Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Labor Shortage?; White House Urges Younger People to Get Vaccinated; Republicans Set to Oppose Voter Reform Bill. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired June 22, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:39]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

We begin with what's expected to be a major blow for Democrats and their efforts to protect voting rights. This afternoon, Senate Republicans are set to oppose an effort to even debate the For the People Act.

BLACKWELL: Now, most Democrats argue the bill is necessary to counter Republicans' efforts to restrict voter access at the state level across the country.

At least 14 states have passed some of those laws, all of it driven by the lies that there was mass fraud in the 2020 election and that Donald Trump actually won.

OK, so we're expecting the Senate vote in the 5:00 Eastern hour, a few hours out from now. It will also be a test of Democratic unity.

CAMEROTA: Democrats are hoping to keep their caucus unified, but moderate Joe Manchin has yet to announce how he will vote today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Senator, Senator Manchin, are you going to support this bill today?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): We're still -- we're still waiting. You're talking about the voting rights bill.

RAJU: Yes.

MANCHIN: We're waiting to see the final, OK?

QUESTION: The final? I mean, it's going to be the vote on the...

MANCHIN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. No, I got to make sure that we're going to move to a better compromise.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CAMEROTA: All right, CNN's Ryan Nobles joins us now from Capitol Hill.

So, Ryan, what's going to happen this afternoon?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are almost 100 percent sure that this bill is going to be blocked by Senate Republicans.

It would require 10 Republicans to vote with Democrats in order to move the bill forward. And Republicans have been very specific in their stated opposition to the For the People Act.

And I guess the big question that we're waiting to see later this evening is what Senator Joe Manchin is going to do. He continues to dither as to whether or not he supports this bill and whether or not there will be 50 Democrats that actually vote yes for the legislation, even though it's not going to go anywhere.

And this is an example of a bill that has sharp divisions between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats consider it one of their top priorities, and Republicans are dead set against it.

Listen to how both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell talked about the legislation this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Later today, the entire country will see whether our Republican friends are willing to even debate this issue in broad daylight. They don't even want to debate it because they're afraid.

They want to deny the right to vote, make it harder to vote for so many Americans, and then they don't want to talk about it. They would sweep it under the rug and hope that Americans don't hear about it. But Americans will hear about it.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to advance Democrats' transparently partisan plan to tilt every election in America permanently in their favor.

By now, the rotten inner workings of this power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light. The Senate is only an obstacle when the policy is flawed and the process is rotten.

And that's exactly why this body exists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: So this once again leads back to a question about the legislative filibuster.

And the reason that Republicans are able to block this legislation is because Democrats refuse to break the filibuster up. And for a long time, we have pinned all of this on just Joe Manchin, but there's really a wider group of Senate Democrats that just don't want to take that step.

We saw Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona pen an op-ed in "The Washington Post" yesterday, where she said even voting rights is not worth the long-term consequences of breaking up the filibuster. There could be as many as four or five other Senate Democrats that feel the same exact way.

What that means, Victor and Alisyn, is that this voting rights bill really has no chance of passing in the United States Congress, at least in the foreseeable future. And there could be long-term consequences to how progressives, particularly in the House of Representatives, respond when there are bipartisan pieces of legislation like infrastructure, for instance, that they will need those votes in the House of Representatives.

So this is a very important vote later today.

BLACKWELL: Indeed, it is.

Ryan Nobles, we, of course, will watch it closely. Thanks so much.

Joining us now, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. She is now on a bus, has been on a bus tour voting for -- pushing for voter protection measures.

LaTosha, thanks for coming back.

Listen, it was seven months of the lies of mass fraud and that the president won. Now the day comes to protect voting rights, and the vote is going to fail.

[14:05:08]

What do you feel about what's happening and what do you do now?

LATOSHA BROWN, CO-FOUNDER, BLACK VOTERS MATTER: Yes, it makes me very, very sad.

I wish it was just a seven-month fight. This has been a 57-year fight. No, more than that. It's actually been hundreds of years, here, where we're talking about democracy, that America that touts itself as being a democratic society, a democratic nation, and black voters in this country continue to see an assault, that whenever we participate in the vote, what we're seeing is these punitive measures of what we're seeing now.

This isn't a question around partisanship. Republicans are trying to make this be a partisan issue. In fact, this is not really about a left agenda or a right agenda. This is about a people's agenda. Every single citizen has agency and should have the ability to participate in a process that is fair and just and equitable.

And so, right now, what we're doing, even on our bus tour, as we're going to talk to communities, whether it's rural communities or urban communities, people are fired up, people are angry, because now here we are, 57 years past the Voting Rights Act, and we're still debating this question of whether protecting voting rights is something substantial enough for us to literally focus on in this country, when, in fact, it is the foundation of democracy.

CAMEROTA: LaTosha, one of the ironies here is that Senator Joe Manchin wasn't comfortable with how expansive the For the People Act was. So he came up with his own compromise. Some of them were the very things that Republicans have said since the election that they want, voter I.D. laws, no sort of unintended ballot boxes, drop boxes, things like that.

And they won't even debate it. What does that tell you that, today, they -- it looks like they don't even want to debate these issues?

BROWN: It tells you that they're not serious about it, that they're never intending or they ever had the intention to plan to vote for voting rights.

In fact, they have been the architects of voter suppression, all the bills that we're seeing across -- sweeping across this nation currently, even in Georgia, that has been architect and created by Republicans.

Just on Friday in the state of Georgia, the secretary of state has said that he plans to drop 100,000 voters or purge them from the voting rolls. In addition to that, they have already started abusing their power. And now, with the new law vote, suppression law in the state of Georgia, they're dropping the voter registrars from the election boards in the state.

And Fulton County is one of them. And so what we're seeing is an all- out attack on voters in this country. When is America really going to be the nation, the democracy that is spelled out in the Constitution? We have to allow ourselves to push back on this. This is not a partisan issue.

This is an issue about our civil rights, about voting rights. How can we strengthen this democracy that all people, whether they're Republican or Democrat or libertarian, have free and equal access to the ballot? That is the real fundamental question. And Republicans are saying -- they're saying consistently that that's not what they believe in.

They do not fundamentally value the principles of democracy.

BLACKWELL: So, we know -- you mentioned Republicans and their value on the purpose of principle of democracy -- that Democrats could pass this legislation with just Democratic votes.

But there are two senators who are publicly reconfirming that they oppose changing the filibuster.

I want to read something to you that one of them, Kyrsten Sinema, wrote for "The Washington Post." She said: "To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act, voting rights legislation I support and have co-sponsor, I would ask, would it be good for our country if we did only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter I.D. law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?"

To that, you say what?

BROWN: To that, I say that she is literally using talking points. She doesn't fundamentally believe in that, because the matter at hand is, let's do the right thing right now. Let's pass this legislation, For the People Act.

She hasn't even come out and said that she supports it. Matter of fact, she said she doesn't support it. So it's disingenuous for her to put that in the statement that in some ways that she's concerned about it and that's why she doesn't want to do it.

And then the second thing, she's affected very differently. As an African-American, as a woman who grew up in Selma, Alabama, that I know people and families that paid their lives, that were on the bridge that day in Selma, Alabama, being beat for the right to vote.

For her to not understand or even really understand the sacredness of voting and how black people have had to fight for the right to vote, it's actually disrespectful and disingenuous.

CAMEROTA: LaTosha, we only have about 30 seconds left, but you sound very fired up. I mean, you don't sound demoralized.

But when you see this map that we just put up moments ago of the 14 states that have already passed -- and there are other states that are in the process of passing restrictive voting rights bills, and then, federally, it appears nothing is going to happen to stop it, I mean, where do you get the energy to keep going? And what will you do next?

[14:10:06]

I mean, it feels like, when we look at this map, it's a losing battle.

BROWN: No, we will not stop.

We who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes. We're doing the Freedom Ride. We will be on the road all week. We believe that really the power of this country is with the people and that we're engaging folks. We're meeting people all along the route that said they're -- we're not going to stop.

We're going to hold folks accountable. And so, even if it does not pass this week -- and we're expected -- we're expecting the Democrats to step up and pass this and to show up just as we showed up for them.

But in the event that it does not, we will continue to really even go more focused on our fight. We will have voting rights in this country. We're going to make democracy be real, and not just a propaganda saying that, if we have to drag this nation in doing so.

CAMEROTA: LaTosha Brown, we really appreciate...

BROWN: We believe in our humanity and our right...

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: We hear you. And we appreciate you taking time out of your bus tour to talk to us. Thanks so much.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, LaTosha.

CAMEROTA: OK, so the U.S. will likely fall short of President Biden's vaccination goal, 70 percent of all adults to be partially vaccinated by July 4.

And although the president has not publicly acknowledged that shortfall, a top White House coronavirus official is pivoting now to a new milestone, that the U.S. has met the 70 percent mark for all adults 30 years or older.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: Where the country has more work to do is particularly with 18-to-26-year-olds.

The reality is, many younger Americans have felt like COVID-19 is not something that impacts them. And they have been less eager to get the shot. However, with the Delta variant now spreading across the country, and infecting younger people worldwide, it's more important than ever that they get vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is with us now.

Elizabeth, listen, we have been talking for some time about how younger people are not enthused about getting the vaccine. What do we know about the White House, what they're doing to try to get young people to focus?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, I think this is really a bit of a conundrum, because younger people have been resistant to the vaccine.

And I think at first it was thought that it wouldn't necessarily be all that difficult for President Biden to meet his July 4 goal. So let's take a look at what that goal is, or kind of was. They're sort of backing away from it a bit now, not by much, but by a bit.

So, if we take a look at this, the goal was to have 70 percent of U.S. adults to receive at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by July 4. The CNN projection is, it's going to be a little bit less than that, not much, a little bit, 67 to 68 percent. And that 70 percent will be by the end of July. And I think, right now, the CDC and others are trying to figure out

how to fix this graphic that I am about to show you. In the middle of April, interest in vaccine was very high. A lot of those people were senior citizens who, rightly so, very, very scared of COVID-19.

Then it went down, down, down, down, and you see where we are now. It really is, I think great minds are trying to figure out, how do we convince young people they need to get this? Because, first of all, young people do get very sick sometimes from COVID-19, and it can kill them. And also they can spread it to older people, to people who are more vulnerable.

So I think that this is going to be the big challenge moving forward, especially when we start the new school year, which isn't -- I know it's only June. But schools do start up in a lot of -- much of the country in early August. How are they going to convince the 12-to-17- year-old group that they need to get vaccinated or those parents that they need to vaccinate those children?

CAMEROTA: Elizabeth, let's talk about the Delta variant. We're seeing it surge in some low vaccination areas.

And one hospital CEO is now sounding the alarm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE EDWARDS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, COXHEALTH: We have seen now in four-and-a-half weeks almost a sixfold increase in COVID patients. So we were sitting around 14. We're at 83 this morning.

It appears to be related to the Delta variant. We began to get news of the Delta variant about five weeks ago .Maybe three or four weeks ago, it was maybe 10 percent of those isolates that were sequenced. And as of last week, it appeared to be 90 percent.

So I think it's the Delta variant. And there's a lot of kindling with low vaccination rates. So it's spreading very rapidly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Is that what we're seeing around the country?

COHEN: Various places in the country are seeing more and more of this Delta variant. That's the variant that was first spotted in India.

And this is a very problematic variant. Its transmission is quite high. It's 60 percent higher than the Alpha variant, which is the variant that was first spotted in the U.K. And that one was higher than the variants that preceded.

So these variants are getting smarter and smarter. They're transmitting faster and faster. And there is some evidence that this new Delta variant can make people sick or make you more likely to end up in the hospital.

[14:15:01] So this hospital system in Missouri, it's a large hospital system. And they're saying, look, we might have to start diverting patients who have COVID to other hospitals, because we're starting to feel overrun.

So, while everything is getting so much better in the United States, all the numbers are so much better in so many ways, we have to remember. We have to be humble. These variants can really prove to be a challenge. And we need to keep in mind that we need to keep doing all the things we should be doing, number one, to get vaccinated.

BLACKWELL: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.

All right, right now, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, he is on Capitol Hill answering questions about the state of the economic recovery and these fears of inflation.

Also, we will tell you why many workers are saying that there's never been a better time to look for a job.

CAMEROTA: And a major moment in NFL history. A defensive lineman with the Las Vegas Raiders becomes the first active NFL player to announce that he's gay. How he could help save lives.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:20:31]

CAMEROTA: Happening now on Capitol Hill: Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell is testifying about the feds' response to the pandemic.

These are live pictures you're looking at. We also expect him to respond to fears of inflation, which are -- basically, inflation is at a 13 year high right now. Powell says inflation suggests the economy is seeing healthy growth and the uptick is temporary.

But let's talk about worker shortages. We have all seen the proliferation of help wanted signs in retail stores, and experienced much longer waits at our favorite restaurants than usual, because they're understaffed.

In April, four million people quit the work force, according to the Labor Department. So what is the solution to the vast worker shortage?

Let's bring in CNN economics and political commentator Catherine Rampell and Neil Bradley. He is the executive vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Great to have both of you.

Catherine, it is a real workers market right now. I mean, the idea that four million people quit their jobs in April, are they right? Is that the right calculation, that they will be able to do better at a different job?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think it shows that people feel -- people feel confident that they have other opportunities out there.

If you look at surveys from a few months ago, there were a lot of workers who said that they expected to be changing their field or changing their occupation. And it looked like that was of necessity, right? If you were a retail worker or a restaurant staffer, maybe you would have to change industries because there were no opportunities.

Now it looks like it's a sign of optimism, that people are saying, hey, the guy down the street is offering a hiring bonus or higher wages. Or maybe I don't like the industry that I'm in. I don't like working in -- at a Burger King or something like that. Maybe I can find something that pays better elsewhere that wants me because there are these worker shortages.

So it does seem like this is a sign of optimism. This is a sign that employers are bidding up wages because they're trying to get this scarce labor. And it's for -- because of a number of different factors, right?

I mean, the quit stuff, I don't think you can really blame on unemployment benefits, for a number of reasons, including that you can rarely get jobless benefits...

CAMEROTA: If you quit.

RAMPELL: ... if you quit, except under very select circumstances.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

RAMPELL: So there's a lot of stuff going on here that said suggests employers need workers and workers' preferences are changing.

CAMEROTA: OK, so, Neil, that brings us to you.

So the worker shortage is real. And here on this show, we have talked a lot about how maybe it was the enhanced unemployment benefits that were a disincentive. Maybe it was that there were so many childcare needs, with kids not in full-time school. But there's another thing that we don't talk about enough. And that's immigration.

And there were caps on legal immigration under the Trump administration. And is that what's coming home to roost now?

NEIL BRADLEY, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Well, you're exactly right. It's all of those factors.

So if you think back the last year, not only did we have caps on immigration, but because of the pandemic, we restricted the number of people entering the country under those caps. So we're at record low levels of individuals coming into the United States, even for temporary work.

So, go to a resort community or a community pool, you would normally find young people here on a temporary J-visa helping staff those facilities, and they're just not here.

And so all of these things are compounding together to really create this worker shortage crisis.

CAMEROTA: And, Neil, what it has to be done now to solve this?

BRADLEY: Well, because there's not one single cause, there's not one single solution.

So we believe that getting rid of the $300 enhanced benefits does make a difference. We actually polled the unemployed, and we said -- these are people who were working before the pandemic who lost their job during the pandemic, but have yet to return. And we asked them, what's holding you back?

Sixteen percent of them told us that the enhanced unemployment benefits meant that they didn't feel the need to look for work. For others, it was the lack of affordable childcare. For others, it was a continuing concern about COVID.

But here's the most alarming thing that they told us; 17 percent of those who had a job before and who lost it said they don't anticipate going back into the work force before the end of this year. And 13 percent said they never expect to come back.

If those numbers hold out to be even be partially true, we're going to have a long-term worker shortage crisis in this country.

CAMEROTA: Catherine, how can they do that? How can they just never go back or not go back for the rest of the year?

RAMPELL: I think it would be very difficult for a lot of workers to be able to sustain that choice, because, technically, they would not be eligible for their unemployment benefits any longer if they are offered a job and they turn it down.

[14:25:10]

Now, how often that is enforced varies a lot from state to state. I think there are going to be a lot of workers who are reassessing what their priorities are in terms of their jobs, and they may be holding off on taking a job until they have really found the thing that they absolutely want.

I don't think it's necessarily that people are saying, hey, I can sit at home and eat bonbons all day, and I will go back to work when I feel like it. I think people can afford to be a little choosier when it comes to what occupation they're in, what boss they decide to work for, and how much money they make and what their work-life balance looks like.

And that's particularly at the lower end of the market, where these unemployment benefits make a bigger difference. You also see a lot of people who are middle wage or higher wage who I think are also reassessing their options who are not necessarily living it up because their unemployment benefits really have replaced what they were earning before.

CAMEROTA: And very quickly, Neil, the Biden administration is changing the Trump caps on seasonal or even skilled workers in terms of immigration.

BRADLEY: They are. And we applaud them for doing that. They're doing about as much as they can within the law. We actually need Congress to go farther.

So, at the U.S. Chamber, we have called on Congress in the administration to double the level of employment-based visas and immigration into the United States. If we don't do -- take those type of bold steps, we're going to continue to have this crunch that holds back our economy.

CAMEROTA: Catherine Rampell and Neil Bradley, thank you very much for all the information. Really helpful -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: So, one NFL player says that he would rather retire than be forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

From the vaccine debate to gay representation, even gun violence, players are making the news this week.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:30:00]