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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and as we continue to bring you your elected officials from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joined us now for her monthly visit to the show. Thanks as always, senator. Welcome back to WNYC.

Kirsten: Thanks so much. I'm delighted to be on.

Brian: Let me ask you first on behalf of so many people in our area who are struggling financially because of the pandemic and caught in limbo by the politics, what's the latest on the coronavirus relief bill negotiations?

Kirsten: It's something that's been really frustrating for all of us because our state as you know is struggling. We need more money for our state, more money for local governments, our cities, we need money for food, food assistance, and childcare and more money for housing, as well as the unemployment insurance. It's very distressing because Mitch McConnell wants to focus only on what he wants.

He's going to offer two bills this week, a stand-alone bill that's for small businesses and then his skinny package, which unfortunately is focused on liability protection for big businesses that don't necessarily follow COVID protections. These two bills are unlikely to be acceptable to most senators, most Democrats at least, and it doesn't have the relief we need for the childcare, the food, the housing, and more money for unemployment insurance and it doesn't have any state or city money. It's not adequate and it's frustrating.

Now, Nancy Pelosi is working with Mnuchin behind the scenes and they may have negotiated another day or two to try to get a smaller version of what the house passed in May. The Heroes Act was our state-of-the-art bill of all the things our state needs and the country needs to recover with money, for contact tracing, for testing, to have a national testing strategy, to have resources for vaccines.

That bill, we could shorten the time horizon on it and make it smaller and that's what speaker Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin are working on. If they can produce something, then maybe we can get that through the house and Senate but again, McConnell seems so set in his ways and only wants to have his skinny bill.

Brian: Let me drill down on those negotiations a little bit. Here is Nancy Pelosi over the weekend on how she sees the Republican leadership, either trying to sabotage the House bill that they've sent over or make a toothless in some important respects.

Nancy Pelosi: They changed shall to may, requirements to recommendations, a plan to a strategy, not a strategic plan.

Brian: Can you elaborate on any of that? Like when the speaker says the Republicans changed shall to may, or to recommendations, is that pandemic-related?

Kirsten: Yes, those are the kinds of changes that all of us want. One of the biggest failures of president Trump is from the beginning he never used the lever of the federal government effectively to prevent the pandemic or to nip it in the bud. He could have used the Defense Production Act to insist that the US could produce all the masks, all the reagents, all the swabs, all the testing materials that we have to get from other countries, and get it done here so they would never be any shortages.

We've seen kids go back to school who didn't have the access to a task, staff who don't have access to tests, and backlogs where sometimes it can take several days to get your test results back. That's problematic because then you can't do the contact tracing as effectively as you might otherwise and really you can't prevent the spread. When speaker Pelosi is talking about changing something from shall to may, what she's saying is these strategies that could protect the country are being undermined by what they're trying to reduce or try to water down. There won't be a strategy just like there isn't one now. There's no mandatory strategy for contact tracing and testing across the country.

There's no safety net created so all kids can get tested before they go back into a school building. It's just not done in a way that's effective. That's, I'm sure why speaker Pelosi is so frustrated because we all know the only way through this is through contact tracing and testing and gearing up the production here in the United States to protect our communities and then to also invest in these vaccines and make sure when they are produced, that they're produced safely and they're given to everyone.

I think that's why she's frustrated. I am particularly frustrated because every state needs state money and the fact that McConnell has been so against it from the beginning just shows he has no empathy. He lacks empathy on helping people, the frontline workers. If you don't have money coming to our state, the first people you're going to fire are frontline workers, the people who are the ones who are protecting us in our communities.

We also would have to stop funding the social safety net. The money that we put into homeless shelters, the money we put into domestic violence shelters, the money we do to subsidize daycares, all of that gets reduced drastically if you don't get money into our cities and states. McConnell's been a disappointment during this entire pandemic and I don't see that necessarily changing in the next couple of weeks.

Brian: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with us. I see you're rolling out a new bill to help restaurant owners survive this true existential crisis for their industry but to get back into the negotiations, the Republicans say there are bipartisan areas of agreement. You mentioned McConnell has what he calls a skinny bill, bipartisan areas of agreement like on immediate aid to small businesses and general relief checks. Respond to his challenge. Why not come yes on what you can and deal with the rest next month, depending on who wins the election?

Kirsten: Well I can get to, yes on the common ground that's put forward. We can get to yes on more money for small businesses, more federal unemployment to money, and more money for testing, contact tracing, and vaccine development and distribution. Those are the common ground areas, but what McConnell's doing, which he does all the time is he puts in poison pills.

He'll put in this liability protection that says no one could ever sue an employer even if they're making you work in a meatpacking plant with no PPE, with no spacing, with no social distancing, with no masks and that's the problem. He sticks in a poison pill that his members will vote for so they can look like they're participating and helping, but it's so anathema to what we believe in and we're not willing to do that.

The other challenge with going along with McConnell is if he has a very skinny bill, let's say its $500 billion package, that he will never vote for something bigger down the line. Getting the money for the cities and states will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happen. That's the reality of negotiating with McConnell. He doesn't do it in good faith and he never wants to fund the cities and the states.

We give into him where he does have pressure, which is the unemployment and the small businesses that he will never actually deliver for the states and the cities and the food stamps and the housing assistance and the daycare assistance, all of which is necessary. I've been going to food banks all across our state, Brian, all five boroughs cities, all through upstate New York and Long Island. I can tell you, families do not have enough food to eat right now, because if you've been unemployed all summer long and now into the fall, any safety net you had, any savings is gone. If we don't get relief into the hands of these people, sooner than later, it's going to be a disaster, a real humanitarian disaster. I just don't think McConnell's negotiating in good faith.

Brian: I'm curious how you see the race for the Senate in the context of all of that. In our last segment, we were talking with Susan Glasser from The New Yorker about how even Senator John Cornyn in Texas, as he runs for re-election and Senator Ben Sasse in Nebraska, as he runs for re-election distancing themselves from the president right now. I'm not sure that either of those seats are genuinely in play, but the numbers I'm seeing, that control of the Senate could swing to the Democrats or might not swing to the Democrats. I'm curious if there's any state that you're particularly keeping your eye on from New York.

Kirsten: There are so many great races around the country and I do believe if we stay on this trajectory and everyone keeps helping and helps get out the vote and do all the work we are all promising to do between now and Election Day, I think we can flip the Senate and then we can govern. I think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can win. What I'm looking at are seats that would normally be really red or purple that are ahead right now. Places like Arizona with Mark Kelly, he is ahead. Sarah Gideon is ahead in Maine.

We have really good progress in Iowa, Theresa Greenfield. We are ahead in North Carolina. We are neck and neck in a bunch of places. We're ahead in Colorado I forgot that one, way ahead in Colorado, but we're neck and neck in Texas, like MJ Hegar is doing a great job against John Cornyn so we're close there. We're close in places like Georgia and even Alaska. These are races that we think we can win.

We can win in Montana, we've had polls where we're just one or two points up or down. These are the tight, tight races that if people work hard, we can win. There's a couple of long shots that are actually closing their gaps super-fast, like Barbara Bollier in Kansas and she's a former physician. She's incredibly smart. They just elected a female Democrat as a governor there. That's a possibility that people didn't think about and that's exciting.

I just think these candidates are strong and they have a vision for the country. We, as New Yorkers can amplify our voices and export our values by supporting these candidates. I'm excited about them. Then we have one incumbent who is a really tight race, Doug Jones. Helping him keep that seat is also a high priority. The other three that are running that have popular states, they're all doing well. We're doing well and I'm excited. I think people are rejecting Trump's failures in healthcare. I think they are willing to support candidates so that we have a governing body.

Brian: You mentioned so many States there, you mentioned Georgia, which is a particularly interesting state where two US Senate seats could even flip in the next few weeks from Republican to Democrat. Georgia is so interesting right now. I assume you'll vote no on Amy Coney Barrett, but is there any way to delay the final Senate vote just one week until after Election Day, which if there is a Democratic sweep of the white house and Senate would change the politics of confirming her, I imagine?

Kirsten: Well, the truth is there are procedural ways we can push back, but I think if Mitch wants to hold this vote, he's going to hold this vote. We don't have the power to stop a vote. I don't think we have the power to delay it past the election either. If he wants to stay in session until the election, he can get that vote in even if we use every bit of time, Democrats are allowed to use to debate it. I believe that the American people deserve to have a voice in this election. I think having this vacancy filled right before an election is wrong, but we can hold them accountable at the ballot box. That's exactly what everybody should be focused on.

We had a chance to be heard all across this country to voice our concerns that this was a horrible instance of Mitch McConnell abusing the process. Not only did he deny a vote on Merrick Garland for Barack Obama and that was in March, but now he's ramming through a vote in October, also in an election year. He's just not honest. Unfortunately, he is a master manipulator and he's using all those skills now to again, force another right-wing ultra-conservative justice.

Brian: I don't know if you're one of the Democratic senators who has met with Judge Barrett, but do you get any sense that she is embarrassed by how her nomination is being pushed through under these circumstances with the election going on? She's trying to project a judicial reasonableness and detachment when she talks, but she's acquiescing to being the vehicle for this paragraph. Do you get any sense that she's embarrassed by the context of her nomination?

Kirsten: I'm not sure. I would not meet with her because I think the process is wholly illegitimate and I don't know what type of person she actually is, but I think it is embarrassing to be part of this process and to feign ignorance, I think is not honest, but I don't know. That's something we're going to see in time, but it's incredibly disappointing and frankly infuriating because they've really harmed the process of naming justices.

Mitch has been doing this for a while so it shouldn't be a surprise. When he changed the vote threshold for a Supreme Court justice from 60 to 51, that was a radical shift in the way the Senate operated and the importance of getting a consensus nominee. He abused the process by changing that vote threshold. He's continued to do it by lying about whether Barack Obama should have been able to have a vote on Merrick Garland and now jamming through this individual.

Brian: We have 30 seconds left. Here's a follow-up question that just came in from a listener on Twitter. It says, asks Senator Gillibrand about persuading two Republicans to vote no on Barrett, rather than delaying. Given all the disaffection with the Republican party that we were just discussing and all these Senate election swing states, do you think there's any possibility of that or just no? We have 30 seconds.

Kirsten: Well, I'm going to try my hardest to convince moderate senators to vote no, but they did not stand up and vote the right way with Kavanaugh so I don't expect them to vote the right way today.

Brian: New York senator, Kirsten Gillibrand joins us every month on the Brian Lehrer show. Thank you so much.

Kirsten: Thanks, Brian.

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