administration on immigration. an influx of children crossing the border alone. >> there is a crisis on the texas border right now. as a result of president biden's open border policies. >> democratic congressman vicente gonzalez weighs in. >> and welcome to "inside politics sunday." i'm abby phillip. to our viewers around the united states and the world, thank you for spending part of your weekend with us. one year ago this weekend, the coronavirus lockdowns were just beginning and covid had killed 70 people here in the united states. the doeath toll, now 534,000 ca counting, would seem unimaginable, but today, americans have never been more optimistic the end is in sight. three quarters in a poll tell cnn the worst is finally behind us, and president biden says there will be enough vaccine for all adults by the end of may and we can safely celebrate the fourth of july with a backyard barbecue if all goes well. >> i will not relent until we beat this virus. but i need you. the american people. i need you. i need every american to do their part. >> meanwhile, americans already seeing the impact of the $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan. in the form of stimulus payments automatically deposited into accounts this weekend. >> for a typical family of four, a middle class family, husband and wife working, making $110,000 here, that means $5,600 check they're going to get. 85% of the households in america will be getting this money. some are going to get it as early as this weekend. >> the law enjoys by partisan support, and the administration's challenge now is to keep it that way. this week, president biden, vice president harris, and their spouses will hold events in at least seven states to tout the law. zero republicans in congress voted for the relief bill. they call it a costly liberal wish list and a giveaway, and with economists predicting a blockbuster year for economic growth, they don't want their voters thanking democrats. >> president biden and his democratic government inherited a tide that had already begun to turn toward decisive victory. 2021 is set to be an historic comeback year. not because of the far-left legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned but because of the resilience of the american people. >> and joining us now with their reporting and insights, laura barone lopez from politico and lisa lira from "the new york times." ladies, good morning. thanks for being here on a daylight savings morning here in the united states. so laura, you know, this bill is a massive bill, and it seems progressives are by and large very happy with the outcome. what are they saying about what this bill means for progressive priorities and maybe whether they can trust the joe biden administration going forward? >> well, senator bernie sanders, arguably one of the most progressive senators, said this was one of the most consequential bills he has ever voted for. so progressives, as you mentioned, are widely happy with this bill. and they feel as though it really meelts the moment. one of the provisions they really wanted in the bill, raging the minimum wage to $15, isn't it in, so they're going to continue pushing the administration on that, potentially trying to see if they can get it inside of a second reconciliation package later this year. but overwhelmingly, they are very happy with what this bill does and it feels as though it's exactly what the moment calls for. >> lisa, while that's happening on the progressive side, republicans are figuring out how do they run against this bill. take a look at this recent cnn poll that seems to show widespread support, not just overall, but by republicans. the overall bill is not as popular with republicans, but take a look at some of the component parts. the tax credit, money for return to classrooms, the stimulus checks. all with majority support among republicans, not to mention overall, the bill overall has also 58% support among independents. so how are republicans planning to run against this? i should say, also, you wrote this weekend in the times that they are trying to go back to 2009. you wrote that republicans calculated they could make the bill the centerpiece of their efforts to win control of congress in the 2020 midterm elections. they began arguing it was full of wasteful spending and failed to create jobs. by january 2010, the last time they did a stimulus bill like this, about 75% or half or more of the stimulus said that half or more of the stimulus money had been wasted, so is this a 2009 playbook they can actually run again? >> so that 2009 stimulus bill is really looming large in the consciousness of both parties. i think democrats are looking to it as a warning sign. they know what happened in 2009. they know they passed the stimulus bill, president obama championed that. that was fairly popular when it passed, and republicans basically spent next year and a half running down the numbers by saying it was full of waste, fraud, and abuse, and didn't create jobs. in the end, they lost the midterm elections in large part because of that legislation. joe biden doesn't want to see a repeat of that, of those political tactics. we'll see him out there over the next couple weeks. people in the administration out there campaigning for this legislation, explaining what it is. i think for the republicans, it will be much harder this time around. we already see them starting to talk about the bill as failing to create jobs. they're going to be watching for any money that's wasted. i suspect they'll go after the money and state and local governments, because at least among republicans, those provisions are a little less popular, but the fundamental problem is people like getting money and this bill puts money directly in a lot of people's pockets, the stimulus checks, and also people with kids. there's a whole new provision in the legislation that would give checks to a large number of families and help tens of millions of children. i do think they have a really hard effort in front of them, and what we may end up seeing them doing is trying to not talk about the bill at all and focus on other issues that tend to rally their base, even if the issues are mr. potato head and dr. seuss. >> the culture wars seem to be back, but they also seem to be a little concerned about biden getting credit for improving the coronavirus situation. take a look at this jim jordan tweet. i have to chuckle because he says, president trump got us the covid-19 vaccine, and president biden plagiarized it. i'm not sure what the plagiarism accusation is all about, but i mean, a little bit of a fact check. let's go in the way back machine and take a look at where we really were in december and in january. look at some of the headlines from across the country. red states and blue states, a lot of anger. covid-19 vaccine rollout leaves people scrambling to find shots. florida, not enough doses, no real plan. you're looking at a mess. in northwest georgians frustrated with the covid-19 vaccine rollout, are they trying to give trump credit for the existence of a vaccine when it seemed the real issue was whether the vaccine rollout process was working enough to get us out of this pandemic? laura. >> yeah, that's certainly right, abby, which is we saw this as well, during the obama years, as the country moved out of the recession, and again, republicans tried to give credit to either his predecessor or trump, who came after him. but again, republicans are trying to say that trump deserves credit for where the country is at right now. was operation warp speed under way? yes, it was, and president trump was responsible for helping get that started. biden has now tried to make sure there's much more vaccines to be distributed. there were clearly times during the trump administration when we reported that trump had turned away more vaccines. and so president biden is trying to make sure that there's more than enough vaccines, and says if there are any left over, that that is when america will have some vaccine diplomacy and start to potentially help other countries if there is a surplus of vaccines left over. but those two dates, the may 1st as well as july 4th, a clearly huge, and a sign that the administration feels pretty confident that they're going to be able to meet them. >> laura, before we go, i want to ask you about what comes next because democrats are already talking about infrastructure being the next big priority. but how do they get there? how do they get the bipartisan support to spend more money in washington? and what do they do about the filibuster at the end of the day? >> it's going to be really tricky for democrats because right now, it looks as though they might try to get infrastructure passed. they may try to find republicans on big infrastructure package. but other elements of biden's recovery legislation would likely go through reconciliation. ultimately, the big thing that i think to be the breaking point on the filibuster reform for democrats is the voting rights bill, is this massive voting rights expansion that passed through the house. a lot of democrats have told me that they think that's what maybe could finally, when it stalls in the senate, when there aren't enough republican votes for it, that could be what gets more moderate democrats on board to reform the filibuster. they want to pass that, they want to pass police reform. they want to pass immigration reform and a litany of other issues that could get stalled in the senate if the filibuster isn't reformed. >> they're talking a lot about reform as opposed to busting it all together, perhaps to get something more narrow like voting through as opposed to getting rid of it all together. laura and lisa, thanks for being with us this morning. coming up next, it's not just relief. it's transformation. more on why democrats call this the most important new law in a generation. hi sabrina! >>hi jen! so this aveeno® moisturizer goes beyond just soothing sensitive skin? 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>> abby, thanks for having me back. i think the most significant parts of the bill, there's one philosophical and one specific that i would call people's attention to. as a philosophical matter, we usually, when we have a downturn, have some kind of a stimulus bill or do something. this is really primarily focused for the first time, most all of the money just goes directly to individuals. and whether it's child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, a series of expansions of unemployment, the main focus of this bill is to get money to the people, not in other big programs. so i do think that's a bit of a sea change in how do you respond to a downturn. i would call everyone's attention, though, to the $150 billion to $200 billion going to schools and child care and that sort of thing, because that's a place where in the economists' language, there's a supply side effect. you have millions of people who cannot go back to work because they don't have an outlet that their child can go to safely. there's not day care. schools are shut down, so the faster we can get that set back up, i think that can unlock some positive on the economic side. >> yeah, so speaking of how much of a sea change this is, in some ways it's a bit of a perfect economic experiment. you have president trump's signature economic achievement, the 2017 tax cuts, and you have this bill. if you look at this graphic, you can see how stark the difference is. a quarter of the benefits in the biden bill go to the bottom wage earners compared to 1% of the trump tax cut. and just 9% of the benefits in this relief bill go to the top earnings compared to 65% of the trump tax cut. president biden says this changes the paradigm. you have some economists predicting we could see 7% economic growth this year, which would be historically high. do you agree, and is economic growth, in your view, is that what you're looking at to see whether this thing is doing what it's supposed to do? >> there are a lot of interesting issues in that question. that's not where i'm going to be looking. i actually don't think that gdp growth rate is where you should be looking because this isn't a regular stimulus bill. this isn't trying to give you bang for the buck on gdp growth. this is a rescue plan that is a disaster relief bill. and it's important to remember the reason why this bill is progressive and is aiming at the middle and lower income people is because this crisis has been concentrated in that part of the income distribution. if you look at the high-income people that benefitted from the $2 trillion trump tax cut, those people did not have a recession during this time. those people's stock market wealth is way up, and those people tend to be in jobs that can be done from home on a computer. so their incomes didn't go down. employment is actually up over the pandemic for that group. so this bill is really aimed at what the problem of the moment is. and i think that the right way to think about and evaluate this bill is to say, are we preventing the permanent damage from a temporary shock that we were afraid of for all of last year and is it getting out to the right people who have been hardest hit? for the most part, my opinion is it is. >> as you know, the 2009 stimulus bill ended the great recession, but a lot of people didn't necessarily feel like it helped them. what lessons do you think the biden administration needs to learn from that part? how do you get people to feel like this amount of spending was worth it and actually had a positive impact on their lives? >> yeah, look, that was the problem of 2009 and of most previous recessions, is people got to feel good and feel like the economy is booming back to have a positive impact from it. i think it will be a lot easier with something like a rescue package where it's concentrated, the money is going to people. it's easy to see who's getting payments when they're going to the people who have been hardest hit. i think the political lesson of 2009 clearly was that if a democrat is the president, there's go to be virtually no republican support for any policy measure that they do. so you should not be counting on being able to go back to the well and pass more bills if they need it, sort of the way we did last year with c.a.r.e.s. act and then another act in december. that politically is very unlikely, so i think that's pushing toward a big bill like this one. >> so i have just a couple seconds left, but right before you go, yes or no, do you see a massive infrastructure bill getting through congress this year? >> i see some infrastructure bill getting through congress. i think there's still a lot of support. there might even be republican support for that. >> all right. well, thank you so much. we'll be on the lookout for that and probably have you back to talk about that. austan goolsbee, thank you for being with us. >> and up next -- >> the rio grande valley has been ground zero of the latest surge of migration, and here you see the operation unfolding right in front of us. >> we'll talk to a texas border congressman about the migrant surge. some people say our trade-in process feels too easy. they can't believe it's 100% online and gives them a competitive offer that won't change for 7 days. an offer that they can put toward their new car. some people can't believe our friendly advocate will come to them as soon as tomorrow. drop off their new ride and whisk their old one away. because we make trading your car unbelievably easy. all so you can say... told you so. experience the new way to trade in your car with carvana. i'm greg, i'm 68 years old. i do motivational speaking in addition to the substitute teaching. i honestly feel that that's my calling-- to give back to younger people. i think most adults will start realizing that they don't recall things as quickly as they used to or they don't remember things as vividly as they once did. i've been taking prevagen for about three years now. people say to me periodically, "man, you've got a memory like an elephant." it's really, really helped me tremendously. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. to support local restaurants, we've been to every city, including boise... ...and even bakersfield. yeah, we're exhausted. whew! so, tonight... i'll be eating the gyro quesadilla from...al quick stop...in... hyde park. 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