Ep. 423 — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the House by storm when she beat out 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, winning on a staunchly progressive platform. She is often portrayed as the embodiment of the liberal left, both by the media and her GOP adversaries who hold her up as a warning of how far left the Democrats have gone. Now in her second term, she has showed no interest in backing down from her priorities, like a $15 minimum wage and healthcare for all. She joined David to talk about her upbringing, how an interest in maternal health inspired a pivot to politics, the state of Covid-19 stimulus negotiations and the problem with austerity politics.

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host David Axelrod.
0:20.0	You know someone's made it in public life when all people need to hear as their initials and they know who you're talking about.
0:26.0	In that town yesterday with AOC, Alexandria, Acasio Cortez, who's upset grassroots victory for Congress in 2018, propelled her into the top ranks of progressive politics in America.
0:38.0	We talked about her own improbable story in the state of the country and a fractious democratic party as President-elect Joe Biden gets set to take the helm.
0:46.0	Here's our conversation.
0:54.0	Congresswoman Acasio Cortez, so good to be with you. I've been wanting to have this conversation for a long time.
1:01.0	And I don't want to go through a whole list of breaking news because you express yourself so well in so many different ways on these things.
1:10.0	I just want to ask about one thing that's happening tonight, which is these negotiations over a relief bill, a stimulus around COVID-19.
1:22.0	And you've expressed unhappiness on Twitter a couple of times last night and today.
1:29.0	What is the status of this now as we're churning toward the weekend?
1:34.0	Yeah, well, I think what we're seeing now in the current state of affairs is what's being negotiated and the current peg is that good news is that we have extension of PPP.
1:47.0	Bad news is we're looking at a second stimulus, quote unquote stimulus payments that is just $600.
1:57.0	What are we eight, nine months after passing a package that had $1200.
2:04.0	We're looking at $300 in extension of unemployment benefits down from these $600 that was initially authorized. And all of this, I think, is important to to acknowledge that these are the numbers that are happening when the cases are worse.
2:23.0	These are the numbers that are happening when we have more deaths and more cases per capita than we had when we passed the CARES Act that was more generous, but even then not sufficient.
2:38.0	Yeah, are you you you you intramed last night that you might not vote for this will you vote for it? Do you think the way it's lining up?
2:46.0	Yeah, you know, I think we were still waiting on final text and these negotiations, you know, they are changing by the hour one hour we see that there will be stimulus payments.
2:56.0	The next hour is that those payments will be half as much as we thought they would be.
3:02.0	But if there is not a real stimulus payment and extension of unemployment benefits, I will not be supporting this bill.
3:10.0	You know, it strikes me that I've been thinking a lot about this lately. We sit in the comfort of our offices, our studies.
3:18.0	We moralize about what people's obligations are in this crisis to keep to stay home to shut their businesses down and so on.
	...

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