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  • JUDY WOODRUFF: As the new year begins, Washington is in a much different place than a year ago,

  • when the government was in the middle of the longest shutdown in history and Congress was

  • crippled by disagreements on spending.

  • Before leaving town for the holidays, lawmakers came together on a huge spending bill.

  • Nick Schifrin sat down with Lisa Desjardins yesterday to learn where your tax dollars

  • are going.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: Judy, this was a massive bill, $1.4 trillion, money to research gun violence,

  • money for the military. And it raised the age to purchase tobacco to 21.

  • But there's a lot more, a whole lot more.

  • And our Capitol Hill correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, and the "NewsHour" team have been combing

  • through 2,400 pages.

  • And Lisa joins me now to examine the government's 2020 priorities.

  • Lisa, let's start with a major issue, immigration, the issue that shut down the government last

  • year. This bill has huge immigration changes.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: It actually does. And not a lot of it is being talked about.

  • We have talked before about the fact the president got $1.3 billion to build new border barriers.

  • That's something that he wanted, a little less than he wanted.

  • But he got something else too. This bill has fewer restrictions in where he can build it.

  • And it also gives him more leeway in taking money from other accounts to do that.

  • There is something that remains the same, however. It still limits the kind of barrier

  • that can be built. Still can be only fencing, steel slat fencing, no concrete wall, examples

  • like you see right now, what's already on the border.

  • Overall, though, Democrats, in exchange for that border money, what did they get for the

  • border barrier? Two new things that are notable. A new ombudsman in charge of immigration detention

  • to oversee the conditions for detainees, and also millions of dollars to help detainees

  • navigate the legal system and court work.

  • Now, that's interesting, because that legal program for detainees is something that former

  • Attorney General Jeff Sessions wanted to stop altogether. But, here, Democrats were able

  • to expand that program. Thousands of more detainees in the coming year will have the

  • ability to get some counseling to try and figure out their situation legally.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: So give and take, but some fallout, especially on the Democratic side?

  • LISA DESJARDINS: That's the thing.

  • In truth, the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and many Democrats were not

  • happy with this deal. Many of them voted against it for this reason. They wanted this to cap

  • the number of detention beds. They feel like now the administration still has the ability

  • to detain as many people as it wants.

  • And there are no new requirements on exactly what conditions the detainees will be under.

  • I want to take you back to earlier this summer, when members were touring those facilities.

  • And here's the chairperson of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Joaquin Castro, speaking

  • at one of those facilities, talking about how important changing those conditions was

  • for them.

  • REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): We came today, and we saw that the system is still broken,

  • that people's human rights are still being abused.

  • We remain very concerned about the conditions in which people are being kept.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: For members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, this is a moral issue.

  • And they're concerned that this sort of detente right now that we're not talking about over

  • immigration may actually be a normalization of things that they find unacceptable.

  • For Republicans, however, they want that normalization. They want this wall to be a normal part of

  • policy.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: All right, topic number two, these spending bills do something new and

  • headline-worthy on education.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: Yes.

  • This is something we hear people want to talk about all the time. And here is a major change.

  • Let's start with the background, a big rift over this. President Trump would like to cut

  • education spending. In fact, he proposed a 10 percent cut this year.

  • I want to take you back. Here's what his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, said to Congress earlier

  • this year about why it should be cut. She said there's just not enough money.

  • BETSY DEVOS, U.S. Education Secretary: That it's easier to keep spending, to keep saying

  • yes, to keep saddling tomorrow's generations with today's growing debt. But, as it's been

  • said, the government will run out of other people's money.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: Now, so, she was proposing a cut in her education funding. Democrats

  • wanted an increase. Democrats won. And they won very big.

  • In fact, this bill has a record amount of funding for education in it from the federal

  • government. It includes more than $2 billion of an increase, especially for early education

  • and for K-12.

  • And it's interesting, Nick. Those K-12 dollars, all of these dollars, specifically go to low-income

  • communities. They're through block grants in part. And, also, we will see tens of thousands

  • more openings for Head Starts, especially in those low-income communities.

  • Now, people know, education is still mainly funded by the states, but, here, the federal

  • government is adding more of its own role to that.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: Lisa, this isn't only about dollars and dollars and a whole lot of dollars,

  • right? This is about some policy shifts in this bill as well, especially on coal miners.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: It's really a big shift. This is something the federal government has

  • never done before, permanently making up for the gap in a private pension system, in this

  • case of coal miners.

  • Now, specifically, we have to tell the bigger story here, which is we know coal mining has

  • been on the decline overall. In fact, if you look at the numbers, Nick, it's rather astounding.

  • Since 2008, between then and 2018, the coal industry lost 32,000 jobs, or 37 percent of

  • its jobs, largely to bankruptcies.

  • Those companies could not pay the pensions, including pensions of this man, Daymond Tucker,

  • who we talked to in 2017, longtime coal miner, depends on his pension.

  • And here's what he said at the time then, when the pension was running out.

  • DAYMOND TUCKER, Longtime Coal Miner: And it's not like we're asking for a handout or anything

  • either. It was hard sweat work that -- benefits that we negotiated. And all we want to is

  • just what was promised to us.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: Daymond Tucker is one of 100,000 miners in that same position, worried

  • about his pension, running out, could have been last week, could have been next year.

  • Instead, the federal government is permanently paying for his pension. I talked to him this

  • week. He just retired last year. And he said, without that pension, he and his wife would

  • have been devastated. He said it was an enormous relief to see this bill extend his pension.

  • However, Nick, this is the only time the federal government has ever done this, extending federal

  • money to pay for private pensions for one industry, the coal mining industry.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: So, let's zoom out.

  • How much spending is this? How much spending are we actually talking about? And what does

  • it do to the U.S.' bottom line?

  • LISA DESJARDINS: This is an ocean of red ink.

  • All together, between this spending bill and the bill that -- the budget that was set earlier

  • this year, $2.2 trillion of red ink has been passed by this Congress and signed by this

  • president this year.

  • To give you some bigger perspective, the kind of spending that Congress governs is called

  • discretionary spending. Since 2017, under President Trump, that kind of spending has

  • seen an increase of about 15 percent in just a couple of years, this from a president who

  • has said he wants to actually rein in government spanning.

  • This has been one of the more dramatic increases that we have seen really in generations.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: And remind us, Lisa, what's the takeaway here? Why does all this matter?

  • LISA DESJARDINS: This matters, Nick, because, honestly, especially in an age of gridlock,

  • like we're in right now, this is what government does.

  • Government spends money. It's thing they can agree on. This was a compromise from both

  • sides to help each other by spending a vast array of money. And we have hit some priorities

  • here, but there are a lot of other big policies in here. For example, this bill says the government

  • will help Somalia restructure its debt. There's tremendous policy implications here.

  • This really is what government does. Even though it may not be the most dramatic headline,

  • it may be one of the most important.

  • NICK SCHIFRIN: Lisa Desjardins, following the important headlines, thank you very much.

  • LISA DESJARDINS: My pleasure.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the new year begins, Washington is in a much different place than a year ago,

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1.4萬億聯邦支出法案有哪些內容? (What’s in the $1.4 trillion federal spending bill)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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