Democrats wrangle over high-stakes agenda as crunch time approaches

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• Judy Woodruff:

  After finding ways to avoid fiscal crises in the past few weeks, Democrats on Capitol Hill are now in a crunch time for critical parts of their agenda.

  Our Lisa Desjardins joins us to talk about three high-stakes issues that seem to be at pivot points, the Build Back Better bill, immigration, and voting rights.

  So, hello, Lisa.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Hey.

• Judy Woodruff:

  A lot to keep track of, yes.

  So, Build Back Better, this has been a central part of the Biden agenda. Where does it stand?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Judy, Democrats wanted to get this through the Senate by Christmas, you will remember. It looks like there's a very slim chance, if any, that that will happen.

  As we stand, of course, now just a little over a week until Christmas, there is not a fully fledged bill yet, and there are not yet 50 senators on board.

  So, let's talk about the two scheduling problems that are important to know. First, one involves the Senate parliamentarian. As many of our viewers know, this bill must go through a process called reconciliation, which means it must show budgetary effect.

  Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian judges that. She, however, is recovering from a diagnosis of stage three cancer. And so, in addition to this being a difficult bill for her to render opinions on — behind closed doors, she's trying to give Democrats guidance — it has taken longer than usual because of her health.

  The second issue, Senator Joe Manchin. He has not yet signed on to the provisions of this bill. He is in meetings daily, sometimes, I'm told, hourly, on this. Everyone wants him to sign on. But he is not there yet.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, Lisa, we know that, in the past few days, a big item in this bill, a lot of discussion around the child tax credit. That's been hanging in the balance. Where does that stand?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  This is one of the issues that we heard from Senator Manchin this week.

  And I just said, everyone wants him to sign on. I should be clear. Every other Democrat essentially wants him to sign on. Republicans are happy for him to stay off of this bill.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Universally.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  That's right.

  The child tax credit is one of the larger goals of Democrats here. Many of our viewers remember that expands child tax credits to $3,000 to $3,600 per child — per child. But it runs out, Judy. And, in fact, it's due to run out. In fact, the last of those expanded checks went out this week.

  In Build Back Better, that would actually extend that. But Manchin has a problem with how it's funded. Let me explain how this works. He's looking at the total overall cost of the bill. If you look at what it costs right now, as it stands, it's about a $1.6 trillion bill, Build Back Better. That includes just one year of that expanded child tax credit.

• Joe Manchin says:

  I don't buy that math. I think we ultimately will try to extend it for 10 years, which is the main — usual length of the bill.

  If you do that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill's cost goes up to $3 trillion. So, Manchin is saying: I don't buy that we're just going to do these things for one year or two years. I want us to say we're going to pay for it the whole time or make sure we're not putting items on the table that are short-term.

  This is a major problem for Democrats to solve. Either they come up for a way to pay for it and bring Manchin board a larger bill, or they have to take the child tax credit out.

• Judy Woodruff:

  OK, a very different part of the bill that I want to ask you about, and that's immigration reform. This is something Democrats have also been pushing.

  Remind us what's at stake here. And what is the Democrats' proposal?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Millions of lives are at stake and, of course, many political dynamics as well.

  Let's start with what the proposal is in the current version of Build Back Better, what's being discussed. It's a parole status for millions of Americans who are — I'm sorry, not Americans, but millions of undocumented immigrants who arrived by 2011.

  It would be a status that they could have for five years and renew for up to 10. It is not a path to citizenship, not a green card. That's something immigration advocates wanted. It is not in here. It is estimated by progressive groups that it would help about seven million. CBO says six million, so millions of people.

  This would be a status that many people have sought. What is not in this version immigration is a path to citizenship for dreamers, so-called DACA recipients, who came here as children, TPS, or temporary protected status individuals, who are here because of disasters in their country.

  Our producer Saher Khan spoke to those people, DACA recipients, and TPS recipients, about their mixed feelings about this bill, what their immigration status means right now here in America.

  Let's listen.

• Ivonne Diaz, DACA Recipient:

  My name is Ivonne Diaz. I'm 33 years old.

• Rajbin Shrestha, DACA Recipient:

  My name is Rajbin Shrestha. I'm 44 years old.

• Efrain Leal Escalera, DACA Recipient:

  My name is Efrain Leal Escalera. I am 32 years old. I reside in Denver, Colorado.

• Daishi Miguel Tanaka, DACA Recipient:

  Hi. My name is Daishi Miguel Tanaka. I am 24 years old and have been in the U.S. since I was 6 years old.

• Eva Santos Veloz, DACA Recipient:

  My name is Eva Santos Veloz. I am a Dominican DACA recipient. I have lived in the Bronx, New York, for over 23 years now.

  I have DACA for seven years, and which I'm thankful for the program and what it has given me, is that it hasn't been enough. Like, I lost my job twice because, look, I haven't gotten the renewal in time. And it's been hard to explain to my children and being able to survive, let's say, five, six months without a job.

• Yoliswa Khumalo Hadebe, DACA Recipient:

  My name is Yoliswa Khumalo Hadebe. And I'm 34 years old. I am a New Yorker born in Natal in South Africa. I have been here since I was 3 years old.

  I know that the popular narrative around DACA is, it's dreamers and it's youth. However, everyone grows up. And so I think the fact that even the first DACA recipients who were these youthful teenagers and early 20 years are now in their 30s and wanting to buy homes and figure out 401(k)s and how that even works.

  I think that speaks to how actually long we have been waiting for a solution that's going to actually impact and shift our lives.

• Rajbin Shrestha:

  TPS being a temporary status, every year-and-a-half, they need to renew our status. And the Trump administration actually canceled our TPS. And, right now, it's still in litigation, and the government has been temporarily extending our status.

• Efrain Leal Escalera:

  It's a tricky situation to think about this Build Back Better bill and the provisions in it and trying not to feel disillusioned or disappointed with how things are headed.

• Eva Santos Veloz:

  We know that this will benefit a lot of people, like my family, like my parents that are undocumented, and millions of other immigrants. It will definitely help us. But, ultimately, it's not a pathway to citizenship.

• Rajbin Shrestha:

  It's not even clear whether we will be receiving work permits for the entire length of five years. And it still does not take away that cloud of uncertainty that TPS has over us. And what is even more scarier is, since it's very temporary, you could have another opposing administration come in and just cancel it right off the back.

• Efrain Leal Escalera:

  If I look at it in increments of eight to 10 years, it's definitely an improvement to the two-year and recently the one-year work authorization.

• Eva Santos Veloz:

  It is not enough. We are going — it's going to be — many of us, in the next 10 years, are going to be again in the grips of deportation.

• Ivonne Diaz:

  My dad had a terrible accident. He fell off a roof. And he couldn't work anymore.

  But my DACA expired a month later after that, so I was let go without a job for a month. And it was really devastating. I was lost. I was in fear. And that was just a reminder that that DACA is not permanent. And the same way that they're going to do that with that parole with the Build Back Better, it's not going to be a permanent solution for us.

• Daishi Miguel Tanaka:

  It's going to be very disappointing if there is no immigration provision at all in this package.

  My late grandfather, he petitioned for my mom and my parents some years back. And so we are in this backlog. And, thankfully, in the bill, there is a — visa recapture provisions that would help speed up the processing, so people — so folks like myself, with a pending petition, don't have to wait decades.

  I'm hoping that that — one — that becomes one of the provisions that makes it in the bill at the end, and so we don't walk away with nothing.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  There, you hear those mixed sentiments there.

  Right now, TPS and DACA recipients, the only thing for them in this bill is some expanded financial aid for higher education. But you hear them saying: We're adults now. And we're concerned about these very large categories of people that Congress has not addressed.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Lisa, we also heard that last young man say that they could end up with nothing. There could be nothing in the bill. Where does it stand?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  This is one of those provisions that I think will just come down to the very final call by the Senate parliamentarian.

  Again, to do this, it has to show a budgetary effect. And this idea of parole, giving a status to many undocumented immigrants, they would be charged a fee. That's a budgetary effect. But is that enough for the Senate parliamentarian to say it should go through? We're going to be watching this day by day as the parliamentarian reaches a decision.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Lisa, we can't talk about all of what's going on without talking about voting rights.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And your reporting is that this — that voting rights and filibuster reform still being hotly debated in these final days.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Senate Democrats, amid all this, had an intense lunch today. That word was used, intense. And it was focused on voting rights.

  I want to talk about what's been going on in the last couple of weeks. There's been a sense that time is running out to pass voting rights reform.

  And I want to play some sound that we heard from the floor. There's a real dispute over what is best for democracy right now. Is it to change the rules of the U.S. Senate to pass voting rights, or is it to not change the rules?

  First, let's hear from Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who says, yes, it's time to change the rules.

• Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA):

  So, when colleagues in this chamber talk to me about bipartisanship, which I believe in, I just have to ask, at whose expense? Who is being asked to foot the bill for this bipartisanship?

  And is liberty itself the cost?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  That idea — the bipartisanship is the idea of the filibuster, which, of course, allows a minority in the Senate to rule the Senate, because you need 60 votes generally in order to break a filibuster.

  Now, the two reasons the filibuster rule is intact are Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Kyrsten Sinema very strong on this point.

  I want to read a statement that she her office gave me about why she thinks it should stay in place to defend democracy. Here's what she wrote. This is from her office: "Senator Sinema continues to support the Senate's 60-vote threshold to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy, which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions and further erode Americans' confidence in our government."

  So here you see voting itself at stake, and the Senate as an institution at stake, and Democrats wrestling over, what do we need to do? Do we change the rules to, in our view, protect voting, or do we protect the institution? And does that protect democracy?

  Right now, the truth is, though, Judy, Democrats do not have the votes to change the filibuster rules. But my sources tell me people involved, they are trying to convince Manchin — and he seems to be listening, they say — to perhaps changing the rules, so that there's a talking filibuster, for example, make it harder to filibuster.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, we know you're going to continue to watch this and all of it.

  Lisa Desjardins, thank you.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  You're welcome.