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Five-Week Congressional Break Imminent; Interview with a Mother in Jerusalem; 80 Bodies Still at MH-17 Crash site
Aired July 31, 2014 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If they -- if they get there, will begin the task of collecting what human remains are still sadly at that crash site. A very delicate mission ahead though and it's about to get much more complex.
Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, we'll check back. Thanks so much.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Congress prepares to go on a month-long break but not before passing a bill to sue President Obama. What about immigration? That issue -- is that issue a lost cause for this Congress? I'll talk to an Arizona lawmaker next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.
The clock is ticking on Capitol Hill with just hours until a month- long recess. Congress has a lot on its plate. A fact that's not lost on you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON": Members of Congress are getting ready to leave Washington, D.C., on Friday for a five-week recess. Five week -- who gets five weeks off? Come on! Five- week recess. Yes. Well, good thing there's no important, urgent business for them to take care of.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The clock ticking on immigration reform.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Immigration border deal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Global warming.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).
DIANE SAWYER, ABC NEWS: Raging wildfires.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mysterious holes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tensions with Russia. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tempers are flaring.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The world is a mess.
FALLON: There you go. Hope you have a great vacation. Just really enjoy themselves. They deserve it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: OK, so it's long been a national joke. I will say, the House of Representatives did approve a bill to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs and it did authorize a lawsuit against President Obama over alleged abuse of powers when it comes to the implementation of Obamacare. With me now, Republican Congressman Matt Salmon of Arizona.
Welcome, congressman.
REP. MATT SALMON (R), ARIZONA: Thank you. Good morning.
COSTELLO: Glad to have you here.
So, Congress is again the butt of jokes on late night TV. Rome burns and lawmakers go on vacation. What can you say to prove that wrong to the American people?
SALMON: Well, it's not quite a vacation. In fact, some of the hardest work that we do is in our own districts. We hold town hall meetings. We meet with constituents. A big part of what Congress does is casework for their own constituents. We have district offices and we have Washington offices. And so the work that we do is not just here in Washington, D.C. A lot of the work that we do is back home in our states as well.
COSTELLO: Well, but with all due respect, it does seem that the world is a mess right now and that Congress should stay in Washington and deal with the many problems we're dealing with right now.
SALMON: I think we have to give Harry Reid a little bit of time to catch --
COSTELLO: Darn. He might be back. Oh, you disappeared there for a second. Can you repeat that? So I'll ask you that again --
SALMON: Yes.
COSTELLO: So why don't you guys just stay in Washington and deal with problems like immigration?
SALMON: I just said that I believe that we may have to give Harry Reid a little time to catch up. We have 355 bills that the House has passed that are sitting in his drawer. Forty of them which would create jobs in America that they've done nothing to take action on. We've passed eight appropriation bills. The Senate hasn't -- has not passed one. And so, honestly, I believe that the Senate needs to get off its duff and do something. COSTELLO: I want to touch on the lawsuit against the president,
because you voted to sue Mr. Obama. Why did that vote come before immigration reform?
SALMON: I don't know why it was scheduled before the immigration vote or the vote on these unaccompanied children will be today and my prediction is that it will be a vote that will go to the Senate and hopefully it will not sit in Harry Reid's drawer with the other 355 bills that we've passed.
COSTELLO: Why did you vote to sue the president?
SALMON: Because I believe that the president does not have the authority to make new laws. In fact, the president has the authority to execute the laws after their past. But in the Obamacare bill was a date that certain things had to be implemented. It was in law. The president can't arbitrarily change that date as he did. He has to live by the guidelines set forth by our founding fathers in the Constitution.
Presidents, whether they're Republican or Democrat, don't have the luxury to pick and choose the parts of the Constitution that they want to abide by. There is a thing called the separation of powers. We don't live under a monarchy. We live under a place where separate branches of government have coequal authority and the president should understand this.
COSTELLO: Why didn't Republicans vote to impeach the president then?
SALMON: Well, I don't think that that would go anywhere. And so why waste the people's time right now. So we're using the opportunity that we have, and that is the courts, to make that decision.
But I will say this. You know, back when Nixon was doing the things that he was doing, it was Republicans that actually went to him and asked him to knock it off, and told him that they had the votes for impeachment. I wish that the Democrats would stand up for the institution here and help us guide the president to do the right thing. At least stand up for the separation of powers.
COSTELLO: I -- and I hear what you're saying and I know that most Republicans say this lawsuit is different than impeachment. Of course Democrats don't agree. They say this is kind of impeachment light (ph) and the only thing Republicans can get away with since public opinion polls show most Americans don't support impeachment. Is that true?
SALMON: They're desperately hoping to try to throw the impeachment thing out there because, honestly, their campaigns are all in disarray. The president, recently in a poll, was selected as the worst president since World War II. And they're all running scared. They're trying to do a hail Mary and God bless them for that.
COSTELLO: Well, the Democrats -- I mean, the Democrats are throwing the impeachment word out there, they are, and they're raising money off it. All of that is true.
SALMON: Right.
COSTELLO: But as -- as "The Washington Post" points out, Republicans have consistently threatened to impeach the president, Sarah Palin, Darrell Issa in 2010 over a cabinet position, in December of 2011 Congressman Sensenbrenner impeachment over fast and furious, in May of 2013 Senator James Inhoff threatened impeachment over Benghazi. And the list goes on. In other words, Republicans gave Democrats ammunition for this. Listen.
SALMON: Look, nobody believes that anybody is going to file impeachment charges against the president and it's not going to go anywhere. So it's great fodder for television and for late night TV, but the fact is, we have 355 bills that are sitting in Harry Reid's desk that would improve vastly what's going on here in America and they do nothing.
COSTELLO: Well, the reason I asked you to listen is because of what President Obama said yesterday. I think we have that bite ready to go now, so let's roll it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Stop. Stop. Stop just -- stop just hating all the time. Come on. Let's get some work done together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: So, see, the Republicans threw the Democrats red meat because both sides are now playing politics at the country's expense, at least that's what it seems like to most of the American public.
SALMON: You know, if the president really wants to get something done together, why doesn't he ask Harry Reid to dig out a few of those bills? One of them was a bill that I was able to get passed last week. It passed unanimously out of the House of Representatives, and it's regarding education. And it would vastly decrease the cost of tuition for our nation's people that are trying to get their college education. Passed our House unanimously. Why doesn't -- why doesn't Senator Reid even take up a fraction of the bills that have passed this body, this body, the House, in bipartisan support? Why do they sit on them? And if the president really wants to get something done, why isn't he pressuring Senator Reid to get those things done?
COSTELLO: Well, I'll ask you one last question about immigration, because I know you've done a lot of work on the bill in the House. You've worked a lot with the House speaker, John Boehner.
SALMON: Right.
COSTELLO: In your estimation, what's in that bill now, will it go to the Senate and pass, and will it survive a possible veto from the president?
SALMON: I think that there's a lot of bluff (ph) and blasphemy going on. The president asked for, on June 30th, a change in the 2008 law so that we would treat kids coming from Central America the same way that we treat kids coming from Mexico. We actually gave them exactly what he asked for. His secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, in a meeting with our working group on this issue, said that this 2008 law change was need. And in a totally political move, they reversed course just to try to stir up the base. I saw the president yesterday yucking it up with everybody. But instead of doing that, why doesn't he roll up his sleeves, why doesn't he ever come to Congress, why doesn't he even meet with people in his own party that are also grousing on the floor that this is the most disengaged president that any of us can ever remember? Why doesn't he roll his sleeves up and get involved in the process, get his hands a little bit dirty? If he focused as much on getting stuff done as he does on golfing and on yucking it up on late night TV, we might be able to actually get something done. I'm looking for a leader in the White House.
COSTELLO: All right, Congressman Matt Salmon, thanks for being with me this morning. I appreciate it.
SALMON: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, raising a child among the rockets and the bombs. We'll talk to a former Israeli soldier about her life as a civilian, trying to provide a normal life for her children in the middle of a crisis.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Earlier in the NEWSROOM we told you about life inside Gaza from the perspective of a Palestinian teenager. It's not any easier for the parents living across the border in Israel. Former Israeli military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich is now living as a civilian in Jerusalem, raising her three kids with her husband. This is what she wrote recently about the obstacles to parenting amid warfare. "My youngest asked to go over to a friend's house one afternoon, that created a dilemma for me. In times like these I would like to have my children near me, and yet she's a normal child and deserves to live like one. I let her go. She and her friend played in a little plastic pool, then the air raid siren went off suddenly and they had to seek shelter. I still think I made the right decision in letting her go. Avital joins us now live from Jerusalem. Good morning.
AVITAL LEIBOVICH, FORMER ISRAELI MILITARY SPOKESWOMAN: Hello, good morning.
COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being with me. Your prime minister says the goal is to demilitarize Hamas. That means the fighting might go on for a very long time. How do you feel about that?
LEIBOVICH: I feel that we don't have a choice. I feel that we reached a point that if we don't take care of the great amounts of weapons and ammunition that Hamas has accumulated just in the year and a half that passed since the last operation, we'll find ourselves in another situation and maybe even a severe one in just a few months.
COSTELLO: I know you have three children, 8, 10 and 14. How are they coping? LEIBOVICH: Well, the young one I think is the most sensitive one to
the situation, since she's the youngest, it's very difficult for her. Every time the siren is being heard, she clings to me physically, and she's scared. I can tell that she's scared. Two nights ago there was a siren for the first time 2:30 a.m., and my oldest had a few friends sleeping over, and we had actually all went to the shelter, ten people in the middle of the night, with our pajamas, and I live in an open area so the explosion sounds are very audible. Its not a nice experience for an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old.
COSTELLO: Oh no. How far away is the shelter?
LEIBOVICH: Well, I'm very fortunate to have a shelter in my own house. Actually, after 1990 when Saddam Hussein actually attacked Israel by scud rockets, the government of Israel issued a law that every house that is built after 1990 needs to have a shelter inside the house itself, so I'm lucky. But I can tell you that last week I went to visit a little town called Ofakim which is only 8 kilometers near Gaza and the people there have only 40 seconds to run to a public shelter. And one woman came over and said, I have three kids, which one do I grab first? The baby? The 3-year-old? The 5-year-old? I will never make it in 40 seconds. So she had moved with her husband and her kids to the shelter and that's where she's living in the past three weeks, the public shelter.
COSTELLO: Oh, my. I know there are apps that you can actually download on your phone. How do these apps work?
LEIBOVICH: Carol, you wouldn't believe this. My three kids decided on their own, as their own choice to download the red alert app, which is an app that indicates 24 hours a day, seven days a week where the siren is actually heard. And even my 8-year-old decided to download this. When you think of it, no normal child should really be in a situation that it's downloading apps for sirens rather than games or, you know, different social networks. It's really abnormal.
COSTELLO: Wow. And I also know your son is going to summer camp, but he'll stay in a shelter? How does that work?
LEIBOVICH: Well, my son -- now is the summertime, you know, and kids, they're waiting for the summer the entire year. All the scouts camps were canceled because of the situation, the security situation. And the only thing I could do with him because I really believe that as a parent I need to give them some sort of a routine, to keep some sort of a routine. After all, they're children, they're kids. They didn't do anything wrong. So I assigned them to a summer camp, and the summer camp is in a university in Tel Aviv. And actually, they study inside a shelter. When the situation allows, they go to the pool outside, but when it's not, they're in the shelter.
LEIBOVICH: Thank you so much for sharing your story. I appreciate it. And stay safe. Avital Leibovich, thank you so much.
LEIBOVICH: Thank you, carol.
COSTELLO: Ahead in our next hour, I'll talk to Mohammed Omer. He's a Palestinian journalist born and bred in Gaza. We'll ask why he says life behind the walls is worse at night. I'll be right back.
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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
COSTELLO (voice-over): We just got word from Australian officials that at least 80 bodies remain at the crash site in Eastern Ukraine. Nick Paton Walsh told us a little earlier that a small group of investigators have finally managed to get to this crash site. They really want to remove those bodies, but, again, the latest breaking news, 80 bodies still at that crash site waiting to come home.
Other top stories for you at 56 minutes past the hour. A pro-North Korean newspaper says imprisoned American Kenneth Bae feels abandoned by the United States. The paper was granted access to Bae by the North Korean government which is known for extracting propaganda friendly statements from prisoners. Bae is serving a 15-year sentence for allegedly trying to bring down the government.
Parts of UCLA's campus knee-deep in water. This is the scene after nearly 20 millions of water gushed from a broken water main Wednesday. Hundreds of vehicles were damaged. Some are still stranded in flooded garages. The high water put six facilities out of commission. The famous John Wooden basketball court possibly ruined for good. UCLA says the city should help pay for the cleanup.
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COSTELLO (on camera): The next hour of NEWSROOM after a break.
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