WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — President Joe Biden's domestic spending policy is still in question. Democrats can't agree on spending levels, let alone agreement with Republicans.
Tuesday afternoon, 13 ON YOUR SIDE'S Nick LaFave spoke with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh about the problems plaguing the Build Back Better plan.
Below is the full interview between 13 ON YOUR SIDE anchor Nick LaFave and Secretary Walsh, and got a reaction from Rep. Bill Huizenga for his thoughts on the issue:
Nick LaFave First question I have on this so far... build back better legislation has lost a lot of major Democratic pillars, paid family leave, free community college, dental and vision benefits for Medicare, lower prescription drug costs. My question for you is did the administration do you think simply try to go too far to the left with a Senate majority that, frankly, consists of the vice president?
Sec. Marty Walsh (D) Labor Dept. Yeah, no, I wouldn't say that. I would view it as a negotiation process. You know, obviously, when you start a bill, I was a legislator. And anytime I filed legislation, the bill never ended up the way I filed it. And I think that there was a lot in the beginning to put into the bill of kind of what we'd like to see happen. It's kind of sitting in agenda. It doesn't mean that the fact that some of that some of this investments recommended whether it's paid family leave, or some of the other things won't happen in this administration. All it simply means that there's going to be another process. And I think that when you think about this bill, when I think about this bill, it's a $1.75 trillion investment in American people, whether it's in child care, whether it's in health care, whether it's in you know, the environment, whether it's in job training, all these different areas. So I wouldn't necessarily say that because I think he can't view the legislative process as wins and losses by what's filed and what ends up being. What, what at the end of the day, it's about compromise and working together. And that's what I think we're seeing play out here is, is the legislative process working.
LaFave One of the things that is still in the bills, childcare access, expansion. And many people you see studies all the time to say it's one of the biggest barriers to getting people, particularly moms back into the workforce. Are you able to quantify what this bill could do for that and getting the labor shortage back up to speed?
Walsh Yeah, and this is kind of this is a tremendous investment in childcare. Anyone watching right now, that has kids will understand this many, many families, individuals, mothers or fathers. They're paying, you know, anywhere from 30, 40, 50% of their weekly salary for childcare. And quite honestly, lots of people are rethinking... Wait a second, why am I working for 50%, when I could actually take care of my children at home?... and because they don't have strong quality childcare. So this, this is definitely an opportunity to change, change for the American worker, it also invest in to be specific, any family's individual family earning under $300,000, will pay a max of 7%, for the childcare. So that that's number one. Number two would make an investment also in the workforce in childcare, and job training. And childcare is something that we haven't seen many childcare facilities will tell you that, you know, when they get a good staff person, oftentimes up, they love that person, that person stays with them for a couple years and leaves because it's only able to pay them, you know, 8, 9,10,12 bucks an hour, and then losing them to teaching and other things. So this is about increasing wages as well for workers. And then a compliment piece of this is also universal pre kindergarten. For three and four year olds, I did it in Boston, as mayor, I did four year old pre kindergarten, it was a game changer for 1000s of families. And I think that in so at the end of the day, you're creating a system that's a stronger system for childcare, but you're also getting a better system for our kids. So when they get into school, they're more prepared in the outcomes that studies have all shown. If you get you have universal pre kindergarten and good strong quality, high quality childcare, the outcomes for young people for their success in the future is so much better.
LaFave August, September, we had 560,000 jobs out of the United States. I do not think I'm putting words in your mouth when I say that's not good enough. Washington Post quoted economist Nick Bunker, he's with Indeed, he said, the return to the labor supply, normalcy will be a lot more gradual than many of us thought earlier this year. Do you see any reason to disagree with him on that?
Walsh No, you know, it's the complicated thing here for a lot of us and whether it's about jobs, creating jobs, or just around vaccines, or what have you. We've never lived through this experience before of living through a pandemic. And it is caused lots of concerns in lots of different areas. And I think that when we think about the job force workforce, you know, in the beginning, as we went to the pandemic, and we were getting to, you know, a year ago, we were thinking that the worksite would be different with the worksite be home with a worksite be a physical worksite. And now we're really evaluating the training, job training, workforce, evolving, people coming back people retiring, and lots of different factors. So I would agree with that statement. It's going to be gradual, and I think that we just have to continue to, to move forward here day to time and hopefully, you know, eventually Christmas season's coming. So I'm expecting I don't know if it'll reflect in this report. But I'm, I'm expecting more people coming back into the workforce. Companies are being creative companies are paying their employees more money, which is not a bad thing. They're incentivized to get people to go to work from so there is some work Apollo going on. And I think that that's not a bad thing in our country because For many, many years, workers have felt that they haven't been supported. And I think a lot of work is being supported right
LaFave Um, is there a breaking point on on this build back better legislation goes? I mean, we basically have two Democratic senators, it seems, who are holding things up. Is there a breakneck point when you would recommend to the president? Mr. President, we have to go back to we have to go back to to start over on this and come up with a with a bigger plan, or is this it? And we're going to get through what we can know, I...
Walsh I think, you know, lots of negotiation going on. The President himself has been sitting down with people, we haven't really seen that in generations of a president actually using his legislative skill to work towards peace legislation. I think that I don't think we go back, I think we continue to move forward, we have two very strong pieces of legislation that that makeover collectively over $3 trillion of investment in in the American people, whether it's in the physical infrastructure of our country, or the or the human infrastructure of our country and human industries in our country. So I think that we're close, we're on the verge of getting to getting this thing done. We just need to continue to stay moving forward. And and I think when we're done, I think we also have to explain to the American people exactly what this these bills will do to impact their life. I think a lot of people are very favorable towards these two bills in the poll number say that, but I don't think people understand how important these bills actually are for the future of our workforce and the future of our healthcare system in our physical infrastructure. So I think that hopefully, next time around with you, we're talking about the investments and how we're going to put them out there.
We then spoke with Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland). He very much thinks President Biden went too far, too fast... and missed an opportunity for bipartisanship with a smaller group of bills.
LaFave I talked with labor secretary Walsh this morning. And the first question I asked him to be perfectly blunt because of all of the Democratic things that they wanted in that had been cut. I said, did the President simply go bar to left on this with the Senate majority that consists of a vice president? He says, No, it's part of the bargaining process. What would you say to that?
Rep. Bill Huizenga (R) MI I think it's fairly evident that they went too far too fast. And they have members in their own party. And I'm not just talking Joe Manchin and Kiersten cinema in the Senate, these folks in the house are very quietly asking for things like a CBO score. They want to know what the actual costs are going to be. It's going to be closer to what we've been predicting, which is trillions dollars more than what they're saying it's going to be then then what what certainly then what the President's been saying is, it costs zero, nobody believes that. So I think they clearly have overplayed their hand, and they're scrambling right now.
LaFave Um, we talked briefly in the past, we do need bills like this, and we're just talking off camera about there are certain things that need to get done just for government to work. If Republicans were in charge right now, this is a hypothetical. So take it however you would like if you were helping to craft a build back better proposal coming out of the pandemic? What would you what do you currently like, if anything about what the Democrats have laid out? And what would you do differently if the Republicans were crafting? The similar theme to build with that type of name and goal to get us out of a pandemic?
Huizenga Yeah, well, I would separate two things, I would separate the infrastructure investments that need to happen from another, frankly, big government socialist spending bill. And that's really what they have the build back better. I've labeled it the buyback voters act. I mean, because it's throwing every, you know, wish list and and hypothetical that the Democrats have been talking about for the last four years into one big giant bill, that's very different than the bipartisan spending, which was significant, which was huge on the paycheck Protection Act, for example. And for the stimulus checks that went out and for so many other things. I mean, we've already spent trillions of dollars to help our economy emerge out of the pandemic, I would argue, in fact, in many ways, it's been the actions of government since then, like an extension of the unemployment, kicker the federal dollars that have been going in, that have slowed down our economic recovery. So we need to remove more of those barriers, get people back to work. And I really honestly don't think we need to spend the kind of money that the Democrats are talking about spending, even on the infrastructure, the infrastructure bill should be much smaller but half the size of what they're talking about, and and there would be massive bipartisan support for it.
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