Hi, this is Catherine and Seattle just waiting for my black hair dye to set in because that sounded fun and

Nobody's here to stop me. This podcast was recorded at

It's 111 Eastern on Friday, April 24th. I probably don't have bangs yet

But other things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right. Here's the show

Oh boy, I feel that impulse in my bones

I'm nervous for her though black hair dye is a commitment. Oh my gosh. It's a commitment

Let me tell you one time I dyed my hair blue black and I look like a witch for six months

Hey there. It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Scott Detro. I'm covering the White House

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress and I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress

We are talking about an interim relief package that President Trump just signed into law and by interim

I mean bigger than almost anything we had ever covered passing Congress half a trillion dollars

And this is just the latest in an astounding amount of money that Congress has doled out to help deal with the economic fallout

Of this pandemic like overall how much money has Congress agreed to spend so far?

I did the math yesterday with a little bit of help from Sue because it takes two Congress reporters to add

And it's around

$2.8 trillion and that is more than the Treasury Department takes in in tax revenue in a normal year

These are radical sums of money

I mean rad and radicalizing sums of money in quote unquote normal political times

If you think about back to the financial crisis

What was essentially a drop in the bucket to what we're talking now was also the kind of spending and and and

governmental and economic unrest that spurred things like the Tea Party movement that really sort of electrified the country

I mean these are just sort of mind bending sums of money and frankly

...