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June 07, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - June 7

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: When you are out there on the campaign trail, you trying to bring this all together. You're trying to make America better. Why can't we work together? This is why we can't work together. Because some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away.

SEN BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: .the notion that somehow that guts the bill or destroys the bill is simply disingenuous. And it's engaging in the sort of histrionics that is entirely inappropriate for this debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: folks, that was late last night and the issue was a measure that the Senate had voted down a couple of weeks ago which would have ended the guest worker provision in the immigration bill, the guest worker program, after five years.

A lot of Republicans favor the guest worker program, a lot of Republican employers favor the guest worker program. It has been a key part of this delicately structured compromise, as it's been called, and Lindsey Graham, who is out on a limb and in hot war on terror for water for a lot of his constituents for backing this bill, watched as Barack Obama, who purports to be guy who want to thing -- to get things done, push this amendment and managed to get it passed.

Now, that has been thought -- that is -- may be the killer amendment that ends the fate of this -- that ends this bill, but we'll see.

Some thoughts on all this now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio; and Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call -- FOX NEWS contributors all.

That, of course Obama, in fighting to get that measure put into the bill, that sunset provision, as it's called, was certainly not making any enemies with organized labor. So where does it al stand now? Is this bill really at death's door and about to expire?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Well, tonight there's going to be a cloture vote and we'll see. If enough Republicans peel off and enough Democrats, obviously, don't support the bill too, then it will go down, they needed 60 votes...

HUME: If you pass -- if cloture is invoked that means you proceed to pass the bill, right? But can the bill pass in this form?

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: No, no, no, look, before cloture -- cloture depends on entirely on one thing that is that deals can be worked out on a couple of the amendments that have already passed. One is the one that the -- the one that sunsets the temporary workers program that Graham and Obama were fighting over. And that one everybody knew it was a poison pill. Dorgan had tried it before.

HUME: Byron Dorgan.

BARNES: Byron Dorgan.

HUME: Fellow Democrat with Barack Obama.

BARNES: He tired it before. It lost by one vote, before Memorial Day, he tinkered with it a little, brought it up again and then it was a poison pill designed to kill the bill. You know, people who really wanted to kill the bill like Jim DeMint and Jim Bunning, both Republican senators, they -- and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina -- all three of them want to kill the bill -- they joined it, they voted in favor of Dorgan because they knew it was a poison pill. But who else did? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden? The Democratic presidential candidates. Chris Dodd was not voting, he wasn't here. And all the Democratic leaders: Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer, they all voted for this poison pill knowing that it could kill the bill. These people claim they're for immigration reform.

KONDRACKE: Just to be fair and balanced about this, though; however, the Democrats got mad at the Republicans because some of the sponsors of the so-called "grand bargain" voted previously for Cornyn, John Cornyn from Texas, bill which would -- which would have eliminated the confidentiality provision when people come forward to get a Z-Visa and if they disclose that they've violated the law in some way that could be turned over and this is Cornyn amendment that would permit that to happen and the Democrats all got mad...

(CROSSTALK)

No, no.

BARNES: Mort's exactly right -- stop it! I'm trying to support you here. It's exactly right. It won with about 57 votes. It won overwhelmingly. It has to be repaired, as well. If those things are fixed, then there will be a vote for cloture and all the Republicans will vote for it, but if they aren't fixed...

HUME: Then the bill has a real of passing.

Mara what do you -- Mara, we need to get you in here.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I think this bill is more threatened than it was 24 hours ago. I don't -- if these things can be fixed, as Fred said, and you can pass different versions of these, it still might go forward a get out of Senate. I think the big question is we know that a large number of Republicans don't want this bill to pass. Up until now, my understanding was that the Democrats, as they group, felt that this was a good political thing to do, in other words, to pass this bill would be good for them even though it gives George Bush a certain kind of victory, now that's called into question.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Wait a minute. Mara, your view is.

LIASSON: Well, I mean, I think they're taking a risk.

HUME: If they decide it's better politics to have no bill? A lot -- they know that that's the way a lot of Republicans look at it.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: That is the question that this raises. I think that.

HUME: So, would they rather have some kind of payback on Republicans than a bill?

LIASSON: I -- look, I think in Democratic thinking this issue is bad for Republicans whether the bill passes or not. Look at the Republican Party, it's split over this. But up until now I believed that Democrats felt, on the whole, it was better for them to pass it.

HUME: What has happened to change their minds? Organized labor weighed in?

LIASSON: I think that on some of these organized labor wanted these votes, maybe the Democrats felt they could vote for these amendments and the bill would still stand.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, they had to make a lot of deals. Everybody -- in order for this bill to pass.

HUME: Oh, I know that.

KONDRACKE: People are going to have to swallow things they don't like and, you know, people don't know whether it is worth doing.

Now, one last thing, two new polls today, I keep flagging these, FOX NEWS poll, indicates that -- do you favor or oppose giving legal immigrants, who pay taxes and obey the law, a second chance to allow them to be in the United States -- 67 percent say yes.

In a similar poll with Pew.

BARNES: Mort, give it up on the polls.

KONDRACKE: No, I'm not going to give it up on the polls.

BARNES: It all depends on how you ask the questions. You can get polls that show.

KONDRACKE: Oh please, these are accurate representation of the way the American people feel.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: There has never been an issue that I know of where the way you ask the question.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: The problem is, Mort, the problem with weighing this by polls is you don't know how strongly those way people feel on that...

LIASSON: People who care about this are generally against it.

(CROSSTALK)

But it's also true that the public wants Congress to do something. And do things and here is a big one.

HUME: Next up with the panel: is a compromise in the offing between Moscow and Washington over missile defense? Wait until you hear about the Russian offer. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): If we make in work transparent through the management of this system, and if we provide for an equal access to the system, then we will have no problem.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, you just heard the desire to work together to allay people's fears.

There's a lot of people who don't like it when Russia and the United States argue and it creates tensions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Yeah, no kidding, Mr. President. That's certainly true. The issue, of course, is the missile defense system that the Bush administration and the U.S. are going to plan to put in Eastern Europe which makes Eastern Europeans feel more secure from terrorist attacks and perhaps from other things as well. Vladimir Putin doesn't like it and has said he would retarget his missiles at the West if that system were put in place, which is a somewhat puzzling reaction.

The president has offered the technology to Russia and asked Russia to be joined be protected by the shield as well, Putin seems not too interested in that, so he proposes that a old Russian missile defense site in Azerbaijan, which of course, is down on Russia's south, bet -- there's a picture of what it looks like. It is not operative at this point and heaven knows whether it would ever work -- could be used instead and that could be what protected everybody. So, that is what they are talking about.

I have no idea whether -- what the technical realties of that whole situation are, but what is going on here in the Bush-Putin relationship? The president talked pretty tough going into the summit, now you have sweetness and light and Putin, of course, is coming to Kennebunkport. Help me out here?

KONDRACKE: Well, it looked as though we were returning to the Cold War, if not World War III, the way they were going into this thing. Firing barbs at one another and accusing each other -- Putin was saying that the United States resembled the Third Reich, for heavens sakes, and was talking about retargeting missiles at Europe, which is easy to do, by the way, it's only a computer. You turn dials and you could retarget the missiles. So, the fact that he's untargeting them doesn't mean that much.

HUME: You mean theoretically you can.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, well, at any event, I mean, this is a big fizzle, I frankly, do not understand what the all the huffing and puffing was about, unless it was.

HUME: You are a fine guy to start a panel with "big fizzle?" What are you talking about?

KONDRACKE: Well, it was a big fizzle. I mean, you know, given what all the storm and (INAUDIBLE) ahead of time and now it's gone.

HUME: Is that good news or bad?

KONDRACKE: Good.

HUME: Are you disappointed?

KONDRACKE: No. It's good. Basically good.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: You know, Bush was wrong, he said when the U.S. and Russia disagree, that creates tension.

LIASSON: No, the tensions.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: Yeah, reflects tensions. And they're there because Putin's acting like a jerk, an international jerk. I mean, he knows that the -- knows perfectly well that those missile defense sights in Czechoslovakia and Poland are in no way going to threaten the Soviet Union and could not knock down their missiles if the Soviets -- if the Russian fired them at Europe, which I don't think they have any intention of doing.

You know, I keep slipping these days and calling it the "Soviet Union" and the Soviet because Mort's right, that's the way they are acting. And - - but look, clearly what happened today is Putin is backpedaling. You know, he's saying well, maybe I'll do this and maybe you won't do that and clearly they're heading toward a position where they'll be -- maybe there will be a missile -- and antimissile site in Azerbaijan and there'll probably be in Eastern Europe, too.

LIASSON: Look, this is something that -- leaders of these meetings try to find some ground where they can agree on and this is better than talking about how Russia has fallen totally off the path to reform or talking about how America has become.

HUME: You don't think this is a put up job to avoid discussing that, do you?

LIASSON: No, but I just think it's something that they, you know, they went to this safe ground because maybe they felt like things are getting a little but -- getting too nasty. But look, Russia and America have true serious strains. They also need to work together on a lot of serious issues like terrorism and Iran, and, you know, it's important that they can do that.

HUME: Russia has not been much help...

LIASSON: No, no, but we need them to help because they are often the key to some of these changes.

BARNES: Well, that is the key to Bush trying to be nice to Putin. He does want help, but Mara's right, he does want help on stopping the Iranians from moving to nuclear weapons and he hasn't gotten much yet, that's true.

KONDRACKE: Beneath the surface here, I mean, the -- what Putin was saying was that Iran is not anywhere near being able to deploy missiles that will hit Europe. And so he's letting Iran off the hook, in effect, because this Azerbaijan thing will take forever to develop.

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