Muse

We're in the Russell Courtyard, sort of a gem of the Capitol. Not a lot of folks know. If I have to go get coffee at Cups, that's a classic Capitol Hill sourcing move. I will usually suggest, if the weather is warmer than 40 degrees, why don't we come sit out here, because it's better than sitting in the basement of Cups when you want to talk to a source or something like that.

Totally fair. Nature brings out people's best.

I agree.

And by the way, I'm Rachel Bade, one of our playbook authors. Burgess, tell people who you are, please.

I'm Burgess Everett. I'm a co-congressional bureau chief of our congressional team. I specialize in the Senate. And I'm a big Maryland Terrapins fan, if you want to know something about me.

So I hear you broke some news.

Yeah, it's a moderate Democrat endorsing a moderate Republican, which doesn't happen that often. And it kind of gets to the heart of the story that we're trying to tell about Senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, a Republican. This is an actual unique look at people and a relationship that you don't see. The same thing that makes Manchin and Murkowski unique is the same reason that they're not representative of the Senate. If there were more relationships like Manchin and Murkowski, we wouldn't necessarily care about two senators being friends. That would be, you know, a dog bites man story in journalism parlance. And instead, it's a man bites dog. This is unusual. Wait, these two people from different parties are actually friends, and one of them's supporting the other's re-election campaign? I mean, that's what makes it interesting. And so, yeah, we probably wouldn't be doing this interview if everybody in the Senate got along as well as these two do.

Is this your show?

I don't have a show, no.

I'm a guest interviewer.

Oh, whose show is it?

How'd you get us on? How was you able to do that?

I think they figured that you would do it if I did it, right?

Yeah.

You see me enough. You know if I screw you on it, you'll see me.

No, no, if you get me, I'll get you.

Yeah, I'm familiar, sir.

I'll get the last shot at this one.

And so does this new podcast have a name?

Playbook Deep Dive.

Deep Dive. So who is Deep Dive?

You're the first Deep Dive.

We are?

Yeah.

Deep Dive. Woo!

I've got her back, and I think she has my back. I feel that way very strongly.

You know, these two folks need each other. You know, as they used to say, like the Tuesday group, which was the moderates in Congress, you know, they could fit in a phone booth now. He's sort of the key player in this 50-50 Senate. And while Murkowski and Manchin are not the total extent of these sort of centrists now in the Senate, I mean, they make up, you know, a large percentage of them at a time when the Senate is so closely divided. If Manchin does not want to get rid of the filibuster, and that means Democrats need Lisa Murkowski's vote on things. And I think it's a unique window in the kind of relationship that may not exist 10 years from now. So there we are. We're sitting in this empty, dim committee room, you know, socially distanced so that we can talk to each other without masks on, and we can actually understand what each other are saying. And we dove into the sort of genesis of this, which is this trip that Senator Manchin took to Alaska, which is, you know, a logistical nightmare for those of us from the lower 48 states, and why that trip was so necessary for these two people to understand each other a little bit better.

You don't get probably a ton of senatorial visitors in Alaska, right?

She came to my state first.

I was going to say, the first visit was not me inviting Joe to Alaska. It was...

2012.

This was Chairman Wyden and Ranking Member Murkowski, I believe, at the time. And this senator from the little state of West Virginia wanted to demonstrate to the chairman and the ranking member what an all-of-the-above energy state...

What real energy state is.

...was really all about. And so I went to West Virginia with Senator Manchin, and I got the tour. I saw forests. I saw a little bit of hydro. I saw coal. I saw natural gas. I saw wind. You saw wind.

Hydroelectric.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She saw it all. Gas and everything.

He was on a little bit smaller scale, but...

Right.

...then, you know, turnabout is fair play. I needed to make sure that he had an opportunity to see Alaska and Alaska's resources as well. And included with Alaska resources were some of the... horses that swim in the water. So we did a little fishing. We partook in that too. You know, had him over to the house for dinner. My husband has cooked for he and his wife. What did you all have? Do you remember? Salmon. That's what we have when we're in Alaska. Right. That's what you're known for. Fresh salmon. That's right. Come to my house and you're going to have a fabulous salmon dinner on the barbecue or inside, wherever. What Lisa's telling you is that basically

we have built a great friendship. Her and Vern and Gail and I have become really good friends and we trust each other and we enjoy being around each other and spending time with each other when

we can. It's rare to have these things happen and he's coming up to Alaska, which is what a huge, huge logistical commitment just to begin with. Oh, sure. It's logistical, but everybody wants to

come, right? I mean, you couldn't wait. Well, it depends on the month, doesn't it? Gail couldn't wait.

Well, the thing of it is it made me respect what Lisa goes through just to go home to take care of her constituents. That's his major commitment. Right. Because you don't get there very quickly.

I mean, isn't part of it too that idle time that you spend together? Oh, that's a great time. My understanding is there was a plane delay and you all were just stuck together for an afternoon

in Alaska, right? We've done that, but the best CODEL that she put together, and it was my turn to put the CODEL that last year, we went to the Antarctic and did all the...

Yeah, we went to the Arctic.

We went to the Arctic. The Antarctic is down. Yeah, we went to the Arctic.

We still have a little work to do with him.

The North and the South, okay. We went North to the coldness of the North, which is the Arctic. We went up there and did the whole thing. We spent, what, five days?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Traveling all over. It's unbelievable. And have the relationships you have. John Barrasso was on the trip with us, Sheldon Whitehouse. We had just a great trip. And I'm going to do one to the Antarctic. I was the next to go down, you know, see what's going on. And it was all around energy and what's happening and the changes, climate change and what's going on, which is all part of our committee.

But you also do, you also focus on the meat and the substance of it. But as you're flying, you know, when you fly up to, let's say, just fly over to Iceland, fly up to Svalbard, you're on an airplane for a long time. And so that's...

You find out who sleeps with their mouth open and drools and you find out...

You know, you have a chance to visit and talk and talk about the books that you're reading. She didn't sleep much. And you get to know one another. And the getting to know you is where I think we've lost some of that muscle memory. We're so busy that we don't take the time to really know one another as people. Because when you know one another as people, it's a lot more difficult to be critical, to say nasty things at them.

Hard to say no to your friend, isn't it?

Well, it is. Or if you're going to say no to your friend, you're going to talk to them in a way that's respectful and says, hey, Joe, on this issue, we're just not going to see eye to eye. But we've got so much good that we can work on. But we do. And, you know, you can talk about it, you can laugh about it. It really do, yeah. We'll stand down on this one, but what's the next one we're going to work on? And you can do that if you have a relationship. And that's about relationships.

When you all spend this time together, when you're in Washington, too, do you all have, has she been on Almost Heaven? Has she been on the boat?

Has she been on Almost Heaven? She's been on that as much as I have.

Well, maybe not quite as much.

You live on it. No, whenever Vern's in town or whatever in Galway, I try to have dinner, at least get together at least as often as we possibly can.

And what does that translate to here? You know, we have these busy days, right?

Look how the Energy Committee worked. Look at the two years we've worked together in the last Congress, 1-16th. Look at the things that got done. No one ever thought we'd get done. And it had been lingering and lingering for years. And the main thing about it, the staff knew that we're friends. The staff knows that I have her back and she had my back. We weren't trying to, gotcha, I'm a Democrat and you're a Republican, so let me see how I can embarrass somebody. They knew that from day one and then the staff start working together and everything starts gelling and blending and it worked out fine. Great American Outdoors Act, the Energy Act, some good stuff.

Yeah, but you set the tone when your staff see that the two bosses here are wanting to get to yes. That's their directive as well. And so you do, you work to build things rather than try to use it as an opportunity to gain or score a political point.

Yeah. Right now you say, I want to work with Republicans on infrastructure. I don't want to. On everything. You don't want to do reconciliation again.

Reconciliation was never designed, was never designed to be how we run government or run the Senate. The only thing I've said is this. I wasn't here when they told me the place used to work. I've been here since end of 2010 and nothing has worked the way I thought should or the way I thought did. I was a legislator in West. Virginia. And legislation has always worked the way I understood it is basically whoever has a bill, did it come from the other house or the other side of the Capitol? Or did we start one on our side, the Senate bill? Then it goes basically to the committee of jurisdiction. We're in the energy committee room right now. So energy issues would come to energy committee. We'd have a hearing, we'd bring in professionals. And I might ask you a question, somebody else might, D's and R's, we hear from the professionals. Then we have a markup and put the bill together, start working the bill. And then we have a vote. And then after that vote, the bill passes. If it passes, then the committee should write that bill, send it to the majority leader. And the majority leader should have a period of time. It has to go to the floor. Came out of here unanimous, came out here bipartisan, should go to the floor. Then on the floor, it should be an open amendment process. And it should be germane. That means it should be within the confines of whatever the subject matter is. So you can't have a got you moment or we'll have you a bill on about guns or something, you know, social issue has nothing to do with energy. So it should stay that. That's the way it used to be done. And when Bob Byrd was the majority leader, you'd work on Friday. You'd even stay on Saturdays and get your work done. And by the time you got done all these amendments, there was no need for a filibuster. There was no need for any of the things, all the different nuances they're picking right now of how we can get by this or get by that. Just do the process in a regular order. Let's try that. That's all I'm saying. Well, that's what he...

Empowering the committees is really where you get the value, I think, in legislating. And again, when you feel like you've been part of a process, it's a lot harder to be critical about the bill afterwards because you had an opportunity in committee to try to weigh in and influence it. Or you have an opportunity on the floor. But I think what has happened, and I was here at a time when the Senate actually did function, when committee chairman actually had more than just the power of setting the agenda. They wrote the bills. And then when those bills were ready to go, they went to the majority leader and said, I'm going to need two weeks on this energy bill because it's big. And the leader would look at the calendar and say, okay, we got a block of time here. You go for it. You manage the bills. You work the amendments. There's none of it.

They were traffic cops.

Yeah, exactly. And we did it. And we did it well. Instead, what has happened now is you have legislation that is built in the back rooms of the majority leaders. We rule 14 everything. We haven't had a process. So there's pent-up demand for amendments. And so this whole issue of germaneness, or even if it's slightly relevant to the bill, people don't care anymore because I never know if there's going to be another train coming that I can catch a ride on. And my issue is important. It's awful. So we have fouled up the process ourselves. We know how to address it. We know what we should do.

Um, we've just got to practice it. If we don't take advantage of this Congress that we're in with a 50-50 split and try to get something back to a order that did work at one time that had function to it and had some direction, if we miss this opportunity, God help us.

I hear you all saying that, but that's not necessarily the signals your leaders send on a daily basis. You know, what is, I mean, it seems like a chicken and egg problem. How do you stop the

behavior that you all just described? Everybody needs to acknowledge that they have a role. So if we're going to talk about negotiation, as Republicans, we can't come in and say, you cannot ever talk about any kind of a tax increase. And Democrats cannot be in a position where they say, you cannot ever lower the, the, the threshold amount that we're talking about here for this initiative. We draw these lines and we say we want to negotiate, but then we don't let ourselves negotiate. Republicans are going to have to give and Democrats are going to have to give. And I think we have forgotten that. And to Joe's point, when we talk about bipartisanship, it shouldn't just be Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski. And occasionally you'll get a couple here or there. Every one of us has an opportunity to be that bipartisan leader in a 50, 50 Senate.

Every one of us have a responsibility. Yes. All hundred have a responsibility. And why, why it has, why it has all been basically put in the majority and minority. When you think about it, you've got four offices and four staffs that write every bill, just about.

Mm-hmm.

Minority and majority in the Senate, Speaker and minority in the House.

Yes. That's it. And so there's no wonder that everybody wants...

to hold this bill up for my amendment because they've not had, they haven't had anything in terms of the process.

We only have one bill, the National Defense Authorization, NDAA. Every year. You ever see when it comes all the, everything out of the woodwork, everything but the Christmas tree and all the ornaments are thrown into that because that's their one chance. Isn't that awful?

Think about how fragile or how tenuous it is when you have an even split. Why aren't we seeing that play out within our leaderships? Why do we not have the majority leader and the minority leader have a press conference every now and again? Actually pretend like we talk to one another.

Last time we had a cup of coffee together.

I believe it's been a long time.

Before that, when's the last time? Yeah. I guess the last time I heard when there was that type of camaraderie was Dash on lot? Was that when it was really that way?

Yeah. Yeah.

Does it make it harder? You're up for reelection in 2022. You already have a primary challenger. You said Republicans need to give. Are you willing to do that in your political circumstances?

I'm willing to do that whether I was at the beginning of a six-year term or in the place where I am now. You know, Joe Manchin and I got a little bit of attention when we first started off as a team in the 116th Congress because here you have Lisa from an oil-producing state, Joe from a coal-producing state, and what do we decide we're going to do? Let's start with climate change. Not because it was the politically safe thing to do, but because we felt that we had an obligation and a responsibility to raise this as an issue and to demonstrate that you could have a good civil conversation about something that is important, even though it causes a fair amount of anxiety in states where you have historically relied on coal and oil and what those changes might mean.

We did the Arctic, and when we did an Arctic tour, we were the only—there's nine nations in the Arctic, right? Nine countries? Eight, yeah. Eight. Eight. Eight countries that make up the Arctic. The United States is the only country that uses climate change as a political divide. The other eight understand their life depends on it. They're up there. They're seeing it. They're on the front lines, and they know that things have changed, and basically the fish migration, all the different things, ocean rise. So for us to ignore that, being responsible for the Energy Committee, would be a derelict of duty.

You took a big move two years ago when you endorsed Senator Collins' re-election campaign. Would you endorse Senator Murkowski's? In a heartbeat. In a heartbeat.

And I would welcome his endorsement.

Well, you just got it.

There you go.

But Lisa, I think that people understand that they have a person that understands Alaska and has Alaska in her blood and in every part of her veins and every part, more so of her body.

Do you feel like you all are sort of the last of this dying breed of people who want to work together in this fashion? I mean, I'm watching both of your conferences, people leave and the people that replace them.

We used to hear about Ted Stevens, and Ted Stevens would go, and he would campaign with Bob Byrd or basically Dan Inouye. I heard about all those things. I don't know why we can't. There's a lot of good people on both sides. I don't get involved in elections. I don't go out and campaign. I don't think we should be campaigning against any colleagues,

Democrat or Republican. You had a proposal. I have a proposal. We don't campaign against each other, and how many people signed on to that?

Yeah, I didn't have a whole lot. It wasn't real crowded then.

So you asked if we're kind of the last of a dying breed. I would like to think that we're the resurgence, that it's kind of lonely right now, but why wouldn't we want to encourage greater collaboration and cooperation amongst our colleagues here in Congress? Isn't that what people want to see?

He said this place sucks in 2018 when he was running for re-election. Do you ever feel like that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

A lot of them just won't say it. Yeah.

But what good does that do me to be critical of it? If I don't like it, then I've got to try to change it. And that means that I choose to spend more time with members that I think we're building something, that we're trying to produce something, that we're trying to solve a problem. Because otherwise, yeah, this place is not a very positive environment. So my neighbor has a bumper sticker that says, is it any coincidence? that means that the next thing is going to be

that a group of baboons is called a Congress.

preferable in terms of what we're building

Basically, everybody thought the place was broke last year,

into our go-to system, and this place needs to be created.

and it was broke for a while.

So it's a good source. But I couldn't say it was going on on their hand.

We went three months and couldn't get another COVID bill,

This place is not a particular problem, but the next place is telling us

which we should have. That went on for a while.

that you can't check through the świźdочek home,

The election happened in November.

which is going to tell a medical designer to this place that comes in just looking at where we're going.

We went to Lisa's house.

If you can consider it for that trip anti-war,

Fateful dinner at her house. Four of us had dinner.

that is really aboutelly.

Eight of us had dinner.

I wanted to call it my mind there for instance,

Eight of us, yeah. Four and four. At Lisa's house.

it's quite an emergency where that is on explicating

We made Warner pay, and he bought.

the impact of it that's going to be atur virtually, that we're going to be www.

You brought the moonshine, though.

Well, we always had to have a little bit.

We didn't have moonshine that night. Not that night. No, no.

No, not that night we didn't, no.

We were still getting to know one another.

That's the next step of friendship.

I bring the shine out when they're serious. Right. So we're looking at this infrastructure package now, and it might come down to where we've got to, hopefully, our group, we have a pretty good group, works together. Don't put you a set figure. Look and see what the infrastructure needs of this country are.

Right.

What's a deferred maintenance? So we've got to start fixing those things.

Don't you need to do something like, say, I will not vote for reconciliation, period, unless to give us time, me and Senator Murkowski, and the rest of our group. We have to have time to do that,

but reconciliation, if we've exasperated every opportunity we have, and we've let that bill go clear through, and it comes down to where we've got a good piece of legislation, we have a lot of input, but still yet, because of the politics, and we're all in cycle, I don't have 10 of my Republican friends that will vote, is what you're asking.

Yeah.

Then we'd look at it a different, then you have to take a different look at it. Is reconciliation needed to be used, and is it going to be used the way it's supposed to be used, or the Byrd rule, you can't go out, you know, we stay within our guardrails. I don't think if you let us go through it and do it the way it's supposed to work, that we'll get to that. Right. Never did before, but we're so much pent up, no one I ever believe will get back to that again, to where they really have any input whatsoever, or be able to have a committee that works, and does the job it's supposed to do, and write the bills.

You've got somebody like Joe, who is motivated to do what he does for the right reasons, and I think that's because he looks at his children, and his grandchildren, and thinks about their future. And so the opportunity to know somebody on a personal basis like that, I think it just cements the bond just that much more for me.

But you've got to spend some time, and it's just a shame we don't have more time here to spend to really have more friends such as Lisa. Oh, she's a very competitive fisher person. She won't give you the honey hole. She takes the honey hole herself, and says, Joe, find a place along the stream here. I'll be over here. Yeah, she knows exactly where the fish are. She's done some research. Oh, she's done, no. So that's what's, she's selfish when it comes to fishing. She won't give me the honey hole.

Okay, that's actually true.

That's actually true. I knew it was.

It's kind of embarrassing, though, because it's really bad for him. You're supposed to let your guess, but I do enjoy the fishing.

And for her and her husband, she makes him go out and scout around everybody, and she knows exactly where she's going. Speaking of time, it's time to go, gang.

Time to go. I'm kidding, guys. Go to work.

I've covered the Senate for nearly eight years, and here's the way this works more often than not. They come in at 5.30 on Monday for a bed check vote and talk to each other on the floor briefly, and then they all leave by 6. I mean, they are in on Tuesday. It's really busy. Wednesday, there's some meetings, and by Thursday afternoon, these people all want to go home, and at 1.45, they take one last vote, and they head home. The vision of Washington that Manchin and Markowski are presenting and that they want to revive is people who stay here on Friday, who bring their families here on occasion, who spend actual quality time together, and it's a good thought, but we've seen people lose their seats because they don't live at home enough. We see people that just want to focus on their campaigns when they're in cycle, and we see party leaders. The Democratic Senate is keeping the same schedule as the Republican Senate, which kept the same schedule as the Democratic Senate run by Harry Reid before that. So you don't see this sort of larger shift that might suggest that Manchin and Markowski are representative of something larger afoot. My job is to be skeptical, and it's easy to be cynical, so I try to be somewhere in between those things. So I would say there's patterns to many of these issues. Gun background checks, there will be some horrific shooting, a new burst of energy, then a failure, immigration reform, a surge on the border, a bunch of meetings, and then failure. And so we shouldn't always assume the worst, but we should not always assume that cautious optimism that senators talk about all the time is actually going to translate into results. The reason why Manchin and Markowski

are so interesting is they did actually translate a couple things into results last year. A big coronavirus bill and this public lands legislation. And so that is significant. And while it's not necessarily the type of thing that is going to make headlines around the country, particularly when Trump was president, it is important to highlight things like this while they're still happening. It strikes me that the trajectory that the Senate is on is not towards bipartisanship and big sweeping 70 votes on immigration reform or background checks. It is instead towards probably the end of the filibuster. And I don't expect that to happen this Congress. Manchin says he would never vote for it. He's very declarative. So does Sinema. However, it does seem that in the end, somebody will change the filibuster rules to get what their party has long wanted, because at some point people will become too frustrated with talk, talk, talk on the big issues and no follow through. That we could do a deep dive on that one if we had to. All right, from the grand rooms and hidden courtyards on Capitol Hill this week, that's our show. Our producers are Adrian Hurst and Annie Reese. Our senior producer is Jenny Ament. And our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Subscribe to Playbook Deep Dive and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Most importantly, if you like our show, share this with a friend. I'm Burgess Everett, and you can follow my Capitol Hill coverage on politico.com. Thanks for listening and tune in next week where we bring you a brand new story with one of my colleagues here at Politico. Thanks for listening.

I mean fishing together and having salmon for dinner on Manson's boat. I want to go to Manson's

boat. I do too. Every time I've been invited, I was not able to go. So I've not been to Almost Heaven, but I have had some of his moonshine before. Homemade moonshine? I think he has it shipped over by car, and I think I felt like I was in West Virginia when I was drinking that.