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Obama Challenges Congress to Act on Immigration; Is there Progress on Iran Nuclear Deal; After Snow, Floods Expected in Buffalo; Showdown between Obama, Congressional Republicans; Interview with Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Zoe Lofgren.

Aired November 21, 2014 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting from Washington.

President Obama has made good on his promise to enact immigration reform through an executive order and, in essence, thrown down the gauntlet to the Republicans in Congress, telling them if they are opposed to his action, they have a simple remedy, go ahead and pass a bill. Joining us now, two guests, the Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, he's a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's -- subcommittee on Immigration Refugees and Border Security. Also joining us, the California Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. She's a member of the Judiciary Committee, a former immigration attorney as well.

To both of you, thanks very much for joining us.

Congresswoman

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now, two guests. The Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who is a key member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security; also joining us, the California Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Judiciary Committee, a former immigration attorney as well.

To both of you, thanks very much for joining us.

Congresswoman, do you believe -- and you've been involved in this immigration battle for a long time -- the president went far enough?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN, (D), CALIFORNIA & FORMER IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: Well, I think the president went as far as he thought he could do based on the legal advice that he received. As I'm sure you know, since really they've had the authority to take deferred action and many presidents have, Reagan, the first the first Bush, Kennedy, George W. Bush and on and on. So the question is how far can that go? And although some of us have suggested he might go further, he is doing what his lawyers have suggested he can do and I respect that.

BLITZER: All right. Let me bring Senator Hatch into this conversation.

You've been involved in this conversation for a long time. You were one of 14 Republican Senators who voted for that comprehensive immigration reform bill with Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and other Republicans as well. In the past year and a half in the House of Representatives, were you disappointed that the speaker didn't even consider what the Senate had passed?

SEN. ORRIN HATCH, (R), UTAH: No, because I knew that they had their own problems over there and they wanted to do a series of immigration bills, which I think they were prepared to do, once we turn after January 1st. The problem here is that when Zoe mentions the other presidents, take Reagan, take Bush, in both of those cases, they had prior legislation that they then enforced, which is what the president is supposed to do, is enforce legislation. Some --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on, Congressman.

HATCH: Some have mentioned 22 times the president didn't have this kind of authority, it would be unconstitutional and so forth. Well, I hate to say this, this is not the way to do it. I actually believe the Republicans in the House were going to come up with their versions and then we'd solve the problem. I'd like to get it done the right way and so that it's legally done. I'd like to get it done so there's a lasting solution rather than a temporary one which is what the president has done.

BLITZER: I assume, Congresswoman, that you want to get it down as well. The Republicans will have a bigger majority in the House and the Senate. You're ready to compromise, work with them and see if you can come up with some sort of framework, right?

LOFGREN: Absolutely. We did a count and at the time the count was done, we knew we had the votes to pass the Senate bill. We made it clear to the speaker, I was part of this for over four years, we wrote a bill that because of Republican concerns, we were not able to introduce. We made it clear you can go comprehensive, do it in pieces, do it serially by the Homeland Security committee by border security. He just won't do anything. At some point, the president has to do his job, which is what he has done now. He can't rewrite the law but there is discretion under the law. For example, when the bill was passed, Senator Hatch voted against it. But the bill specifically in 1986, the dependents of the beneficiaries, and President Reagan decided to give all of the dependents deferred action because he couldn't conscious separating families. The president has asked Congress to act. If they don't like what he's done, they can supersede it. Certainly, Senator Hatch did his job, but the House of Representatives, the Republicans refused to act. BLITZER: A lot of people look back on what President Reagan did in

1986, he went ahead with what was widely called them the Amnesty Bill, which became the law giving amnesty to millions of undocumented people who were here in the United States. So was that a big mistake going back then? You remember that. Because this current president said he's doing exactly what Reagan and Bush did.

HATCH: Reagan had legislation that was passed that he implemented and did it the way he thought he should do it, and that's the difference. Congress is the responsible party to be able to pass legislation like this. The president has the job of enforcing it and implementing it. The president has taken over both acts of Congress and his rights and the rights of the Supreme Court and incorporated them all into the White House. That shouldn't be allowed. It shouldn't be permitted.

Now, I have to say that I've been talking with the Judiciary Committee in the House and they were prepared to go ahead, as soon as we get through the first of next year and come up with a series of bills that they think would be the way to go starting with making sure that the borders are secure.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Let me ask the Congresswoman --

Are you ready to do this piecemeal, smaller steps and then getting the Senate to pass moderately smaller steps and then sending it to the president for his signature?

LOFGREN: We've made it clear -- I talked to the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee practically every day. We don't agree on everything but I certainly respect him. I talked to the chairman constantly. No one is talking to us in a bipartisan way about working together. We're prepared to act and to compromise and the president in his speech held out his hands saying, if you don't like this, do your job, legislate, I'll work with you. I would hope that this action, which is bringing peace of mind to millions of people who have been living in fear, I hope this action will spur the Congress to get busy and do their job, which is to provide compromised legislation that can serve the country well.

And I've just got to say that on the legal issue, we've just received a letter from dozens of legal scholars pointing out that the president is well within his authority. Other presidents have done exactly the same thing. And, in fact, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the branch to defer immigration action in cases such as this. So we ought to talk about how to legislate, not get stuck on a legal issue, which is very clear.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Go ahead, Senator.

HATCH: That's a nice argument but the president doesn't have a right to violate the law, to violate the Constitution. And what Zoe is talking about is presidential action after, and certainly not in granting what really amounts to amnesty to these folks.

(CROSSTALK)

HATCH: Look, I'm on Zoe's side on this. I actually believe we need to do something on this and we did it in the Senate. It's not a perfect bill. I was hopeful the House would pass a more perfect bill. I think we will do that. But what the president did is not a lasting way of solving this problem. It's a temporary way of not even solving it and, in the process, creating a huge uproar that is going to make it more difficult to pass real immigration reform.

I'm going to work with Zoe and others who feel otherwise, and hopefully we can get this done in a way that is decent, honorable, and welcoming to people who already are here and aren't going to go home.

BLITZER: All right.

HATCH: So I'll do my best.

And, Zoe, I hope we can work together.

LOFGREN: I'll look forward to it.

BLITZER: I suspect both of you will be seeing both of you on a house/Senate conference committee working out compromised legislation moving forward.

Senator Hatch, always good to see you. Thanks very much for joining us.

HATCH: Same here.

BALDWIN: Congressman Lofgren, same to you.

Appreciate both of you for joining us. Let's see if your colleagues in the new Congress can get together and work out some sort of reasonable compromise. That's what your job is. Let's hope you guys can do it.

Appreciate it very much.

HATCH: Thanks, Wolf.

BALDWIN: Up next, we're just days away from a deadline for a nuclear deal between Iran and the West. There are serious gaps in the negotiations. We're going to go live to Vienna, Austria, to see if a deal can be done before the Monday deadline.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The clock is ticking on a deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran. Monday is the deadline and it now seems that the sides are still pretty far apart.

Our Nic Robertson is joining us from Vienna, Austria.

That's the site of the last-minute talks. Nic, Iran's chief negotiator was supposed to head home to Tehran for negotiations. He's now staying where you are in Vienna. What are we reading into this?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, there's been a lot of moving pieces today. You had the British foreign Secretary Philip Hammond that flew in. He said still significant gaps. Then we had the French foreign minister and he kept his convoy waiting and waiting there. They eventually took off and left the building without him. So he still appears to be here. So it does seem that people's plans have been changing. We heard earlier in the day that Secretary Kerry would be going to France this afternoon. That didn't happen. He waited at another hotel. His third trilateral meeting with the E.U. chief negotiator, Katherine Ashton. So that's their third trilateral. We heard Zarif was going to go back to Tehran. It's really a day of flux but I think the headline at the moment is, there's a real desire to get this done but the gaps are significant, Wolf, and we're not hearing anything yet. Telling us that the gaps are closing down.

BLITZER: They can always agree to an extension in these talks for a few more weeks or months, right?

ROBERTSON: There is certainly talk of that. The British have talked about that. What we're hearing from the State Department is that the focus is to get this deal done by the deadline, the 24th, Monday, but the reality is, if they can't do it, there's still a desire to keep the progress that they have made and to keep this effort going forward. What we're told is that the contemplation of failure is too high. So it's, if you can't get it by Monday then try to find a way to play this out further, give everyone more time -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Nic, we'll stay in contact with you. We'll see what happens. These are critically important discussions under way in Vienna.

Nic, thank you very much.

Buried under seven feet of snow. Residents of Buffalo, New York, are facing a new weather threat. We're going to tell you what's going on. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The death toll from the historic snowstorm in the Buffalo, New York, region grew today. A man was found dead in his car becoming the snow's 13th victim. Residents are facing a new weather threat. Flooding from the melting snow and heavy rains that are moving in this weekend.

Alexandra Field is joining us live from Buffalo.

Alexandra, how concerned are officials there where you are about the potential for major flooding? ALEXANDRA FIELD, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Wolf, to put it simply, the

governor came out and said that the city could see the worse flooding that they've seen in a very long time. That's why they have acted rapidly to all of the snow that has fallen. These are 1600 dump trucks. That's right. 1600 of them carting snow out of south Buffalo, one of the hardest hit areas. So far they have piled up this mountain of snow. On it, more than 32,000 tons of snow that has been trucked out of this city. It is so important to get that snow up and out as quickly as possible because we've got rain in the forecast, because we have temperatures warming up once this snow starts to melt. That's when we could see some very serious problems. Officials warning that in the lowest lying areas of the city, you could see five to six feet the snow. A lot of people are already preparing. They are trying to get people to do as much shoveling as possible and get snow off their roof because when it starts to rain here, the snow gets very heavy and that's when we start to see these catastrophic problems with people's homes. That's what they are preparing for, the one-two punch here.

BLITZER: Let's hope for the best here for all of my friends in the Buffalo, New York, area, my hometown. Let's hope for the best, but even by Buffalo standards, this is really awful.

Alexandra, thanks very much.

Just ahead, a sign of things to come. What about the current showdowns between President Obama and the Republicans on Capitol Hill? What does it all mean for the next two years? Our political panel is standing by. They will weigh in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A lawsuit over health care reform, a showdown over immigration reform, is this a preview we can expect over the next two years between President Obama and the Republican-controlled Senate and house?

Let's bring in our panel, our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash; our senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein; and chief political analyst, Gloria Borger.

Can they work together over the next two years? They're starting off on a negative note.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: You think? Not going to be easy. You've had the leaders of both houses, Republican leaders saying this is just sticking a thumb in our eye. And today we heard the House speaker come out on no uncertain terms saying, I warned the president he shouldn't do this. There is one little piece of this, though, that leads me to believe that they might be able to compartmentalize to a degree.

And I don't know if you guys agree with this.

Because it's in the Republican self-interest to get something done or Hillary Clinton, if she's a Democratic nominee, can very easily run against the Republican do-nothing Congress. There's that piece of it.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You have these confrontations multiplying because not only is it clear that we're going to see a series of moves to defund this and perhaps a litigation against it. You still have Affordable Care Act where many Republicans want them to do any means necessary to roll that back. And I was doing a panel yesterday with a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who said their first priority will be legislation to block EPA regulation on carbon emissions.

(CROSSTALK)

GLORIA: I amend my answer. No.

BROWNSTEIN: So you remember the three nos? So we have the three nos right out of the box from Congress.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But I think you guys are kind of saying the same thing.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: That's part of the Republican agenda. Mitch McConnell, the in- coming Senate majority leader, made it clear on the campaign trail when I was with him in Kentucky that that is what he wants to do. He wants to use the levers of the Congress to rollback some of the issues that really offend them the most, EPA is one. That is why I'm getting the vibe from a lot of Republicans that they don't want to distract from those things on things like immigration. I interviewed Roger Wicker last night, the incoming head of the Republican Committee to elect Republican Senators in the next election. He said, do I look like my eyes are bulging out of my head and I'm foaming at the mouth? No, but that's what the president wants me to do and we're not going to do that.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Republican leadership has to tamp down all of the members of the caucus who would rather go out there and either shut down the government or do something, and they don't want to risk losing a huge sector of the electorate for the 2016 campaign and that's what's at stake here.

BROWNSTEIN: But this has enormous ability and will, in fact, roll forward into the 2016 presidential race. With a Republican Congress making this big an effort to un-do the immigration executive action and to continue to repeal the Affordable Care Act and block EPA regulation on carbon, it's almost guaranteed after the Congress acts that way. And the Republican presidential candidates in 2016 will feel compelled to support repealing all three of those and that -- Hillary Clinton endorsing immigration action. We'll debate this in the next two years but into the presidential race.

BLITZER: You have three or four Republican Senators already thinking about running for the Republican presidential nomination, including Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, maybe Marco Rubio. How does that fit into all of this?

BASH: I think it's exactly right. They have very loud megaphones. They have the Senate floor. They can go there and make their ideas known. But I do think that it does give room for debate within the Republican Party, still, which I think -- call me crazy -- but it could be healthy.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: In 2012, everybody was running to the right, self-deportation and so forth. There still is an active debate within the Republican Party that will play out when it comes to the 2016 primary.

BORGER: So, self-deportation, Mitt Romney's famous line got him 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. They can't afford for that to happen again if they want to win the presidency. They are all very, very well aware of that. They are also well aware of the fact that this is going to play out on a separate course in the courts. And we were talking about this last night on the air that it might be more about John Roberts --

BROWNSTEIN: Than John Boehner.

BORGER: -- than John Boehner.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. That's the future.

BORGER: Because that's the future.

BLITZER: Do we assume that Republican leadership in the House and Senate will do everything in their power, A, to avoid those calls for impeachment of the president and, B, for some sort of government shutdown?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, I think they want to avoid that, but the question is, it's not always in your control. They are saying two things simultaneously that may or may not be compatible. One is they'll fight all three of these. The immigration action, Affordable Care Act and climate action, fight all three intently, by any means necessary, but we won't shut down the government. That's driving along the edge of the cliff.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Right. None of them are probably going to happen.

BASH: Part of the reason why John Boehner could control his caucus the last two years is because, frankly, he didn't try that hard because, if he tried too hard, they would have tried to oust him. His famous line is that a leader is only a leader if people are following behind you. If not, you're a guy taking a walk. The question is whether he's a guy taking a walk or corralling people to --

(CROSSTALK) BALDWIN: The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, that certainly is an

issue. Republicans will do whatever they can to derail it. The U.S. Supreme court is considering a piece of this right now.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

BALDWIN: The Supreme Court might be able to do what the Republican leadership can't do.

BORGER: What would the irony here be if, in fact, the president's greatest enemy, to use that phrase, would be the chief justice of the Supreme Court and not the Republican leaders?

BROWNSTEIN: And that is the direction we're heading because the divided government makes them do things unilaterally and --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: -- and increases exposure to the courts.

BLITZER: We expect a decision by the Supreme Court before the end of June during the current session. That could be hugely significant.

Guys, thanks very much. We'll continue our analysis as we always do.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.