President Biden’s agenda in his first days in office and the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump dominated the political interview shows Sunday morning.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) discussed the possibility of using budget reconciliation to pass parts of Biden’s agenda, while two of the president’s nominees weighed in on the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
Multiple guests also discussed whether a Senate impeachment trial of a former president is constitutional.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the incoming Budget Committee chair, said on Sunday that Senate Democrats would use a tactic known as budget reconciliation to pass parts of President Biden’s agenda if Republicans refuse to support Biden’s plans.
“Now as you know, reconciliation, which is a Senate rule, was used by the Republicans under Trump to pass massive tax breaks for the rich and corporations, it was used as an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and what we’re saying is, ‘You used for that, that’s fine. We are going to use reconciliation…you did it, we’re going to do it to protect ordinary people, not the rich and the powerful,’ ” he said.
“The plane in a nosedive. And we’ve got to pull it up,” Xavier Becerra told CNN’s Dana Bash. “And you’re not going to do that overnight. But we’re going to pull it up. We have to pull it up. Failure is not an option.”
Vivek Murthy, President Biden’s nominee for surgeon general, said on Sunday that achieving herd immunity was an “ambitious goal,” while stressing that vaccine distribution should be the main focus.
“Colleagues of mine that I had known for decades… decades in that one experience, because I was in the White House, decided that I had become this political person, even though they had known me forever,” Deborah Birx told CBS host Margaret Brennan.
Former White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx said in an interview aired Sunday that there were “definitely” people within the White House who believed the virus to be a hoax.
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said recent data reported by the British government suggest a new, more virulent strain of the coronavirus is also more deadly, but said U.S. officials needed to examine the numbers themselves.
“There’s no question that the article of impeachment that was sent over by the House describes impeachable conduct, but we have not yet heard either from the prosecution or the defense,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in early 2020. “I’ll get a chance to hear from them, and I’ll do my best as a Senate juror to apply justice as well as I can understand it.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday defended the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump, saying it is constitutional and dismissing arguments of her Republican colleagues.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that he would vote to dismiss the article of impeachment against former President Trump at the earliest opportunity, calling the upcoming Senate trial detrimental to national unity.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believed the Constitution only allowed for current presidents to be impeached by Congress, thereby rendering the discussion about whether Trump had committed an impeachable offense with his incitement of the violent mob that overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 a “moot point.”
A senior Democratic senator indicated Sunday that he believed his party should consider scrapping the Senate’s filibuster rule if Republicans prove unwilling to compromise on legislation pursued by the Biden administration.
