The World and Everything in It - October 6, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

U.S. government spending is bigger than ever. Now lawmakers are at an impasse on raising the debt ceiling and the plans to spend even more.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also World Tour.

Plus we return to dairy country. This time to meet a man who collects historic relics!

And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on education and schooling. There’s a difference between the two.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, October 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Debt ceiling fight continues in Washington » President Biden on Tuesday urged Republican senators to “get out of the way” and let Democrats suspend the nation’s debt limit.

But Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans are not in the way and that Democrats are fully capable of lifting the ceiling on their own.

MCCONNELL: The majority needs to stop sleepwalking toward another preventable crisis. We gave them a roadmap and three months' notice.

Congress is facing an Oct. 18 deadline to allow for more borrowing. That is needed to avoid defaulting on U.S. debts.

Democrats can raise the debt ceiling on their own using a process called reconciliation. That’s the process they hope to use to pass trillions in new spending without any Republican votes. In protest, Republicans are not signing on to help lift the debt limit.

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continues to pressure Republicans to help raise it.

SCHUMER: The fact is, we don’t have the luxury of waiting until October 18th to extend the debt ceiling. Even a near miss can have dramatic consequences.

Both Biden and McConnell have promised that the country will avoid default, but neither side has yet to budge.

The global economy relies on the stability of U.S. Treasury notes. Economists warn that unpaid debt could crush financial markets and hurl America into recession.

AstraZeneca seeks authorization for antibody treatment to prevent COVID-19 » Drugmaker AstraZeneca has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize the emergency use of a first-of-a-kind antibody treatment to prevent COVID-19.

The company said it would be the first long-acting antibody combination to get the green light for COVID prevention. The drug would likely be limited to people with compromised immune systems who don't get sufficient protection from vaccination.

The FDA has stressed that antibody drugs are not a substitute for vaccination, which is the most effective, long-lasting form of protection.

Also on Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson applied for authorization of a second booster shot for its one-dose COVID-19 vaccine.

Biden administration lifts abortion referral ban » The Biden administration has reversed a ban on abortion referrals by tax-supported family planning clinics. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The Department of Health and Human Services said Monday its new regulation will mark a return to Obama-era rules. It will allow clinics to refer women to abortionists.

Planned Parenthood, the country’s biggest abortion provider, celebrated the announcement. But the group criticized part of the Biden administration rule that allows individual clinicians who object to abortion not to provide referrals.

The taxpayer-funded program known as Title X, makes available more than $250 million a year to clinics to provide birth control and healthcare services mainly to low-income women. The Trump administration barred clinics receiving those funds from referring women for abortions to prevent tax dollars from being used to promote abortions.

That caused Planned Parenthood and others to exit the Title X program. But the abortion giant said it looks forward to accepting taxpayer dollars once again.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Whistleblower slams Facebook at Senate » A woman who once worked as product manager at Facebook testified before a Senate panel on Tuesday, calling for Congress to hold the tech giant accountable.

HAUGEN: I’m here today because I believe Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy. The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.

Frances Haugen said the company develops algorithms to feed hateful or inflammatory content to hook users, employing a metric to see which users are likely to be on the platforms frequently. More consumers spending more time on social media sells more ads.

One leaked internal study showed 13.5 percent of teen girls said Instagram made thoughts of suicide worse, and 17 percent said it made eating disorders more severe.

She recommended raising the minimum age for an Instagram account from 13 to 16 or even 18. Facebook has lauded its use of artificial intelligence to remove offensive content, but Haugen said its success rate was only 10 to 20 percent. Facebook responded that Haugen did not directly work on the issues she raised, but Haugen said the reports she leaked were public to any company department.

Francis Collins resigns as NIH head » The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, has announced that he’ll step down by the end of the year. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Francis Collins has led the National Institutes of Health for 12 years. That’s longer than any previous director. He took the job under President Obama, but Presidents Trump and Biden both asked him to stay on.

Throughout the pandemic, Collins has advocated for measures like masking and vaccines. Under his leadership, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases partnered with Moderna to create a COVID-19 vaccine in record time.

Long before COVID, he led the growth of the agency and helped discover genetic mutations involved in cystic fibrosis.

President Biden will nominate Collins’ replacement, and the Senate must confirm his pick.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the fight over spending in Washington.

Plus, the difference between schooling and education.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 6th of October, 2021.

You’re listening to World Radio and we’re so glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It: the battle over the debt ceiling and trillions in new spending.

Congress has less than two weeks to raise the nation’s debt ceiling to avoid possible default on U.S. debts. That, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Democrats are working to pass trillions in new spending by themselves with no GOP votes. In response, Republicans say Democrats can raise the debt ceiling by themselves, too.

EICHER: As party leaders bicker over the debt limit, Democrats also face a struggle within.

Two moderate Democrats, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have balked at the price tag of President Biden’s proposed spending package.

Manchin said spending $3.5 trillion right now would be—quote—“The definition of fiscal insanity.”

That’s not a good sign for the president, because he must have all 50 Democrats on board to pass it.

REICHARD: With that in mind, President Biden is reportedly trying to salvage a scaled down version of what he calls his Build Back Better plan.

Phil Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s been keeping close tabs on all of this, and he joins us now. 

Phil, good morning!

PHIL WALLACH, GUEST: Glad to be with you.

REICHARD: First of all, Phil, lawmakers last week averted a government shutdown by kicking the can down the road. Again. They passed what’s called a continuing resolution. Just a stopgap measure. It just keeps current funding levels in place for a couple more months until December 3rd.
Then we’re into the holidays. Do you think they’ll agree on a funding bill after Thanksgiving?

WALLACH: I think they might well push it up against Christmas. But this has actually been a pretty familiar pattern in recent years of waiting until December to actually get spending resolved and the appropriators, you know, despite all of the tensions between the two parties that we hear so much about in the media, appropriators continue to have some functional working relationships with each other, and they'd like to get that worked out. So, I think they probably will come to some understanding in December.

REICHARD: Alight, well let’s talk about the debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Congress has until October 18th to raise the debt ceiling or the government will default on its debts. Twelve days from now.

Usually, the parties vote together to raise the ceiling. But Republicans say this time, Democrats can do it on their own. Why is the GOP drawing a line on this and can Democrats actually raise it on their own?

WALLACH: Well, I take a little issue with the premise that you put out there. I think historically we have oftentimes seen the minority party just say this is an ugly vote that we're not going to take and the majority can just go ahead and do it themselves. That's not an entirely novel thing and even in the Trump administration, you had most House Democrats voting against one of the debt ceiling increases then. So, playing politics around the debt ceiling is actually a pretty familiar feature of American politics in recent decades. Now, can the Democrats just do it themselves as Mitch McConnell says they ought to? Yes. They can figure it out one way or another. But that doesn't mean it'll be pleasant for them. They believe that using the reconciliation tool would be procedurally clunky compared to just putting forth a regular statute. And they are reluctant to put a dollar amount, which the reconciliation process would require. So, they're not too eager to go that direction.

REICHARD: Okay, let’s move on to the president’s massive spending plan. As we mentioned, Senators Sinema and Manchin aren’t on board with $3.5 trillion. What are their objections and do you think they’ll hold the line?

WALLACH: Well, I think both of them are genuinely concerned about just wantonly increasing the federal debt at a time when the economy is already recovering quite strongly and actually experiencing some inflationary pressures. They're worried that just pouring many more trillions of federal dollars into that mix will cause some problems. I think those are definitely legitimate concerns that are sincerely held on their part. They may also have specific concerns that they don't always get into in the media about particular portions of the spending which they might think are wasteful or sort of unfairly favoring certain kinds of districts. There's a lot in that three and a half trillion dollar package obviously that they may feel they want to negotiate over.

REICHARD: President Biden and party leaders are working with those two senators, trying to win them over. Biden is reportedly bringing the asking price down. But down to what and does it matter when we are talking these massive numbers?

WALLACH: Sure. I think the difference between one and a half trillion and three and a half trillion is $2 trillion. We used to think that was real money. And so I think it's totally reasonable to have Manchin and Sinema put their foot down and say, we don't want to go nearly as high as three and a half trillion. Now is that one and a half trillion dollar number that they've floated somehow magical on its own? That would be a little harder to understand. And so we are now seeing some reports that we might see a $2 trillion package be able to get those two senators’ support.

REICHARD: What other concessions do you think the White House and Democratic leaders might be willing to make?

WALLACH: I think they're in a difficult position, because their base has gotten very invested in the idea of putting through this whole three and a half trillion dollar package. Of course, Senator Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has made it seem like that was a concession on his part, going down to three and a half trillion from what he might have liked, even more ambitious than that. And so there are a lot of people very invested in that. But at the end of the day, they only have 50 votes and the vice president in the Senate. They really have to bring all 50 members along and so it's not clear entirely what the White House’s leverage might be with such a thin majority.

REICHARD: Now, progressives in the House are holding up the bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate already passed. Kind of holding it hostage while they push for the president’s bigger spending plan. But President Biden says he wants that infrastructure deal to reach his desk regardless of what happens with the other proposal. Do you think that will happen?

WALLACH: Well, that's a great question. I think the progressives in the House are trying to make it seem like this is one big package deal—it's all or nothing. And that's their way of trying to gain some leverage over the moderates. Not only Manchin and Sinema in the Senate, but also some moderates from wealthier districts, usually, in the House of Representatives who are a little bit reluctant as well on the three and a half trillion. So, I think in the end, though, these are two different bills and I think at the end of the day that progressives probably want to see the infrastructure bill passed. So, even if the reconciliation package were to go down in flames, probably at the end of the day, Democrats would want to see the infrastructure bill move through the House.

REICHARD: What do you wish the public understood about all this that perhaps it’s missing?

WALLACH: Well, I'd certainly go back to the debt limit. I think there's a lot of people understandably very frightened by what's going on right now. And certainly Janet Yellen 's letter to Congress makes it seem like, you know, we're headed for a financial crisis potentially in the next few weeks. And so I think there may be some investors out there getting nervous. And I would just say to them, unfortunately, this is a crazy ritual that we're going through right now, but neither party really has any incentive to want to see the United States default. There really aren't any legislators who would try to make the case that that's somehow a good thing. And so I think most of the folks on Capitol Hill have really a very strong faith that this is all going to get worked out at the 11th hour. And so as scary as it seems, and as crazy as this whole ritual around the debt limit is, probably the best advice is not to panic.

REICHARD: Phil Wallach with the American Enterprise Institute has been our guest. Phil, thanks so much!

WALLACH: Glad to be with you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Abuja, Nigeria: Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Report details abuse in French Catholic church—We start today in Europe.

AUDIO: [Man speaking French]

French Catholics are reeling over the revelations of a report detailing child abuse in the church. The independent commission released its findings this week.

Its investigation found more than 200,000 cases of abuse by clergy since 1950. Another 100,000 children fell victim to lay leaders such as teachers.

AUDIO: [Woman speaking French]

This woman said she prayed the report would help the church deal with the problem.

Investigators estimate about 3,000 abusers are involved.

According to the report, the “vast majority” of victims were pre-adolescent boys. The lead investigator urged the church to pay reparations to victims, even though most of the crimes are too old to prosecute.

Muhammad cartoonist killed in traffic accident—Next we go to Sweden.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Swedish]

Police say they have no evidence of foul play in a traffic accident that killed a cartoonist targeted by Muslim extremists.

In 2007, Lars Vilks drew a caricature depicting Mohammed as a dog. After a Swedish newspaper published it, Islamic groups put a bounty on his head. He spent the rest of his life under police protection.

AUDIO: [Man speaking Swedish]

Two police officers assigned to guard Vilks also died in the crash. Investigators say their car crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with another vehicle. They don’t think anyone else is involved but are working to determine the cause of the crash.

Duterte to retire from politics—Next to Southeast Asia.

DUTERTE: And today, I announce my retirement from politics.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his plan to retire on Saturday. His daughter, Sara, is expected to run to replace him in 2022.

Duterte came to office in 2016 and the country’s constitution bars him from seeking a second term. He first said he would run for vice president—a move widely seen as a bid to avoid prosecution over his controversial war on drugs. Human rights groups say tens of thousands of people have died in the brutal police campaign.

Duterte could face charges in the Philippines and the International Criminal Court. But if his daughter wins the presidency, she could shield him from a trial.

Cumbre Vieja continues to erupt—Next, to North Africa and the Canary Islands.

AUDIO: [Sound of explosion, flowing lava]

The Cumbre Vieja volcano has grown more aggressive in the last few days, spitting molten lava from two new fissures. The new lava flow threatens towns not in danger from the first eruption.

The volcano rumbled to life for the first time in 50 years on September 19th. The lava has destroyed at least 870 buildings and prompted the evacuation of about 6,000 people.

Desert ultramarathon begins—And finally, we end today in Morocco.

AUDIO: [Sound of cheering as race begins]

The Marathon of the Sands began Sunday. The six-day ultramarathon takes runners across the Sahara Desert for 156 punishing miles. It is considered one of the toughest races on earth. Temperatures in the arid climate can reach up to ​​120 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.

Despite precautions, the race can be dangerous. One runner died on Monday. He was only the third person to die in the race’s 35-year history.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Archaeologists in Israel have found a rare item in Jerusalem dating back nearly 3,000 years.

The smooth, carved limestone object was found in part of a sprawling mansion overlooking what is now the Old City.

It was designed for comfortable sitting with a deep septic tank below.

You’ve put two and two together by now it’s a 2,700-year-old toilet.

Experts say this particular object would be considered quite a luxury at that time, even within a mansion.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “a pot of gold.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 6th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: preserving a piece of farming history.

Before Amazon Prime brought everything to our doors, the milkman delivered milk every day.

EICHER: Now perhaps you’re too young to remember when milk came in glass bottles. With the delicious cream on top? But today we’re going to meet a New Jersey man who used to drop the milk bottles off, now he’s scrounging through people’s basements and barns to get them back. WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis has his story.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: On his way to school as a boy, Butch Shoemaker delivered metal cans of still-warm milk from cows he milked on his grandfather’s farm in rural Warren County, NJ.

SHOEMAKER: Along the road they had a nail stuck out on the post and I would hang it there. And at night, on the way back I’d pick up the cans. And if I happened to get out of school a little early, I would go in the house and usually the lady would have cookies and milk or something for me.

AUDIO: [MILK BOTTLE DELIVERY]

Shoemaker has lived here his whole life. As a teen in the 1950s, he apprenticed with a local farmer and graduated to delivering milk in bottles. Eight years ago, at age 70, he started collecting those bottles—hoping to find at least one from every historic dairy in the county. Preserving history through milk bottles is a race against time. Glass bottles break. And there are fewer people around who remember the dairies. His oldest bottle was made before Clara Barton established the American Red Cross or Wyatt Earp fought at Arizona’s OK Corral.

SHOEMAKER: It's hard to believe but you figure in 100 years most of this information is lost. And all you have to do is go on your computer and Google it, and any of the names. You won’t find it.

Shoemaker’s collection of more than 300 bottles has taken over a small room in his house. Tiny milk-colored Styrofoam beads fill the embossed and painted quarts, pints, and half-pint bottles. They are arranged alphabetically by town—from Allamuchy to Washington.

Shoemaker’s favorite bottle is a painted one from Pohatcong Dairy in Washington. It’s not the most expensive in his collection, but it has some of the best graphics.

SHOEMAKER: And what happens with the bottles is the ones with the nicest graphics become highly collectible throughout the United States. People don't care about Warren County, but they do care about the graphics of it. So they become very difficult to find, where the embossed bottles…

Shoemaker teamed up with fellow bottle-collector Shawn Kale. They could only guess at how many bottles they were looking for to round out their collection. They posted ads at Mackey’s ice cream shop and started getting the word out about their mission. One woman offered her stack of old yearbooks to find dairy ads.

SHOEMAKER: We chase down every lead there is. And there's a lot of leads that go nowhere. But it only takes one. And that could make it.

One day, they got a call from someone cleaning out their basement. It was full of old bottles. Most they already had in their collection. But then they came across a bottle from a dairy they didn’t even know existed! They bought everything in the basement for the sake of that one bottle.

As far as he knows, Shoemaker lacks only 7 or 8 bottles. Finding what he needs is getting harder.

SHOEMAKER: And it was only last year, right? The Corona hit. There's no milk bottle shows. Nobody is doing nothing. And this lady calls. And she says, ‘I have half a dozen milk bottles my father left,’ right? She says, ‘If you want to look at ‘em when the weather is right, I don't want to have you in the house. I'm scared. I'll bring ‘em outside.’ So down I go, and we get these bottles out. And there was none I needed. But there was one in a box. I picked it up. There was a bottle I'd been looking for. So you talk about a joy?

AUDIO: [FOUR-WHEELER]

Back at the house, Shoemaker drives a four-wheeler up to his barn where he stores various milk paraphernalia: bottlers, milk crates, pasteurizers, and an old delivery truck. He also keeps plenty of duplicate bottles so he can take them on the road or display them. He wants to share the bottles and the stories behind them.

SHOEMAKER: We have bottles, too, we give away. We gave loads of bottles away. And if somebody says they want to start collecting, well, we start ‘em collecting. I have that catalog and I send them anything I have. Because we're all not going to live forever. And they can’t go with you, so if you share it…

A complete collection will be quite valuable—but that’s not important to Shoemaker. What he cares about most is the history he learns, and saves, through each bottle.

SHOEMAKER: We were at shows already and somebody comes along and starts talkin’ to me about certain bottles we have and knows some history on it. Well, I don't care if I sell a bottle. I want to write this history down. It's almost like each name of a bottle has a story to tell.

And Shoemaker is determined to make sure none will be forgotten.

Reporting for WORLD from Warren County, NJ, I’m Amy Lewis.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on best intentions gone awry.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTATOR: Back when I visited schools as a children’s book author, I met lots of teachers. Their main complaint at the time was No Child Left Behind, especially its demand for accountability via standardized testing.

Teachers still complain about testing. That’s probably why so many of them supported Oregon’s SB 744. The bill passed both Oregon houses in June and was signed by Governor Kate Brown on July 14. The process was swift and quiet, but the news broke with screaming headlines, like, “Oregon governor signs bill suspending proficiency requirements for high school graduates.”

Outrage blazed across the podcast world: “more dumbing down education—is this how we compete?”

I read SB 744, and it’s not really about erasing standards (or not directly). It’s about reconsidering graduation requirements after the devastation wrought by a year of online schooling. Since the early 2000s, “demonstrating proficiency” in math and reading means passing Oregon’s four Essential Skills tests, a bridge too far for many low-income students who fell through the cracks during the pandemic.

While a task force evaluates graduation requirements and makes recommendations, the state will waive said requirements. In the meantime, high school students must still show up for class and turn in homework if they expect to graduate.

Teachers who supported the bill in public testimony consistently pointed to the tyranny of testing: of “being reduced to a single number on a single day.” They called testing “devastating for students, teachers, and principals.” One man testified, “I was not teaching how to write [or] communicate . . . I was test-prepping them—again.” Isn’t there a better way to educate all our kids?

Well, no. Not in the overbuilt, top-heavy structure we have now. Public funding makes public demands. Mass schooling means mass management. Classroom teaching has never been the best model, but back in the day of local control, it was much more responsive.

Senator Ben Sasse, in his book The Vanishing American Adult, makes the point that schooling is not education. Schooling encompasses four walls. Education happens everywhere. Schooling is data. Education is life. It’s a point lost on the Biden administration, now pushing for free preschool and free community college. They assume more schooling equals more learning and therefore more opportunity. The equation isn’t that simple.

It’s not that kids can’t succeed in school, or that nothing good can come out of a classroom. I’ve met some excellent teachers who live for that moment when a students’ eyes light up. But the farther education policy gets from the individual child, the less effective it will be. Oregon may be making a good-faith attempt to meet the needs of at-risk students by reevaluating their standards—but starting at the top almost guarantees lowering—even eliminating—standards at the bottom.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: non-fungible tokens. Believe it or not, they’re the latest digital craze. We’ll explain what they are and why they’ve gotten so popular.

And, we’ll take you to the March for Life in Berlin, Germany, where pro-lifers are spreading their message with the help of young activists.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition—the Bible says—and not according to Christ.

Go now in grace and peace.

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