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House Meets Ahead Of Debate On Debt Limit Bill; Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) Talks About The Potential Threat To Speaker McCarthy's Leadership; U.S.: Chinese Jet Made "Aggressive Maneuver" In International Airspace; Loved Ones Of Missing Demand More Searches Of Collapsed Iowa Building. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 31, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:46]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The race is on to avoid a default disaster. Minutes from now, the first key vote on the debt ceiling bill is set to take place on the House floor already it's facing pushback from both sides of the aisle. We'll be speaking to one of those lawmakers ahead.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Officials in Iowa trying to decide whether they can keep searching for five people who remain unaccounted for at the site of a partially collapsed apartment building there. Rescuers are entering what they call a no-win situation, as we learned that what remains in the building is now unstable and could come crashing down at any moment.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, the gloves are off during his first official campaign event, Ron DeSantis taking on Donald Trump. Ahead let's see why he thinks the former president's attacks are going to backfire. We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Right now the House is in session ahead of a key vote to avoid default on the nation's debts. President Biden and House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, both expressing confidence today that this deal they worked out will clear Congress, will be signed. That is despite grumblings from members of both of their parties and despite some earlier suggestions that McCarthy could have faced a mutiny from some hardline conservatives.

CNN's Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill for us.

And I know we saw you actually speaking to Speaker McCarthy last hour ahead of this critical vote. Tell us when he said.

RAJU: Yes. He is confident that this bill will pass tonight. He believes he'll have a majority of House Republicans who will support the plan. That is what he is aiming for and something that actually could prevent any mutiny on the right, if he's able to get a healthy Republican margin, certainly more than a House - the majority of the 2023 House Republican Conference. That is still not enough to pass this. They're going to need

Democratic support. We do expect sizable Democratic support to get this over the finish line, even as they're facing some criticism on the far-right and left about exactly what is in this plan.

Now, on the right, McCarthy has to contend with criticism that this deal which would suspend the national debt limit until January 2025, did not go far enough to cut spending, some are concerned that it would actually authorize - could authorize potentially $4 trillion in new spending without - spending cuts that could ensure that the government deficits and debt would be decreased.

I asked the Speaker about that and about the concerns in actual threats against his speakership and he didn't seem too concerned about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: What do you say to folks on your right flank who are concerned about this deal and don't think that you cut the best deal by authorizing about $4 trillion of new borrowing in exchange for some spending cuts?

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): (Inaudible) truth in advertising, okay? So don't think things that aren't true. This is the largest cut in American history. This goes through the debt ceiling to January 1st. It also brings you work requirements on welfare, something we've never been able to get through in our modern time outside of (inaudible) ...

RAJU: But CBO has expands those work requirements.

MCCARTHY: I'll bet you dinner that you'll find that it actually saves more money, because it cuts, adds the age group, but at the same time it cuts the states that have the loopholes to do the 12 percent down to 8 percent. And you know if you've been here long enough, CBO always gets that part wrong.

RAJU: Do you - are you worried that this may make your speakership less secure?

MCCARTHY: Now at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, the Speaker causes the largest cut in history, it really depends on how you measure this. The deal would actually cap spending, domestic spending for non defense programs for the first two years.

The next four years under this proposal, it's just a target. It's not actually binding which is why there's some criticism from the right that it could have gotten much further. And then on the Senate side, if this is approved tonight as expected, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just said that he hopes his clears the Senate as soon as Thursday or Friday, you will need consent from all 100 senators to schedule a vote, but that is the hope among leaders on both sides of the aisle that this will be done by the end of this week, Brianna. KEILAR: Yes. Curious to see where he will take you to dinner, Manu.

[15:05:00]

More curious to see how this vote is going to turn out. The stakes, obviously, very high.

Manu Raju live for us on the Hill, thank you. Jim?

SCIUTTO: I want to speak now with Republican congressman, Ken Buck, of Colorado. Congressman, thanks for taking the time today.

REP. KEN BUCK (R-CO): Thank you.

SCIUTTO: So you heard the Speaker say to my colleague, Manu Raju, there that he is not at all concerned about any potential threat to his leadership following this agreement, which you oppose. Should it be concerned?

BUCK: Yes, I think he should be concerned. I'm not suggesting that the votes are there to remove the Speaker. But the Speaker promised that we would operate at 2022 appropriations levels when he got the support to be speaker. He's now changed that to 2023 levels plus 1 percent, that's a major change for a lot of people.

And so I - after this vote, and he will win the vote tonight, but after this vote, we will have discussions about whether there should be a motion to vacate or not.

SCIUTTO: You say, though, that there are not the votes - if you raise that motion to vacate, are you saying there's not the votes there to take him out of the speakership?

BUCK: Well, it only requires five votes if the Democrats all vote for Hakeem Jeffries. It \only requires five votes for Kevin McCarthy not to get elected. What I'm saying is that we don't have a majority of Republicans to vote for somebody else at this point in time.

SCIUTTO: Understood. Okay, let's talk about McCarthy's claims about this particular agreement. He just described it as the largest cut ever. It appears that he's basing that on the two years required cuts lasting beyond that. He is he misconstruing the actual cuts in this bill?

BUCK: It's absolutely smoke and mirrors. The truth is that any deal that is made right now on cuts can be waived by Congress in this year's appropriation bills, next year's appropriations bills and certainly a future Congress.

So all of those are targets and they will be targets that would be cuts, but they are not cuts in actual dollars right now. What is absolutely true is that we will have a historically high deficit, $4 trillion more, at least, than we have right now.

SCIUTTO: As you know, there is a normal budget process when Congress votes on budgets. Here is a case, again, Congress passes the spending and then as the debt limit approaches, that is where you have debates like we've seen these last several weeks here.

Why not if you want to cut the budget, why not do that during the budget process, as opposed to the debt ceiling debate when you have genuine fears about the effects, not just of actually going over that clip, but even discussing going over that cliff and the damage that does to the economy.

BUCK: Well, there is a relationship between spending and debts. The more you spend, the more debt you have if revenue remains constant. And in this case, revenue is looking like it will remain constant, maybe decrease a little bit if we have a recession. But certainly there's a relationship there and to be able to use the debt ceiling as leverage to reduce spending makes all the sense in the world.

SCIUTTO: Even with the potential cost to the economy, as you know, the rating agencies were looking at this even days before we reach that cliff point and saying, we got to reconsider the standing, the confidence in effect in U.S. debt.

BUCK: Well, there should be a lack of competence in U.S. debt, because at some point in time, we're going to default. If we don't get our hands around this situation, where you're going to default. It isn't going to be in June of 2023, but I'm not saying it won't be in 2027 or 2030. This country cannot continue to add $4 trillion, $5 trillion, $6 trillion of debt every year, two years, three years without a default.

So no, we're not going to default and the credit agencies are going to be able to take into account where we are financially. But if we don't turn this ship around, there will be a default in this country.

SCIUTTO: Finally, before we go, just to be clear here, you say that McCarthy has the votes to pass McCarthy - the Democrats - we should say - have the votes to pass this and move forward. After that point due to your opposition to this, will there be a motion to vacate?

BUCK: I don't know the answer to that. I know there will be discussions starting next week. I don't know. A lot of it depends on how big the margin is for this vote. But certainly you can't call this an historic victory if you're relying on large numbers of Democrats to come over and vote for this.

SCIUTTO: Congressman Ken Buck, Republican from Colorado, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

BUCK: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Boris?

SANCHEZ: Another major headline we are following this afternoon, tensions between the United States and China are soaring after a video showed a Chinese fighter jet conducting what defense officials are calling a, quote, "unnecessarily aggressive" maneuver on a U.S. spy plane.

[15:10:00] Now here is the video. This happened last Friday. The Chinese fighter,

you see it there in the distance, it cuts directly in front of the U.S. Joint reconnaissance aircraft it forces it to fly through the aircraft's wake turbulence. And this video of the incident released by the U.S. military, you can see how the turbulence impacts the U.S. aircraft disrupting it as the cockpit visibly shakes.

Now, this was over the hotly contested South China Sea. This is a part of the world that China claims belongs to it. Now the international community, they disagree. They say this happened in international airspace while the Chinese military claims that the American plane deliberately intruded over a training area.

This intercept is very similar to something that happened in December. Another encounter between U.S. \and Chinese military aircraft. A Chinese fighter jet, you see it there flying very, very closely to another U.S. reconnaissance plane over the same area. The Chinese fighter jet coming within 20 feet of that plane forcing it to take evasive maneuvers.

Of course, this also comes amid strained relations between the two countries, especially since former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan last August. Of note, China also says that Taiwan belongs to it. And, of course, the U.S. decision earlier this year to shoot down that Chinese spy balloon that floated over sensitive military sites in February.

And even this week, CNN reported that Beijing rejected a proposal for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart. We want to get the latest now from the Pentagon on this increasing tension between the U.S. and China.

CNN's Oren Liebermann is there for us.

Oren, what are you hearing from officials about the situation with this jet?

LIEBERMANN: Boris, you laid out very well not only how much tension the jet encounter has added to the relationship between Beijing and Moscow, but how rough and how difficult that situation already was to begin with, because of everything you essentially just went through there.

Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last summer. It's worth noting that there had been quite a few breakthroughs in the months before that in terms of opening up more communication and more dialogue.

At that point, about a month or so before that, defense secretary Lloyd Austin had actually then met his Chinese counterpart at the Shangri-La Dialogue. And there was an agreement for more communications at more levels of the military.

But all of that or I should say a lot of that has been curtailed. China cutting that off as a way of sending a message to the U.S. Military to military communications, discussions about climate change and efforts on that front, so it has affected a lot of different levels of the relationship between China and the U.S. here. This has only added to the tension.

As you pointed out, China claims much of the South China Sea as its own territorial waters. International law doesn't recognize that, neither does the U.S. which is why the U.S. was flying there, an RC- 135 Rivet Joint flying in international airspace. Much as it was in December.

And yet, you see, and this is what the U.S. is pointing out, this pattern of aggressive behavior. For the U.S. it's important to still have those open lines of communication so that these encounters, and they happen between the U.S. and other countries as well, but so that these encounters don't lead to greater problems and miscalculations.

SANCHEZ: Yes. The serious potential threat there for a grave escalation, basically because of a potential mishap. Oren Liebermann, thank you so much.

LIEBERMANN: Of course.

SANCHEZ: Jim?

SCIUTTO: We do have this just in to CNN, the Republican race getting a little bit more crowded. Former Vice President Mike Pence plans to make it official and enter the GOP presidential race next week. He's set to launch his bid with a campaign video and a kickoff speech in the key early state of Iowa and that's where we find CNN's Jeff Zeleny.

Tell us this has been expected for some time. Now we know the timing, what's the impact on the race?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORREPONDENT: Well, look, we do know the former Vice President has been eyeing this really for several months and is going to make it official next Wednesday, one week from today with a speech and a message to voters as well, of course, as a town hall with our own Dana Bash on CNN that evening.

So what this is going to do is really potentially split evangelical voters in Iowa, give them one more potential candidate to consider. And Jim, this really is - the race is really coming into shape. Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in the state today, former President Donald Trump coming to Iowa tonight.

So what this does is really expands the opportunities and choices for conservative voters here. But it also raises the stakes for the former vice president. He, of course, has been speaking out against Donald Trump. He said, of course, the election was not stolen. He could not overturn it.

So the question is, is there a lane for him, what is the road for him in this Republican Party. But as I have traveled with him last week in New Hampshire and previously here in Iowa, there is somewhat of a market for a true conservative and that is what he's going to build himself as, of course. [15:15:08]

He has a long record before he was vice president. He served as a congressman from Indiana, as a governor from Indiana, deeply conservative. That is why he was chosen by Donald Trump as a validator, if you will, back in 2016. But now they are set to both be rivals in a growing field of candidates here.

So certainly a challenging road for him, but he wants to make the case that there is room for a, as he calls it, a true conservative in this race.

SCIUTTO: The former vice president challenging the former president, in effect and others that he served under. Ron DeSantis, of course, another recent entrance to this race, has been in Iowa and going very directly in a way against Donald Trump in a way that many other Republican candidates have not. What have you been hearing?

ZELENY: Well, this is his first full day of campaigning here as finally a formally declared presidential candidate. He, of course, has been hinting at this for months. Last week, he formally jumped in with an announcement that was a bit too botched on Twitter. But today he's doing it the old fashioned way, campaigning from Sioux City to Council Bluffs.

He'll be coming here to Pella, Iowa, a conservative community in the middle of the state before going on to an event this evening in Cedar Rapids as well, making the case that he, in his words, at least he is a Republican who can win, talking about his big win in Florida last fall.

But he's also, Jim, he's drawing some sharp distinctions at his own choosing against the former president. Take a listen to what he said earlier today in Western Iowa.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R) FLORIDA, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have to dispense with the culture of losing that we've seen throughout the Republican Party, not in Iowa, not in Florida, but in way too many states. We look at this debt deal. We should have 55 Republican senators right now, if we had just played our cards right over the last few years, and so we can't make excuses. But we have to be able to get the job done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So certainly placing blame there on the former president for his role in the midterm elections, not only in 2018, but 2022. Also taking a bit of a swipe at the debt deal, but certainly stopping well short of urging Republican members of the House or indeed the Senate to vote against this, which would lead to a default.

One thing we've seen from the Florida governor, he's simply introducing himself to voters. They have a general sense of his record in Florida, but he's campaigning a bit more on the personal side as well, reminding voters of his military record. He's clearly making the distinction here when he's talking in public to voters, he's talking about himself in a more positive way. But he also is not shying away from questions about Donald Trump essentially saying that he would be a loser for the party.

So that, of course, is the balance he is trying to strike here going forward. But again, former President Donald Trump coming here to Iowa as well tonight. So this race, definitely as the heat comes on and the wind here in the final day of May in Iowa, this race is picking up, guys.

SCIUTTO: Which are losing quite a rhetorical broadside against the former president.

Jeff Zeleny in Iowa, thanks so much.

A reminder, CNN will host a town hall with former Vice President Mike Pence one week from today in Iowa. The town hall moderated by our colleague, Dana Bash, June 7th 9pm Eastern from Grandview University in Des Moines, Brianna.

KEILAR: Five people still unaccounted for after a building partially collapsed in Iowa, this as we learned that the owner of the apartment structure was cited for a safety violation. We have details ahead on this.

And witnesses back on the stand today in the death penalty trial of the man accused of the deadliest attack on Jews in the U.S. Ahead, the chilling new account from one survivor who testified about hiding in a closet as the chaos unfolded.

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[15:23:02]

KEILAR: The City of Davenport Iowa has cited the owner of this apartment building that experienced a catastrophic partial collapse on Sunday. He's actually been fined $300 for failing to keep his property "in a safe, sanitary and structurally sound condition." May not sound like much considering what you see happen here.

Right now there are five people who are still missing. Many of their loved ones protested yesterday, want them found before the demolition of this building, hoping that somehow there are still survivors.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESTON MCDOWELL, COUSIN OF MISSING MAN BRANDEN COLVIN: You all want to tear down the building and you know you got five people still unaccounted for. Helped me understand that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But city leaders are weighing if they should further risk rescuers lives when thermal imaging and dogs detected no signs of life. They want to bring the building down safely before it comes down on its own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM MORRIS, FIRE MARSHALL, CITY OF DAVENPORT, IOWA: This building shifted when we were operating in there. And each time we were in there, it shifted at some point. So we could walk out of this room right now and that building could only have 20 minutes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Joining us now is Dr. Benjamin Abo. He is an emergency doctor who helped in search and rescue efforts after Florida Surfside building collapse two years ago that killed 98 people.

Doctor, thank you so much for being with us. This is obviously quite a difficult situation that these rescuers and these officials are in. What do you think about this discussion of whether this building should be demolished or whether they should keep looking for people at this point in time?

DR. BENJAMIN ABO, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN: It's pretty loaded, because while there is a chance, depending on the type of collapse, especially like that, where it's not flat pancake, that there are potentially chances for people to be in voids and to still be alive.

[15:25:02]

However, we have a lot of techniques to try to see if there are survivors with the dogs, thermal imaging and other things like that. It's not an easy decision needs to be with physician, with rescue personnel, with structural engineers to see because at the same time, while we'd love to just be able to get right in and scoop them out and make everything okay, we can't let everybody else can hurt at the same time. So it has to be a very calculated decision and it's - no matter what not an easy decision.

KEILAR: Yes, these are live pictures that we're looking at right now of the building. You can see how some of it is actually folding down onto the floors below it. You can see the challenges that these rescuers would have.

You've walked through these precarious buildings in very different situations, both in Haiti more recently in Surfside, Florida. What are the challenges as you are going through buildings that are unstable.

ABO: There are a number of different hazards coming at you from all different directions, and even ones you can see whether it's under the floors, things above you, air conditioning units and other things like that. The walls come in and then also the air quality as well. But everything is like a game of pick-up sticks.

And every movement - I mean, if you even feel the earth moving underneath you, then it's really, really unstable. Most of the time, things are less stable than you think and you feel secure and then all of a sudden, it just gives out. It's a very precarious situation. I mean, we're talking about things can collapse onto you, fall on to

you, the floor give out underneath you, and combinations of all the above, not to mention a lot of sharp objects that can hurt us and our dogs.

KEILAR: Are there situations where dogs have not detected signs of life, where thermal imaging has not detected something, but there are still survivors in voids.

ABO: So especially with our federal dogs in our - a lot of the state teams the dogs are training, we have two types. We have live search dogs and we have cadaver dogs or recovery dogs, which is after someone's deceased.

They are so, so well-trained that we don't know exactly when it is. But there's a point where the live dog will only find live people and then if they're deceased for so long, they won't pick up on anything similar to - in Surfside and the hurricanes and earthquakes and only the cadaver dogs will.

So there is a small chance, nothing's a hundred percent except for improbability, but it's very unlikely with - especially if they're certified dogs. And that's usually all we're ever going to use the certified dogs that are so highly trained. So again, yes, there's a chance they could be, but it's very unlikely.

KEILAR: It's really - these are really hard things to hear, especially for those people whose loved ones are still unaccounted for, but it's a very important perspective to get.

Dr. Ben Abo, thank you for taking the time for us this afternoon.

ABO: Sure thing. Thank you very much.

KEILAR: Thank you. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, jury selection is now underway for the trial of a former Parkland School resource officer. He's accused of failing to confront the gunman in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. We'll have details just ahead.

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