Transcript for May 28

MR. EUGENE ROBINSON: Well, I think politically it’s damaging. It makes it—this whole issue has been raised, it’s, it’s topic A. If they get nothing done on it, I think it’s harmful to the Republican Party. It may be a good thing for the country if they don’t get anything done, because the House approach, I think, really ignores the fact that there are 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants here who can’t be rounded up and deported overnight, or, or whatever. The president’s bill, and the president’s approach and the Senate approach—very complicated, hard to sell—might make more sense as public policy, I think, but harder to sell.

MR. RUSSERT: David:

MR. DAVID IGNATIUS: Well, you know, I—listening to the debate between, between, between Sensenbrenner and Hagel, I, I kept thinking this is a wedge issue for Republicans. And Republicans are really angry at each other. And, you know, I think this may be a moment where, if they’re unable to come to a compromise on final legislation—you’d certainly have to say that after, after watching this debate and hearing what’s going on, that may be a good thing, that the country really isn’t quite yet at the point where there is a clear path that everybody will feel comfortable about going forward that will legalize this very difficult problem of immigration. We’re just not there yet.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well...

MR. RUSSERT: Go ahead.

MS. O’BEIRNE: What the House is going to argue, I think, is—what they are arguing is we wouldn’t have the 11 million to 12 million illegals here had we not done what we did in 1986, which was, of course, legalize three million illegals and promise to enforce the border and interior enforcement, and not do so. So I think what the House is going to be arguing is for an incremental approach. We do know 80 percent of the public wants the border enforced, they want to stop the hundreds of thousands coming over, and they support workplace sanctions. They think you shouldn’t be able to hire illegals. So they’re with the public on the enforcement side, and they’ll talk incremental.

Once we have that in place, then we can adopt—and I think there’s more support among House Republicans than people think for a guest worker program. They are hearing from employers back home. But they want to make sure that it’s going to be orderly, not make the mistakes in ‘86, and it would be unworkable if we don’t get the enforcement and workplace stuff right.

MR. IGNATIUS: You know, Sensenbrenner talked about turning off the magnet that’s drawing illegal immigrants. I’m sorry, the magnet is the U.S. economy.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Right.

MR. IGNATIUS: And you can’t turn that off.

MR. ROBINSON: And the border is not easily sealed.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Right.

MR. ROBINSON: It is not easily sealed. Go down there, you’ll see.

MR. RUSSERT: David Broder, the president of the United States, 35 percent approval rating, has talked about this issue, immigration, passionately for a long time. What does he now do if he moves forward on the path to citizenship—or amnesty, as Congressman Sensenbrenner referred to it? Does he further antagonize his political base and risk going down in the polls, or will a success on the issue help him with moderate or swing voters?

MR. BRODER: Well, a success would certainly help him. He has not had a win in Congress for much too long politically. So he’s better off if he can get a bill. But there’s no question that he’s going to pay a price for challenging the core of the Republican Party on, on this issue.

I have to say, I think the president is committed. I think his gut and his heart is in this issue, and he is prepared, I think, to fight on this issue.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the issue of the FBI raid on the office of Congressman William and—Jefferson, denounced in an interesting bipartisan letter by Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi, the first I’ve seen in a long time.

Kate O’Beirne, your National Review editorial this week is quite strong on this subject. Let me read it. “House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader John Boehner led a chorus of disgruntled legislators in crying foul, closing ranks around an apparent felon and raving incoherently about a supposed separation-of-powers violation.

“This incredibly tin-eared performance was based on an extravagant construction of the Constitution’s speech-and-debate clause (Article 1, Section 6). Congress evidently reads this clause as giving its office space blanket immunity from any investigation by the executive branch - even with court authorization - in connection with any crime, no matter how heinous.

...

“This is delusional. Congress had a chance to come out swinging against corruption - to demonstrate, amid a slew of tawdry scandals, its recognition that public officials are subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. The Republican leadership in particular should have seen an opportunity to redirect attention from its caucus’s lapses to a Democrat’s crude criminality. They chose, instead, to rally around an apparent swindler.” Wow.

MS. O’BEIRNE: The, the broad constitutional claim I think is awfully shaky. In fact, as you watch this during the course of this week, it’s not a claim that the congressional leaders are making. They do allow that no member should be able to hide in secret in his office, away from law enforcement officials, evidence of criminal behavior.

But just because the Justice Department has a legal right under a, under a legal search warrant, doesn’t mean they should either do it or that they did it in the right way. There actually are legitimate separation of powers arguments, I think. And, in fact, the legislative branch is susceptible to being intimidated by the executive branch. The members had no interest in appearing to be defending an accused felon in their midst. They knew the public relations was terrible on the objections they raised, but they felt so strongly about the principle of it. And members who are uneasy about the public relations of seeming to be protecting an accused felon in their midst really reacted so negatively to a leak from the Justice Department against Speaker Hastert a couple of days later, falsely claiming that he was the target of an investigation, part of the Abramoff scandal, that they really rallied to the speaker on those grounds. And it was reminded to them that the same people capable of leaking in retaliation are rummaging through congressional offices.

MR. RUSSERT: How much anger, frustration is there amongst House, Senate Republicans with the Bush White house?

MS. O’BEIRNE: There’s a backdrop of frustration. So some saw this as maybe the latest example of showing a lack of regard for legislative prerogatives. I mean, it is an administration that has jealously guarded its own prerogatives, it’s own executive privileges. You think they would have been more sensitive to a co-equal branch’s view of its prerogatives.

MR. RUSSERT: Gene Robinson, I can hear people, watch people all across the country saying, “You know, the guy is under investigation for taking money. Why not go into his office?”

MR. ROBINSON: Well, you know, the Justice Department seems to feel equally strongly about that what they did was right. The question I had initially was, if you got the money in Bill Jefferson’s freezer and you got the alleged bribe on videotape, why do you need to go into his office?

MS. O’BEIRNE: What do you need?

MR. ROBINSON: What do you need? Well, you know, it turns out that there are other instances, there are other possible crimes they want to look into. But also, remember the Abramoff investigation is ongoing. It seems to me that, in a sense, the Justice Department was kind of putting down a marker and saying, you know, “We’re going to be looking at a number of people up here, and we’re going to go in when we need to go in, and you can’t just hide stuff in the corner in your office and expect that, that it will never come to light.”

MR. BRODER: I talked to a former member of Congress, a very good lawyer, last night because I was confused by this, by this issue. He said he thinks that the law is probably on the side of the Justice Department, but that it’s not a very clearly defined area of law. And he said institutionally he’s glad that the Congress is challenging it because this may get it to the Supreme Court and get a definitive ruling about under what circumstances and under what limits can an executive branch agency go in to the congressional office, because there truly is an important principle of the separation of powers that’s at stake here.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the president. Back in April of ‘04, David Ignatius, he was asked about his biggest mistake, and he said that he really couldn’t respond at that moment, he couldn’t think of one, and, and he wishes he had more time to prepare for that kind of question. Then, this week he was asked about his biggest mistake with, with Iraq, and without hesitancy, he said, “I shouldn’t have said ‘Bring it on.’ I shouldn’t have said, ‘We’re going to get them, alive or dead,’ and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was a huge problem.” Are we seeing a president who’s been chastened by Iraq, more introspective about Iraq? What?

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