Welcome to Beg to differ the Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork, and I'm joined by our regulars, Bill

Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal, Linda Chavez of the Niskannon Center, and Damon Linker of the Week.

Our special guest this week is Tom Nichols, professor at the Naval War College and contributor

to The Atlantic.

Welcome, one and all.

We are now in the midst of something approaching regular politics with part of our screens and then the crazy part is still going

on the left-hand side let's say. So let's start with what seems comparatively normal.

The Biden administration has proposed a COVID relief

package that amounts to $1.9 trillion.

Now I'm going to start with you Bill Galston because you've written about this and about

chances for any sort of bipartisan compromise.

Let's start with the sheer magnitude here.

Bined is suggesting 1.9 trillion.

We had a stimulus bill that already passed, it's really wrong to call it a

stimulus, but let's stick with that terminology since everyone is using it.

That passed back in just in December, which is only a few months ago, for $900 billion.

There was a time when that was real money.

So let's start with that problem.

You had a great line in your column.

You said that there's a potential conflict

between budget reconciliation and political reconciliation.

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