Presented by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Good Wednesday morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to your Politico Playbook audio briefing.

And I'm Jake Sherman on Tuesday during a meeting in Nancy Pelosi's office. The speaker and Chuck Schumer had a point to make.

The Republicans' $1 trillion COVID relief plan and the Democrats' multi-trillion dollar heroes act are simply irreconcilable. It's like a giraffe and a flamingo, Pelosi said to the room, which included Schumer, Mark Meadows, and Stephen Mnuchin. They're both at a zoo. A dumb person may think they can mate for offspring. A spart person knows that's impossible. That's our bills. They're unable to mate.

Schumer compared them to dogs. A golden retriever can't mate with a chihuahua. You have a

chihuahua. You have a beautiful lion, he said, according to multiple people in the room.

Pelosi then helpfully reminded Schumer that a lion is a cat, so no, they could not mate.

There comes a point in every congressional negotiation where it will be helpful for Google

translate to have a feature, to turn Capitol Hill speak to English.

Political leaders talk in hard-to- decipher codes that leaves reporters confused, market

seesawing, and some novice observers of the Capitol,

guessing what the heck everyone is talking about. We've reached that point. After a few days of

negotiations, it seems like Meadows, Manuchin, Pelosi Schumer, and Mitch McConnell are speaking to us

in Swahili played backwards. So John Presnahan suggested we use this space to give you a sense of what to listen

to when you're listening to these people. We spoke to our Hill colleagues, most of whom work for other

news outlets, to help us decipher all this stuff. Here's some examples. We've had a good meeting.

We're making progress, good discussions. Translation, man, we're screwed. This means nothing is going on and the meeting

might as well have been canceled. This is filler and the worst kind of filler at that. When you're

having a good meeting, you don't need to say it. You just have it. And more times than not,

when you have a good meeting, you don't leave until that good meeting comes up with something

better than we had a good meeting. Number two, metaphors galore.

We, meaning the American people and its elected and unelected representatives in DC,

...