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Senate Passes New Filibuster Rules; President Obama Speaks about Filibuster Rule Change; Jet Departs Small Airport

Aired November 21, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Within a few seconds, the president will walk into the briefing room, make a statement, reacting to the historic decision of the United States Senate today to change the rules of the game as far as presidential nominees.

Here's the president.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's no secret that the American people have probably never been more frustrated with Washington. And one of the reasons why that is, is that over the past five years, we've seen an unprecedented pattern of obstruction in Congress that's prevented too much of the American people's business from getting done. All too often, we've seen a single Senator or a handful of Senators choose to abuse arcane procedural tactics to unilaterally block bipartisan compromises or to prevent well-qualified patriotic Americans from filling critical positions of service in our system of government.

At a time when millions of Americans have desperately searched for work, repeated abuse of these tactics have blocked legislation that might create jobs. They've defeated actions that would help women fighting for equal pay. They have prevented more progress than we would have liked for striving young immigrants trying to earn their citizenship or has blocked efforts to end tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas. They've even been used to block common sense and widely supported steps to protect more Americans from gun violence, even as families of victims sat in the Senate chamber and watched. And they prevented far too many talented Americans from serving their country at a time when their country needs their talents the most.

It's harm to our economy. And it's been harmful to our democracy. And it's brought us to the point where a simple majority vote no longer seems to be sufficient for anything. Even routine business through what is supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body.

Now, I realize that neither party has been blameless for these tactics. They have developed over years and it seems as if they've continually escalated. But today's pattern of obstruction, it just isn't normal. It's not what our founders envisioned. A deliberate and determined effort to obstruct everything, no matter what the merits, just to refight the results of an election, is not normal. And for the sake of future generations, we can't let it become normal.

So I support the step, a majority of senators today took to change the way that Washington is doing business. More specifically, the way the Senate does business. What a majority of senators determined by Senate rule is that they would restore the long-standing tradition of considering judicious and public service nominations on a more routine basis.

And here's why this is important. One of a president's constitutional responsibilities is to nominate Americans to positions within the executive and judicial branches. Over the six decades before I took office, only 20 presidential nominees to executive positions had to overcome filibusters. In just under five years since I took office, nearly 30 nominees have been treated this way. And these are all public servants who protect our national security, look out for working families, keep our air and water clean.

This year alone, for the first time in history, Senate Republicans filibusters a president's nominee for the secretary of defense who used to be a former Republican senator. They tried everything they could to hold up our EPA administrator. They blocked our nominee for our top housing regulator at a time where we need more help for more families to afford a home and prevent what has caused mortgage meltdowns from happening again.

And in each of these cases, it's not been because they opposed the person. That there was some assessment that they were unqualified, that there was some scandal that had been unearthed. It was simply because they opposed the policies that the American people voted for in the last election.

This obstruction gets even worse when it comes to the judiciary. The Constitution charges the president with filling vacancies to the federal bench. Every president has exercised this power since George Washington first named justices to the Supreme Court in 1789. But my judicial nominees have waited nearly two and a half times longer to receive yes or no votes on the Senate floor than those of President Bush. And the ones who eventually do get a vote, generally are confirmed with little if any descent. So this isn't obstruction on substance, on qualification, it's just to gum up the works. And this gridlock in Congress causes gridlock in much of our criminal and civil justice systems. You've seen judges across the country, including a Bush appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court, say these are vital vacancies that need to be filled and this gridlock has not served the cause of justice. In fact, it's undermined it.

Over the past three weeks, Senate Republicans again denied a yes or no vote for three highly qualified Americans to fill three vacancies on the nation's second highest court, even though they have the support of a majority of senators. Four of President Bush's six nominees to this court were confirmed. Four out of five of my nominations to this court have been obstructed.

So the vote today, I think, is an indication that a majority of senators believe, as I believe, that enough is enough. The American people's business is far too important to keep falling prey day after day to Washington politics. I'm a former senator. So is my vice president. We both value any Senate's duty to advise and consent. It's important, and we take that very seriously. But a few now refuse to treat that duty of advise and consent with the respect that it deserves. And it's no longer used in a responsible way to govern. It's rather used as a reckless and relentless tool to grind all business to a halt. And that's not what our founders intended. And it's certainly not what our country needs right now.

And I just want to remind everybody, what's at stake here is not my ability to fulfill my constitutional duty. What's at stake is the ability of any president to fulfill his or her constitutional duty. You know, public service is not a game. It is a privilege. And the consequences of action or inaction are very real. The American people deserve better than politicians who run for election telling them how terrible government is, and then devoting their time in elected office to trying to make government not work as often as possible.

Now, I want to be clear. The Senate has actually done some good bipartisan work this year. Bipartisan majorities have passed common sense legislation to fix our broken immigration system, upgrade our courts - our ports. It's passed a farm bill that helps rural communities and vulnerable Americans. It's passed legislation that would protect Americans from being fired based on their sexual orientation. So we know that there are folks there, Republican and Democrat, who want to get things down. And, frankly, privately, they've expressed to me their recognition that the system in the Senate had broken down and what used to be a sporadic exercise of the filibuster had gotten completely out of hand.

I believe -- I'm confident that that spirit will have a little more space now. I want us to make sure that we can do more work together to grow the economy and to create jobs. And if there's differences in the Senate, then debate should be had. People should vote their conscious. They should vote on behalf of their constituents. But they should vote. That's what they're there to do. And, ultimately, if you've got a majority of folks who believe in something, then it should be able to pass.

You know, Americans work hard. They do their jobs and they expect the same from everybody who got sent here. And as long as I have the privilege of being in this office, I'll keep working as hard as I know how to make sure that the economy's growing and we're creating good jobs and we're widening prosperity and opportunity for everybody. And I know that that's what the majority of folks in the Senate believe as well. But the gears of government have to work. And the step that the majority of senators took today, I think, will help make those gears work just a little bit better.

Thanks very much, everybody. And now Josh will answer all your questions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) filibuster (INAUDIBLE) Republican (INAUDIBLE)?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Afghanistan. Afghanistan. Does this mean political war?

BLITZER: All right, so there he is, the president of the United States speaking, what, for almost nine minutes, defending, strongly supporting the decision by the Democrats in the Senate to go ahead and change the rules of the game as far as his nominees are concerned. No longer allowing that 60-vote threshold to be required to break those so-called filibusters, but now a 51-vote, simple majority, will get those nominees confirmed for their positions on the bench in the judicial branch of the U.S. government, as well as executive branch nominees.

Gloria Borger is still with us. Dana Bash is up on Capitol Hill. Brianna Keilar is over at the White House. Candy Crowley is joining us as well.

Let me start with you, Candy, quickly. Get your reaction to what is going on. You've covered Congress. You've covered the White House. This is a big deal. This is a major change the Democrats pushed through the Senate today.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. And, let's face it, though, when the president first started talking, I thought, wait a second, I think he misunderstands what happened here because thus far, this applies to appointee - I mean, I'm sorry, to nominees in the judiciary and executive levels except for the Supreme Court. It does not apply to the legislation that he went through at the very beginning. You know, they've blocked gun legislation, they've blocked this, they've blocked that. Legislation is still going to take 60 votes to put that on the floor and to get past a filibuster. So that remains.

And I do think it's interesting that, yes, people have voiced frustration, you know, sort of across the board with how Congress is working, but their frustration was aimed at a lot of these bills the president brought up. A lot of the sense that the Senate wasn't doing anything, not particularly because they couldn't get three seats filled on the Circuit Court in D.C. This, I think, we should also remind people why it's called the nuclear option, and that's because it's expected to make things kind of even worse. Obviously, the Democrats felt they had no other choice, having blocked three nominations for the same court. But I don't think this is going to get better any time soon when it comes to legislation.

BLITZER: Yes, it's going to a really poisonous atmosphere here in Washington. It already has been, but it's going to even become more intense now.

Candy, stand by for a moment. Everyone stand by. We'll take a quick break. Continue the breaking news coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: President Obama, you just heard him saying, enough is enough. He's finished with all the Republican efforts to stonewall some of his nominees supporting the Democratic decision, the majority decision in the Senate to go ahead and change the rules of the game as far as confirmation processes is concerned. No longer requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster but 51 votes right now. The Democrats have 55 members in the Senate to 45 Republicans. So they can obviously deal much more easily with those confirmation processes. Once again, Gloria Borger, our chief political analyst is with us, our chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash, the "State of the Union" anchor Candy Crowley.

Let's go to Capitol Hill and get the reaction. I don't know if there's reaction yet to what we just heard from the president from the Republicans, Dana, but I assume it's going to be very negative.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, because just as Candy was pointing out, which is crucial to underscore, the Democrats who run the Senate still have a 60-vote threshold that they need to overcome for any legislation, just run of the mill legislation, not the nominations that the president is sending forward, both for his cabinet or his executive branch or the judicial branch. And, you know, it was already tough to get basic legislation through the United States Congress.

And some of the Republicans who had been most eager to work with Democrats on legislation, for example, Lindsey Graham. He may be in a tough re-election campaign in a tough primary race back home, but he has been one of the few to stick his neck out and say, for example, I'll work on immigration reform. He has said since this change has taken place a couple of hours ago that this is going to be a disaster for cross-party relations. John McCain, who has been of late willing to work across the aisle, has said the same thing.

So really it's going to be interesting to see how and whether that really plays out because, on the flipside, you have the Democrats leadership saying, how could it possibly be that much worse than it is now? If you are going to -- a few Republicans are going to obstruct, OK. I mean you're obstructing now, so this is the best that they say that they can do in order to get the Senate wheels moving, at least in some part of the system. And in this case, it's the president's nominees. And, of course, it's important for the president legacy wise because who he puts on the bench, it's a lifetime appointment. That is a very important legacy for any president.

BLITZER: Gloria, as the president -- just before the president made his reaction, his statement reacting to what the Senate has decided, for several hours, Republicans were arguing the Democrats were doing this, Harry Reid was doing this because they wanted to change the subject from Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, the implementation of that, to get that out of the way, so they were changing the subject for political reasons. That's one of the arguments the Republicans have been making today.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, I think this is more evidence of the extreme dysfunction of the United States Senate. And it is as if the Democrats and the Republicans have just said, OK, let's get a divorce, but we still have to try and live together. And I don't see how that really works because once you do this, as John McCain warned, Republicans could try and filibuster everything else. And as the president even eluded to in his little speech, he said, there's enough blame to go around here, because he understands that when the Democrats were not in charge, they were on the other side of this issue. And so it's -- you know, where you stand depends on where you stand in this.

BLITZER: You know, and let me ask Candy about this, because she's been up on Capitol Hill over these years.

Candy, a lot of Democrats I know were reluctant to support the use of this so called nuclear option because they feared, if the Democrats, one of these days, sooner rather than later potentially, are in the minority, this could come back to haunt them.

CROWLEY: Absolutely, it could. And if you look during the Bush years, there was some thought - I mean there's bipartisan hypocrisy on this. So, we'll put that right out there. Republicans once argued, hey, we really need to kind of rein in the filibuster and the use of it because President Bush found that some of his nominees weren't being passed. And the Democrats were arguing, including Senator Barack Obama, that this would halt democracy, it would make the atmosphere so poisonous that nothing could get done.

Now they've flipped. It's not unknown on Capitol Hill. And absolutely, I think for the immediate future, this poisons an already poisoned atmosphere. I think it -- the Republicans are right on this score, that Democrats do intend to run next year on obstructionist Republicans. We can't even get anything done. We had to take this move that, you know, for a generation. Rules in the Senate have been this way, but we had to take this unprecedented action because we can't get anything done. Therefore, vote for Democrats - vote for Democrats in the Senate, not Republicans. So there is obviously a huge political element to this. And it is also true that Republicans feel they've been on a roll because Obamacare has been so badly bashed. So there's that element going in.

But I also wouldn't, in any way, underestimate the power of these judgeships, as Dana alluded to, that many of these are lifetime appointments. And this is not just about filling slots, although, you know, that's certainly a lot of what we've heard. This is about the power in those courts. And Democrats looked at that D.C. Circuit Court, Republicans looked at the D.C. Circuit Court, saw that right now the balance is there. Certainly some of the part-time members, the balances for conservatives, they don't want to upset that, but Democrats do. So there is - there is politics all the way through this. And it is also true that both sides have argued both sides.

BORGER: And, you know, to echo what Candy is saying, in the language the president used, which I found quite partisan, he used a lot of the same language that he was using during the shutdown fight, which is that this has been a deliberate effort to block everything and to refight the results of an election, which is what we heard when Republicans were trying to defund Obamacare. He was saying, look, the election was decided. Obamacare was passed. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. You can't relitigate that. What he is effectively saying is, look, I won the election, I can nominate who I want to these judicial appointments and you ought not to be able to block me in the way that you are now. Blocking me, he said, they do not treat, advise, and consent with the respect it deserves. And I would argue, if you were a member of the Bush administration, you might have said exactly the same thing about the Democrats. As Candy points out, there's a lot of hypocrisy.

BLITZER: There certainly is.

All right, Gloria, thanks very much. Candy, thanks to you. Dana, the story is obviously not going to go away. We're going to have a lot more coming up throughout the day.

Other news, by the way, we're following that cargo plane we've been talking a lot about. Guess what? It just successfully lifted off from that too-short runway in Kansas. There you see it taking off. All good, all fine fortunately on that score. Brooke Baldwin, by the way, is going to have much more on that in just a minute.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "The Situation Room." NEWSROOM with Brooke will continue right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, great to be with you on this Thursday. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

I want to begin this hour in Wichita, Kansas, where a jumbo jet landed on a runway that was, by the way, the wrong runway. It was too small to handle its size. I can tell you now, it has just taken off minutes ago. This is a Boeing 747. It's a Dreamlifter, operated by Atlas Air.

So, it was on its way to McConnell Air Force Base, but somehow it ended up landing about 12 miles away at Jabara Airport, on a runway that is about two thirds of the length of the runway that it should be for this kind of plane to take off. CNN correspondent Rene Marsh is joining me now as we are watching this takeoff.

So far as I'm looking at the video with you, Rene, success?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it looked pretty good to me. It was pretty smooth, Brooke. And it happened, I would say, just about maybe eight, nine minutes ago. And the flight is a pretty short one. We're talking about a roughly eight-hour flight to get to its -- I'm sorry, eight-minute flight to get to its destination.

But really the investigation begins as to what went wrong here. How did this plane end up at the wrong airport? And that's what the FAA is going to try and figure out. They want to know if these pilots, they were using their navigational systems or were they using a visual approach. And if that was the case, did they mistakenly think that they were landing at the correct airport? So, still lots of unanswered questions. But what is really clear is, there was a lot of confusion in the cockpit. We actually have a little bit of that sound of the pilots talking to the control tower. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONTROLLER: Giant 4241 heavy, confirm you know which airport you're at.

PILOT: Well, we think we have a pretty good pulse.

CONTROLLER: Giant 4241 heavy, it appears you are at Jabara.

PILOT: Say again?

CONTROLLER: Giant 4241 heavy, we saw the plane on the radar and it appears you are at Jabara airport.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARSH: All right, so clearly the pilot didn't even know exactly where he had landed. We can tell you - and he was supposed to land at McConnell Air Force Base, but instead landed at that airport about roughly 12 miles - 12, 10 miles away.

Here's a side-by-side comparison showing you the difference in the runways. Jabara runway is about half the length of the intended airport's runway, so big difference there. But, Brooke, when we saw that video, and it looked pretty smooth.

BALDWIN: So just quickly, as we look, that really tells the story, that the pictures and the yellow lines are the two different runways. And we're talking a pretty big plane. This cargo plane. Do we know how they were able to pull it off? What they needed to change?

MARSH: Yes. We know that the engineers, they looked - it's all about the weight of the plane. So they looked at a few factors, the weather, they looked at how heavy was this plane, how long is this runway. They crunched the numbers and they figured out that it was safe to take off. And we just saw that video there. So far, no word of any problem.

BALDWIN: So far so good. Rene Marsh for me in Washington, D.C. Rene, thank you very much.

Something else we're watching for you today. Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel is now a free man. He has just posted $1.2 million in bail. Here he is. This is from moments ago. A judge in Connecticut set it just a short time ago. But here's the deal. Skakel cannot leave Connecticut without court approval. His murder conviction in the 1975 death of Martha Moxley was overturned last month and he was granted a new trial. Moxley's mother says she is disappointed at the decision.

Still ahead here, really just this stunning story. Three women rescued, say they were held captive for more than 30 years. We have new details today on how and where police found them.

Plus, we take you to Washington. The political implications of the so- called nuclear option. What does this mean for the future of this hyper partisanship in Washington? How does this historic rule change really change things for governing in our nation's capital. We have one senator standing by live. He is Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, standing by on Capitol Hill. We will talk to him, next.

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