CBS "Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer" - Transcript - Immigration Reform

Interview

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MAJOR GARRETT: In studio with me now are two top members of the House of Representatives, Democrat Xavier Becerra, the Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. He's from California. And Republican Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He's from Texas. Congressman McCaul, thank you very much for joining us.

REPUBLICAN MICHAEL MCCAUL (Homeland Security Committee Chairman/R-Texas): Thank you.

MAJOR GARRETT: You just heard Senator McCain, he wants to make sure you House Republicans don't feel dictated to. Do you fell pressurized, dictated to by the Senate immigration bill, what is its prospects-- what are its prospects in the House of Representatives?

REPUBLICAN MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, in the House, we're going to-- we're going to do our own thing. We're going to pass our bills regular order.

MAJOR GARRETT: Meaning ignore the Senate bill?

REPUBLICAN MICHAEL MCCAUL: I-- I think, you know, we'll take a look at it. I have some concerns about the border security piece that was laid out in the Senate bill in terms of throwing forty-six billion dollars at a problem without any plan, without any strategy, without any definition of operation control. And, yeah, there's an old saying, you know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. We have no plan and that's the problem over the last decade within prior administrations.

MAJOR GARRETT: Do you think that forty-six million dollars was just covered to get Senate Republican votes and because there's not a plan from your vantage point it's illegitimate?

REPUBLICAN MICHAEL MCCAUL: I believe that it's not a responsible plan. I believe it was hatched at the last minute to-- to get votes to pass what they-- they passed in the Senate. On the House side, I passed a bipartisan bill out of my committee that will be, I think, the centerpiece of the enforcement and border security piece. We can't go back to 1986, we granted amnesty to illegals and then forgot about the security provisions. And I think that's the important lesson that we can't repeat today.

MAJOR GARRETT: What is the schedule of your border security bill? Do you expect the House to consider that and pass it before the August break?

REPUBLICAN MICHAEL MCCAUL: It's possible. It could be on the floor by July, if not, I think September. The discussion is with other reform bills and we're going regular order in the House that we can get something done by-- by the September timeframe.

MAJOR GARRETT: I want to help our audience deconstruct what you mean when you say regular order. That means you're going to take up specific bills addressing specific elements of the immigration debate, not comprehensive reform, a terminology that people hear all the time. You're going to do this piece by piece. And the fear is among Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans who support this legislation is the piecemeal of pro-- process will by its own slowness and gradual approach kill it off.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Interesting, usually the Senate's slower than the House, but we're going to move and do this the right way and pass our bills the right way. I do think--

MAJOR GARRETT: Why is that the right way, though?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, I think going regular order-- it's what the American people want. They don't want a comprehensive bill like what we saw with Obamacare that passed in the-- in the middle of the night. And now we're seeing what all the problems are in that bill. They don't want comprehensive. What they want is regular order pieces of legislation and, Major, you know, eventually this will put the House and Senate in a conference committee position--

MAJOR GARRETT: Sometime next year.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Well, it could be as early as, you know, late this year, maybe early next year.

MAJOR GARRETT: Okay.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Where we do hash out the differences between the Senate and the House versions. But again, I would argue that-- that what our bill calls for is a plan and a strategy, which we haven't had for a decade. It calls for metrics to measure success and it defines operation control. These are all key ingredients because we haven't had that before. In the past, all we've done is thrown money down at the problem on an ad hoc basis and it hasn't worked. And what the Senate just passed was, again, a bunch, you know, candy thrown down there, a bunch of assets thrown down there to gain votes, but with that methodical, smart border approach. We want a smart border. We also want a smart immigration plan, something that makes sense.

MAJOR GARRETT: Do you think the President and Democrats in the House and in the Senate are setting Republicans up and want to see this issue fail and become a dominant issue in the midterm elections next year?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: I am-- I am deeply concerned that the efforts should be bipartisan. Border security on my committee was a unanimously approved, completely bipartisan bill. My concern is the political backdrop could be that the White House would like to see this fail in the House, so that he can blame the House of Representatives for that and then try to take back the House of Representatives and then all bets are off on his agenda.

MAJOR GARRETT: That's the politics side of it. Before I let you go, the policy side of it is do you believe there are two hundred and eighteen House Republican votes for anything that is a pathway to citizenship or a legalization mechanism that starts very soon after enactment of any legislation?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: We-- we have a GOP conference on Wednesday to talk about immigration--

MAJOR GARRETT: But you have a sense already, don't you?

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: What's that?

MAJOR GARRETT: You have a sense of this question already.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: I think-- I think you've identified probably the two key hot spots, one would be path to citizenship and one would be applying Obamacare. And so I think those are going to be the issues that are going to be hashed out in our conference on Wednesday and we have a full healthy debate about it. But I do think as the Speaker said we need to be the party of solutions and not always obstructing and so I think there's an effort here that we have a broken immigration system. We need to fix this immigration system and, frankly, I want the best and the brightest in here. I don't want an uncontrolled Southwest border and a random lottery system.

MAJOR GARRETT: Very good. Congressman McCaul, thank you very much for joining us.

REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL MCCAUL: Thanks Major.

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