Senate Parliamentarian Funkadelic
What A Day
What A Day
4.6 • 12.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
Senate Democrats got the green light to pass more bills with a simple majority vote. On Monday, the Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that the Dems can pass more budget reconciliation bills this year — the same process they used for the relief bill. We explain what this means.
President Biden wants states to make all adults eligible for vaccines by April 19th. The new date is two weeks sooner than his previous goal.
And in headlines: St. Louis jail uprising, Iran and the US take steps to resume nuclear deal, and Kim Kardashian West becomes a billionaire.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Wednesday, April 7th. I'm Achila Hughes. |
| 0:09.0 | And I'm Gideon Ressank and this is what the day where all our jokes for today are fully lifted from Fox's late night show Gutfeld. |
| 0:15.0 | Yeah, you know, we're just trying out some conservative comedy. |
| 0:18.0 | We like to be conservative with our comedy like they are, so... |
| 0:21.0 | We really want to conserve the amount of comedy that we're getting people. |
| 0:35.0 | On today's show... |
| 0:37.0 | Beginning April 19th, every adult and every state, every adult in this country is eligible to get in line to get a COVID vaccination. |
| 0:48.0 | Alright, well, that was interesting, but it was also President Biden yesterday moving up the date again for when states should make COVID shots available to all adults. |
| 0:57.0 | We'll talk about what returning to normal life could look like and, you know, what even is normal nowadays, been some headlines. |
| 1:03.0 | But first, on Monday, Senate Democrats were handed an important detour around the filibuster, which is a big deal if they want to pass President Biden's infrastructure bill with a simple majority. |
| 1:13.0 | And it has to do with our dear old friend, the Senate parliamentarian, aka parliamentarian, Bunkadelic. |
| 1:20.0 | That's right, she has got a cool theme song. |
| 1:30.0 | It is Elizabeth Vickdana. |
| 1:33.0 | You can think of her as the nonpartisan referee, I guess, in the Senate. |
| 1:37.0 | And we know that she previously said that a minimum wage strike couldn't be included in the COVID relief bill while Democrats passed that via reconciliation. |
| 1:45.0 | And so reconciliation as a reminder is the process by which the Senate can pass legislation pertaining to the budget with just a simple majority, i.e. 51 votes. |
| 1:53.0 | So the more recent takeaway is this. |
| 1:55.0 | Vickdana ruled that that simple majority vote process could be used more than once in a fiscal year. So translation, President Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan could maybe be passed while avoiding a filibuster. |
| 2:08.0 | Oh my gosh, too good to be true. |
| 2:11.0 | So obviously this ruling seems really great for the president, but there are still a lot of twists and turns that need to happen before Democrats can get around Republicans who continue to stone wall the idea. |
| 2:21.0 | So what do we know about what's going to happen next? |
| 2:23.0 | Yeah, so for the immediate future, Senate Democrats are not exactly saying how this could come into play. |
... |
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