConnell and others: don’t just say we’re going to put in a Republican consensus proposal before you even talk to Democrats. That’s just going to waste time.
I’m curious what issues you and your Democratic colleagues have with that proposal. What are the sticking points in what McConnell and others have put forward?
Well, we haven’t really seen it. We haven’t seen the details. We’ve seen broad outlines: that we’ve got to help people, and people are out of work and so on. Everybody’s going to agree on that. But there’s a lot difference between saying: we’re going to bail out the big cruise liners, most of which are not even registered in the United States. I’m a lot more concerned about the people who work for them, the people who cook on them, clean on them. I’m more concerned that they’re getting paid.
I know the airlines say, ‘we’ve got to get bailed out.’ Well, the airlines, you recall, when gas prices went up, they had to put a surcharge on everybody. Gas prices dropped considerably, and I don’t recall that surcharge ever coming off. I’m not too concerned with them, but what I am concerned with are the people who unload the baggage, who do the work, who get paid by the hour.
So what I want to make sure is that the Republican plan is not just a huge corporate bailout. Especially as corporations have spent so much of their money in stock buybacks so they benefit just a few. I’m more concerned about the people who work for them.
Do you agree with this concept of just sending checks to each American household? Do you think that’s the right approach?
Well, I want to see what they mean by it. I’ve heard about five different versions from the White House. Will it be, if you’re below a certain income you’re ‘this’? It may be a worthwhile stimulus. But it’s a short timeline. I think we need some systemic things.
We need things for paid sick leave, and we need an ability for child care. Look how it is for people, with suddenly: ‘Oh, we’re closing the schools tomorrow.’ Both parents working. Now they’ve got a 7-year-old, 8-year-old, 6-year-old around the house. They can’t leave them alone. What do they do? Who gives up a job to go home and do it, and may not have a job when they come back?
So I am less concerned with a few multibillion dollar corporations. They’re going to be able to make it anyway. It may hurt some stockholders. I feel sorry for them. But I’m more concerned about what you and I would consider the average Vermonter.
What do you see happening next? What do you think the timeline of negotiating this package is going to be, and what do you see happening in terms of debate over it?
In just a few minutes we’re going to be having a caucus of Democratic senators. We’ll do it by phone because there won’t be votes today. We’re going to say, look, we successfully got that last package through because we worked together, Republicans and Democrats. And it passed overwhelmingly.
Senator Shelby and I, as chairman and vice chairman of Appropriations, we’ve told both McConnell and Schumer: a package of this will be money. Why don’t you let us work out a plan with our counterparts in the House. If we do, at least that part of the bill will probably get near unanimous support.
This is not a time to have a partisan package. I don’t care if it’s a Democratic package or a Republican package — we need an American package. And the White House, which has made so many mistakes getting this far, is finally starting to get their act together. I don’t want them to suddenly think: oh, here’s a time to get some real good gifts to some of our corporate sponsors.
I just think we have to be realistic.
What do you mean?
Well, I’m terrified they’re not going to be realistic. This is the same administration that said we could do everything for a couple billion dollars. And we’ll take a lot of that out of Ebola research, and we’ll take some of it out of low income heating.
We changed all that, with Republicans and Democrats coming together. Made it $8 billion-plus, which — at first the White House said we can’t accept that. And then as more stuff came in, the president jumped in and said, ‘Boy, look at this $8 billion package I put together. Isn’t this wonderful.’ Signing it wearing a campaign hat.
I mean, he can say he’s a wartime president. He can do all these things. That’s fine. Let him do all the symbolism. They can do the rhetoric. I want reality. And I don’t want us to waste a week or more or saying, ‘we have a Republican plan,’ or ‘we have a Democratic plan,’ neither one of which will go through. We’re going to have to have one where we can work together.
Given the time that you’ve been in the Senate, you’ve been through a number of national emergencies, whether it’s wars or weather events. How does this crisis compare to ones you’ve seen before?
I think of 9/11. 9/11, we had to all come together. On a personal level, during the anthrax attack, I was one of the five who got the anthrax letter. The one addressed to me was so deadly — the one I was supposed to receive — one person who handled it in the mailroom died. So that kind of focuses your attention.
But I also saw the whole Congress being stymied for a while. One of the buildings closed down. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this.
What is it about this that makes it so different?
Because we don’t know how it turns out. And we don’t know how much more there’s going to be. We don’t know how we protect against it in the future.
We know things we can try. We have to develop a vaccine the same way we do the flu. We will develop a vaccine, but it’s going to take a while. It’s not going to be done next week. Is there a coronavirus number two coming behind it? We don’t know.
We’re still vulnerable. We have to take steps to get breathing machines into the hospitals. We don’t have enough respirators. Look what they’re doing in at least one country. They’re saying, OK, you’re above a certain age and you have it. We can treat three; here, we have four who are sick. Who’s above the age? And bless you, we’ll give you the last rites. I mean, that’s not America. I don’t want us turned that way.
You have an earthquake. What’s the best response? ‘We’ll put in this, this and this, and they’re on their way.’ We have a virus and we don’t know how it’s going to develop. What’s our best response? That’s why I’m urging other senators, set aside your party labels. Listen to real people like Anthony Fauci and others.
Then you come to the problem, of course. Define how far you go and what is best. Everybody’s willing to do it. But I’m not about to say, ‘let’s have a couple special interests get a nice payout, and the rest of you? Hope you make it.’
