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Biden Says, Now is the Time to Go Big on COVID Relief Bill; Epic Winter Storm in Texas Bringing More Ice, Freezing Rain; Biden Says, I Want to Focus on the American People, Not Trump. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired February 17, 2021 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[11:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: President Biden is urging Congress to charge ahead with his massive COVID relief package. The question for Democrats right now, it seems to be, just how big to go and whether to include things like an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

During CNN's town hall last night, President Biden reiterated his support for the wage hike.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I do support a $15 minimum wage. I think there is equally as much, if not, more evidence to dictate that it would grow the economy and long-run and medium-run benefit small businesses as well as large businesses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Let me bring in right now Democratic Congressman from Michigan Dan Kildee. Congressman, thanks for coming in.

So, Biden, he said that last night, but President Biden has also admitted that he doesn't think that the wage hike is going to make it in the final bill. And then you have Senator Joe Manchin saying that he's not supporting anything that violates the Senate rule kind of in question when it comes to the minimum wage hike.

So I'm left wondering, Congressman, should it be taken out of the package now so it doesn't jeopardize the whole thing?

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): Well, I think we need to push for policy that we believe in. And I know the president believes in the $15 minimum wage, so do I, and we should push for it. I do think there's a question as to whether this will sort of pass muster in the Senate given the rules that apply to a reconciliation bill. That's a reality that we just have to face.

So I think what Senator Manchin is saying is he's expressing the same concern that the president is expressing, will this pass the test, and if it does, then, obviously, we want to pursue it. This is good policy, and I think, in the long term, it's good for the country. We should be pursuing it with every avenue we have.

BOLDUAN: It does look at the moment that this is moving ahead without any Republican support. And the Republican governor of Maryland, he said something that has stuck with me about why he believes bipartisanship is so important with this COVID relief package and also what he would say to Joe Biden about this directly. Listen to this.

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GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R-MD): I said to him, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And I said that I thought that it was good for his agenda over the next four years if he started out by getting some Republicans on board in a bipartisan way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Do you think it's important that this be bipartisan?

KILDEE: Well, I think we have to really think about what that means. It's bipartisan in the sense that Republicans across the country are supportive of it. So I understand the point that the governor is making. It's obviously better if we can get Democrats and Republicans on the same page.

But I think the challenge that we face right now is that in order to get Republican leadership support, which is really the question here, we have to accept a bill that is not enough to solve the problem the way we see it. So if we're going to adhere to any principle, the principle of bipartisanship is important, but more important is the principle that we ought to scale the response to the size of the problem.

Republicans across the country support that. It's just that Republicans in the leadership in the House and Senate have become so partisan, that even though their constituents want us to do this, they're not willing to sign on yet.

But let's see what happens when the vote is called. Let's see if some Republicans do join us. I still leave open that possibility.

[11:35:00]

BOLDUAN: Leave open that possibility because you know something or because hope springs eternal?

KILDEE: Well, hope definitely springs eternal. You can't do this job if you don't believe in hope. But I believe it's possible because of what I'm hearing from small business people, from independents and Republicans right here in my own district. They want us to get this package across the finish line because they know it's important.

And if I'm hearing that in my district, I believe my colleagues are hearing it as well and they're going to have to make a choice. You can't vote maybe when you go to the floor of the House. You have to vote yes or no. And I think the choice between doing this package or doing nothing is a choice that I'm not sure my Republican colleagues are going to want to explain when they go home.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you about what's going on with the Republican Party at the moment. Following the scathing speech that Mitch McConnell gave about Donald Trump after the Senate impeachment vote, Trump put out this lengthy statement attacking Mitch McConnell. One of just one line in it says, Mitch is a dour, sullen and smiling political hack. And if Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.

What did you think -- what do you think of this statement?

KILDEE: Well, I've been pretty critical of Mitch McConnell over the years, over the last few years because he has been such a cheerleader for Donald Trump. And what this shows is that in this cult of Trump, which has now gripped the Republican Party, if you cross him once, he attacks.

This ought to be a lesson -- this is really dangerous for any political party to become a cult around what Senator Sasse would say is just one dude. And he's not exactly the most stable person in American politics right now.

So I think it's a lesson for other Republicans, if you believe somehow you can continue to ride this Trump wave, this sort of 30 percent of the population that is somehow following him without question, it will come back and bite you. But more importantly, it's going to hurt the country.

I think one of the reasons we can't get bipartisan support going back to the previous question, the reason we can't get bipartisan support around this package is because political leaders in the House and the Senate are following Trump with few exceptions. But that doesn't mean that that's where the country is. And that's what I think is really frightening about this.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, thanks for coming on. I always appreciate it.

KILDEE: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, millions in Texas are still without power as dangerously cold temperatures are crippling the state's power grid, and they're now facing another ice storm battering parts of the state. We're going to have the very latest from the mayor of Austin.

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[11:40:00]

BOLDUAN: A crippling ice storm is hitting big portions of Texas right now. Just this morning, the National Weather Service in Austin is warning of nearly an inch of ice from freezing rain from San Antonio through Austin, areas that are already paralyzed from this historic winter weather that they've been seeing. Some 3.4 million customers are facing yet another day without power and heat, and growing frustration now at the people in charge of the state and the power -- and of the power grid who warn of even more outages to come.

All of this suffering in the midst of a pandemic, of course. So this is a weather issue, a power issue, a coronavirus issue and now, increasingly, a political issue.

Joining me right now is the mayor of Austin, Texas, Steve Adler. Mayor, thanks for coming on.

How are things going there right now?

MAYOR STEVE ADLER (D-AUSTIN, TX): Kate, good morning. Things are not going well. You just listed the series of plagues that are falling on us all at the same time. This weather and power issue has just put us over the top. I'm in a community right now that is scared, frustrated, confused, angry, and I am too.

We had up to 5 million people across the state without power. We still have about 3 million people without power. About a third of the customers in our city are without power right now, some for -- in excess of 50 hours. The state grid has failed us. We weren't ready for sustained weather of 18 below zero, but we need to be. These extreme weather conditions are happening much more frequently and we were not prepared.

BOLDUAN: Mayor, have you gotten any good idea of when the power will be fully restored for residents in your town? That seems to be the hardest thing for folks, it it's just we don't know.

ADLER: And we don't know. And the answer to that question is how soon the state can bring back online the power generation plants that are around the state. We don't have visibility to that here in Austin. What I'm hearing is, it could be that we don't get that generation back online until things thaw, and that could be Friday, that could be Saturday here in Texas.

[11:45:03]

BOLDUAN: That's too much to ask people -- that's too long to ask people to hold on in freezing temperatures with no power. I mean, I've already seen a number of reports of carbon monoxide poisonings in your town because folks are freezing and taking dangerous steps to try to protect themselves and their families. I mean, what are people to do?

ADLER: What absolutely horrific choices people are making, not in Austin, but in Houston. We get reports this morning of a mother and her daughter that died trying to stay warm in their car. We're telling people you can't do that. You can't heat up your house with your stove.

We're opening more and more warming stations and shelters in our city. We have people volunteering all over the city to drive people from an unsafe place to a more safe place. But understand our roads right now are iced over and dangerous.

Yes, we are asking people to do things that go beyond anything that we should be asking for. We're asking everybody in the city that has power to treat this as if they did not, to conserve, to lower their thermostats and lower them again, even if you have power, to use candles and flashlights.

This is a rough place we're in right now, and there's no guarantee of immediate relief.

BOLDUAN: It's really horrible. I mean, right now, what needs to be done is people need to just survive the next couple days, which is just the sad state of things. But then there's also the question of what the heck happened here and how can it be avoided.

In the midst of this emergency, the governor of the state, he went on Fox News last night and he thought in this moment it was a perfect opportunity to start back into the climate change debate, specifically saying that this bungled emergency response is proof that the Green New Deal would be a disaster. Let me play for you what he said.

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GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.

If the Biden administration is going to try to eradicate fossil fuels in the United States, every state is going to constantly have challenges like what America is seeing take place in Texas right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Never mind that a vast majority of the power that was wiped out was from natural gas and coal plants being knocked out. That's been fact checked a hundred times over. But, Mayor, I have to ask you, I know folks are looking to you for answers, but are you looking to the governor for answers? What is he doing? Is he at fault here?

ADLER: You know, at the state level, there's fault. And to reduce it to a conversation about renewable energy at this point in time is outrageous. The statement is not true to start off with. Most of the power outages that we have are the result of natural gas plants and coal plants, even nuclear. And to go -- that's classic Texas right now.

No, we want our governor focused on getting us power and on restarting the grid, to find out what it is with ERCOT that made this happen. My sense is, and we'll find out after the fact, that in Texas, the push for deregulation is so great where the only concern was trying to develop power as inexpensively as it could be done, there is no incentive at that point for people to do what it takes to be able to harden the system because it increases cost.

And I'm looking right now at deregulation. The state has to step in to set what the standards are for hardening our system so that they continue to function even in extreme situations. BOLDUAN: First and foremost, folks in your town, they need help and they need to survive the night. Thank you, mayor. Good luck.

ADLER: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, President Biden says that he's tired of talking about former President Trump. So, how is he going to turn the page?

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[11:50:00]

BOLDUAN: One message that President Biden tried to convey throughout last night's town hall on CNN is that he is ready to leave the talk of Donald Trump behind. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: For four years, all that's been in the news is Trump. The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people. I'm tired of talking about Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now, CNN's John Harwood. John, he made that very clear but he -- also that he didn't want to focus on Donald Trump anymore. But I did notice Biden did look back and make comparisons to the Trump administration several times throughout the night. I mean, what do you think of this attempt to turn the focus away, what do you think it looks like going forward?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you suggest, Kate, he wants to make comparisons that end up making him look good. So, that's why he has said, well, we didn't have any vaccines when we got here, there wasn't a plan, not exactly true. There was some vaccines and there was a plan. He may not like the plan and they try to make improvements of the plan. But that's the way in which he wants to use Donald Trump.

What he doesn't want to do is throw any logs on the fire of personal combat with Donald Trump, so he did not take the bait when he got a question from Anderson about, you know, what do you think of those Republican senators who weren't willing to stand up as he had hoped for to vote to convict Trump? And he said, I don't want to go there. He's trying to drain the negative energy out of politics, be as unifying as possible as he presents himself in his first month as president, and also as he tries to get this coronavirus package through the Congress. That's going to be the most important thing that determines the success of the first year of his presidency.

BOLDUAN: I'm interested in your take as well, because he really did -- this forum has long been one where he shines. He is very comfortable. He seems very comfortable in a town hall format, albeit even a socially distanced one.

[11:55:02]

I thought it was interesting that he revealed during last night that every single living president, except one, had reached out to him since taking office.

HARWOOD: Yes. We know who that is. It's Donald Trump. We had questions for Jen Psaki at her briefing about, are you going to tell us what was in that note that Donald Trump left you, because he said in the beginning he wasn't going to do that without consent from Trump. But, obviously, they haven't spoken. Donald Trump doesn't want to have that conversation, and Joe Biden's not going to look for it.

But, of course, the previous presidents, Carter, Obama and Clinton have reached out to him. And he's going to try to use them as allies.

BOLDUAN: They're the only people who know exactly what you're going through, that's for sure. It's good to see you, John. Thank you.

HARWOOD: You bet.

BOLDUAN: Coming up still, President Biden, he made more than one big promise last night. How is the administration going to follow through?

We'll be right back.

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