Quorum call the presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell i ask consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Mcconnell i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its Business Today it adjourn until 9 k506789 a. M. 9 00 a. M. Monday. Following the prayer and pledge the time for use later in the day and morning business be closed. Further following leader remarks the senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to h. R. 748. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Schumer reserving the right to object. The presiding officer the democratic leader. Mr. Schumer thank you, madam president. I know the majority leader likes to talk about partisanship, but were not here for that reason. The bill were voting on will affect us for not just in the days to come, but in the months and years to come, and we need the best bill possible. We democrats have seen some real flaws in the bill that was put on the floor by the republicans and what it has is, for instance, a giant, giant Corporate Bailout fund with no accountability. You wouldnt even know if the loans were made until six months later. What we have seen is a cutback in what we asked for, for hospitals, doctors, nurses, masks, equipment. We need more money than the republican majority proposed. What we have seen is no money for state and local governments. Theyre going broke. They have huge, huge new expenses. We need to make those better. And so the bottom line is very simple. We are fighting for a better bill because this bill will have an effect for a very, very long time. Ive been working with secretary mnuchin, the president s Congressional Liaison eric. They have been in my office about six times tonight. Were making progress. I think theres a good chance well have an agreement. But we dont need artificial deadlines. We will get this done. We will come in at noon and hopefully we will have an agreement by then. So i object. The presiding officer objection is heard. Mr. Mcconnell madam president. The presiding officer the majority leader. Mr. Mcconnell as ive said repeatedly and i think all 100 of us know, we had a good bipartisan bill developed on a bipartisan basis with members in the senate over the last 48 hours until the democratic leader and the speaker of the house decided to blow it all up and play russian roulette with the markets. The futures market is dramatically down going into tomorrow. The asian markets, i suspect, i havent checked, are probably rattled by all this. Nothing would have been lost by allowing us to get on the bill because they could have used 30 more hours not that they could have but they should have used 30 more hours to continue to negotiate. But alas every single one of them has been on record preventing us from taking the next step toward getting an agreement the American People are waiting and waiting and waiting for us to get. So the result of what the majority leader, the democratic leader just did was to prevent us from voting right after the markets open in the morning and allow the markets to be rattled until noon, further evidence of the reckless behavior weve witnessed on the democratic side in the senate over the last hours. So, madam president , i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its Business Today it adjourn until 12 00 noon monday, march 23. Further following the pledge the morning hour deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date the time for the two leaders be reserved for use later in the day and morning business be closed. Further, following leader remarks the senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to h. R. 748. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Mcconnell if there is no further business to come before the senate i ask it stand adjourned under the previous order. The presiding officer the Senate Stands adjourned until Senate Stands adjourned until now on booktv after words New York Times reporter jennifer chronicles the first year the largest class of women ever elected to congress. Interviewed by democratic congresswoman of pennsylvania. After words is a weekly Interview Program with relevant guest hosts interviewing nonfiction authors about their latest work. All after words programs are also available as podcast. Host im excited to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you today, because i have a terribly good memory and this last year and a half has been a blur so im grateful you took the time to write down so many stories from the last year and a half. What inspired you to write this book . Guest ma so many firsts for so many different districts in the congress period dont you think that would be a good book and give comfort congress over the years. I thought that would be great. It will be all new people. And i had the experience of covering when the republicans took over and what that was like to have select directly through candy through state that through senators of them are personal to me. What stood out as being the most remarkable that he would want to share with them about the costs this year marks guest i loved sitting in the gallery watching you interact. I did find a group of National Security women with the men as well but watching that was interesting to me. I think that this kind of legislative memory that sticks out is the vote on the background check bill for a lot of reasons having had such an experience losing her child to gun violence and so many personal stories did drive wom women. A bill that hadnt gotten any traction in congress in the last decade to see it pass and then to see the contrast of the moderates and progressives fighting over the amendments to that happening right in front of us. And i followed the congresswoman from her hearing to the floor as she was getting ready to go on to build. That always stuck out to me and something that demonstrated in so many words what this congress has been about. Host that was an important bill in the decades we hadnt considered in any sort of legislation about guns and gun safety and it was important for lucy in particular and i recall in the buck you told about the motion to reconnect, and that was associated. I think it is on that is one ofe things from a memory standpoint strikes me what its been about in my learning experience. There is a concept were actual thing called the motion to reconnect for any bill of consequence that gets voted on in congress and it has at the history something that is sort of the last byte of the apple for the party thats been a minority to be able to perfect the bill so that theoretically if we just had this happen on the motion to reconnect everything would be perfect in the bill as a whole we would be able to pass it at speeds that it can become instead a weapon of the minority and a lot of ways and something that can be used to run attack ads and this is one of the things that is most striking to me not only as a freshman but a firsttime legislator that they are these kind of weapons or at this point in time seemed to be almost like your appendix not necessary any longer and that is something i was really struck by in congress. Another thing you wrote about was freshman orientation having been largely blocked with a lot of content and so i thought that that was interesting, too. I was wondering when i went to college there was an essay that stands out in my mind and was in one word if you could describe yourself what would that one were to be, so if you could describe the freshman class, what do you think that word would be and why would you use that word is guest i would say remarkable because on the one hand if you look at the fact its the most number of women and yet so few when i interviewed the congresswoman about this she said i dont know what they are celebrating here both in its absence of a larger number and then the diversity as i mentioned earlier. And we talk about the motion to reconnect which only on cspan can we have such a lengthy conversation about this. For me, when there are republicans in control and a lot of the guys go out and smoke cigars on the balcony. Watching how Something Like that has become symbolic at this point to be revived at this conversation and watching i think what was remarkable, too is these interesting backgrounds you let your experience unfold pretty openly. I dont think people try to hide the fact it was a badge of honor especially in washington and to let your opinions on how things should be done even if it doesnt work out in your favor, you talked about the motion to reconnect and i was talking about this in the minneapolis suburbs and the coffee shop and she said i kind of regretted that. I realized only after the fact that it actually did. So shes learning, everyone is learning in front of the country and i think that is different than ten years ago. Host i think it is important, transparency is important, particularly to me and i think a lot of our freshman class members to cause we did just get here in a lot of ways and we have the legislative records. We are trying to be thoughtful and deliberate with our processes and making sure that we not only are hopefully representing people with explaining why we believe we are presenting to people in whatever food we take into so i think it is important also to be human. I think that is one thing i hope we see is we are trying to be our whole selves in terms of how we present it to people and i think that is different than some who may have gone before us in terms of how they felt they had to present to the people they didnt necessarily feel like could be their whole selves and i think that my next question here is you did spend a lot of time kind of talking about people figuring out whether or not to run and whether they were recruited were not recruited. I have an example i am literally hit reply to an emilys list solicitation and said i would like to run for congress and my reply i didnt think anybody would ever answer me out in the universe and they did for whatever reason because i was earlier on in the process and also i got a lot of questions early on on why are you not running for the school board, why are you not starting with the locals and my response at this time was im too old for that and not only that but im quite excited about the response back of who are you to think that you are qualified without having any other qualifications in government, and i dont think we would have had those conversations with male candidates, and i think that is something i would like to understand what do you think the differences are the men and women running for office and do you think this is the class that wasnt necessarily recruited and what did you see in the landscape of all the fuss . Guest its funny when you are reflecting upon how you got into the race and publications. I would go back to the class of 87. One of them i spent a lot of time with he had a pizzeria that was his Family Business and i dont think anybody said white. Or you going to be this incumbent democrat, but i dont think that he was laughed out of town with regards to experience it again that has become a badge of honor in washington to know your constituents. If you are talking to a woman that is automatically a different standard if your standard is to be part of your community and it is very interesting your thoughts on Elizabeth Warren dropping out because that is obviously a huge piece of the conversation. There is no getting around these almost reflective responses. They talk about what youre talking about. Who will care for your kids when you are in washington on the road and they face questions that come up all the time and all i can say is the conclusion is in order to combat that you need more. When women can get through a primary they will get elected they have to get through the primary and that is where a lot of the start. Host a lot of that reflected on the experience versus the Democratic Women experience and that there were some differences that you assess and i share a kind of the joy when i look at our side of the aisle and the democratic side into the diversity and the color because women tend to not wear suits and so you just see this kind of tapestry of america and when i looked at the other side and see more. I want the other side to be bright. What comment did you make in the book that have to do and why cant we get more republican women elected . Guest they dont believe me when i say this and it is probably not universally enthusiastically so. I do believe in having covered congress and talking to some of these people in congress and writing this book, republicans do want that, especially when. They do want a more diverse congress. Now structurally speaking, the way they have normally recruited people which has to do with their overall political philosophy and meritocracy they want to be genderneutral and race neutral and so forth and i think republican women in particular especially those in the fundraising space are starting to come around to the view that that was simply not going to work and there had to be a gender focus on recruiting because as we all know, women have to be asked to run or talked into running sometimes. If that is the case, you have to recruit women directly. I talked to a woman who had been in the primary in North Carolina and was stunned to see how many especially just didnt believe another woman should have that job so its going to take a concerted effort i think it is just not going to say ron. Ron. There have to be structural changes in place. I know in my particular case i am also a veteran and engineer and also an educator and all of those different kinds of things are not very well represented in congress and they are largely not really represented because access to capital is the lifeblood of politics and people who are veterans or educators are not those people that have the networks of people that can support them and provide resources for the campaigns at that sort of thing so we are at the time when there are increasingly more and order organizations that are representing that and some on the democratic side and some on the republican side that support women as well. There are also some that are coming up into supporting the professionals with engineering backgrounds or veterans on one side or the other so i think we are making some reforms that are allowing better access to candidates that are nontraditional candidatenottrado didnt come through politics or, as lawyers as an example. So i think we are creating pathways for that. And it would be better if we had a system that we funded campaigns that wasnt about access to capital. So there could be a global Playing Field so more people could be encouraged to run on both sides of the aisle. Did you see any parallel between that conversation and other members . Guest it was interesting to me. I learned a lot obviously. What struck me was selected was quite gross and was more prevalent in the 70s and i wanted to understand that. It was because so many of the early members of Congress Took her dead husbands seat and they were viewed by their male colleagues as adjunct, some of them worked on the husbands campaigns and district offices and so forth. Like lucy is okay. There wasnt a huge number asserting themselves and their own agency the way there was with the first who showed up at the town and everyone wanted her lemon pie recipe so its always been upheld. And im going to make that fight for womens history month. Im excited. But they began to run on their own and that is when they were pushing back and also when the women in both parties came together to try to have some legislative muscle behind the scenes and they certainly did the gavel and things like that and they put a lot of arguments off the table and worked on things they could agree on and that was a more bipartisan time for women in congress so this class. Its interesting that the need to movement was happening in the background of all of this, because that isnt the same as coming to the Womens Movement and getting elected in large numbers. Its not quite the same context but there are similarities in terms of whats going on nationally and in the culture and women reflecting that and in different backgrounds who would never us used to be considered r Public Office for federal Office Coming up deciding to run and getting elected. Host you mentioned theyve only ever had seven before this cycle or seven total and i think four of them were members of congress, so only three in history in pennsylvania had been elected until the election and now we have four so we went from having no women in pennsylvania at the time that i was elected to having the four. And i remember having a conversation and you include this in the book a woman lawyer who had been around for a while and she was talking to me about being supportive of my campaign and candidacy but basically begging me that if she was going to support me that i would come back and buy what not leave this Congress Unless i felt there was a stability and pennsylvania had this kind of heritage of having only one woman at a time and that was pretty much our limit and now i do think we are collectively committed to making sure this isnt some kind of an aberration and permanence as well. You did write something in the book that says one thing congress no one wants to lose and every day as part of the time. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic and how it has played out in the last year particularly for the women members . Guest we are seeing that in the primary. The house is remarkable to me how many are excited where democrats who are excited about taking back the house really struggle with the concept of how that occurred with democrats beating some republicans and how did that happen . And get the focus of the Democratic Party whether it is criticizing them or embracing them was to focus on the progress of element, and the notion that the party itself is organically moving to the left and there was some research to back that up. But right now if you look at how people are voting in to see what is going on in the democratic primary in fact if you want to attract centrists and some republicans which is the coalition you need to win the certainly in the white house and in some districts with more republicans were equal numbers you need that coalition you cant be embracing the most positions and probably naturally you wouldnt be because you are running in a district. Chrissy but then something section right now. Jennifer