FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Executive Orders and Congress Going Forward

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Joining us from Oklahoma, Senator-elect James Lankford. And here in Washington, Senator-elect Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Gentlemen, congratulations. And welcome to FOX NEWS SUNDAY.

REP. TOM COTTON, R -- AK, SENATOR-ELECT: Thank you, Chris.

REP. JAMES LANKFORD, R -- OK, SENATOR-ELECT: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: President Obama called both of you on election night, two of the relatively few new Republican senators that he reached out to.

Senator Cotton, when you see what the president intends to do with executive action on immigration, steps that he apparently is taking on a climate deal with China and we think a veto of the Keystone pipeline, do you get a sense that you can do business with him?

COTTON: Well, I hope so, Chris. When President Obama called me he said that, obviously, we're going to have disagreements, but we're going to try to make progress for the people of Arkansas and Americans. I don't want to prejudge what he may or may not do on immigration. I mean, he's been discussing this for months now and it still hasn't happened, and some voices in his own party after the election last week are urging him not to go forward with it.

So, I'm hopeful the president will work with Congress to make any changes to our immigration laws.

WALLACE: Senator-elect Lankford, same question -- do you sense from what you've seen since election any give in this president?

LANKFORD: I don't sense any give from the president. Now, he did reach out as well on the phone and said let's try to find works to get together, and I told him we had a ways to work together a year ago on some basic things, and a lot of things including immigration. For instance, the House passed in December of 2012 a high-skill worker visa program that he immediately threatened to veto, the Senate never took up. He said, if we don't do everything, we're going to do nothing. And I think we're going to get nothing done if he continues to have that attitude.

WALLACE: All right. The first face-off between the president and Republicans is going to be on immigration. Mr. Obama took a hard line on executive action this week in Asia. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if, in fact, Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better. And that's going to happen. That's going to happen before the end of the year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator-elect Cotton, I think it's fair to say you come from the Tea Party wing of the GOP. Do you think Republicans should be prepared to either shut down the government by making some links to the funding which runs out on December 11th, or to pass these short- term spending bills to keep this fight up with the president?

COTTON: Well, I don't think anyone wants to shut down the government, because that doesn't solve the problem. But it's not just Republicans who have spoken on this. The American people have spoken.

Immigration was a central issue in my campaign. I won by 17 points.

Kay Hagan, Mark Begich, Mark Udall all supported President Obama's amnesty bill. They lost. Mary Landrieu is about to lose. Greg Orman, Alison Grimes, Bruce Braley, Michelle Nunn, they lost when they supported that bill.

The voters of Oregon, not exactly a conservative state like Arkansas, voted 2-1 against driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.

So, the American people have spoken loudly about the kind of immigration reform they want and it's not what the president is proposing.

WALLACE: But you've got to know, and this has happened before. It happened on ObamaCare in 2013, it happened with Newt Gingrich on the budget back in the '90s, when Republicans take action, even if it's the president who ends up vetoing what links they put to funding, it ends up biting Republicans.

COTTON: Chris, it's actually happened thousands of times over our history that Congress uses our power to control how taxpayer dollars are spent to put limitations on what a president can do. For the last six years with Guantanamo Bay, the president has wanted to close our detention facility there and move terrorists to the United States.

WALLACE: But are you saying you're -- be prepared like with ObamaCare to shut down the government?

COTTON: I'm saying that with Guantanamo Bay, we have fully funded our military spending bills for the last six years and put restrictions in what the president can do in terms of transferring terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the United States.

There's no reason that we can't find all our immigration agencies and law enforcement agencies, yet not let the president use taxpayer dollars to get Social Security numbers and work permits and federal IDs to illegal immigrants.

WALLACE: So, you would want to put that link on funding for the immigration agencies?

COTTON: Well, I'm hopeful that we won't have to take that action, because I hope the president will listen to what the American people said last week. And again, he's been talking about this for months, and it hasn't happened. So, I don't want to yet prejudge what he may or may not do.

WALLACE: Senator-elect Lankford, after the midterms, Mitch McConnell in the Senate, John Boehner in the House, made it pretty clear that they did not want to touch this stovetop again after what happened in 2013 with ObamaCare, and the fact that the government got shut down and rightly or wrongly, Republicans got blamed.

What's changed?

LANKFORD: Well, I think the significant part about this is, we still hope to be able to reach out and work with the president on it. We're not pursuing some government shutdown. I think what people misunderstood at the time was, how many people really detested what was happening in their personal lives and their businesses with ObamaCare. And we are trying to find every way possibility to communicate.

This is a real problem. It's not a Web site problem. It's a real problem that affects every single American, every single business.

This is also an issue like this.

WALLACE: But I'm --

LANKFORD: But people are not pursuing some government shutdown, though.

Let me take you back into the Clinton administration. President Clinton put out an executive order and the House voted against that to defund that executive order 417-2. That was in 1998, because it took over power from the legislative branch in the states.

I would love to see that bipartisanship again where the Congress to step up and say to a president, you do not have executive authority to do this. You have to do your responsibility. We have to do ours.

WALLACE: But I guess what I'm trying to get at and, you know, I fully understand there are a lot of members who say, look, you've got to use the power of the purse. That's your one advantage, your one piece of leverage over the president, to try to change policy.

But are you willing to go to possibly shutting down the government to do that?

Because it seems -- let me -- my point is, that regardless of who is responsible on the merits, it seems like Congress gets blamed and the president ends up winning. It certainly would happen in October of 2013.

LANKFORD: Sure. But, Chris, your assumption is, is that that's the only option that's sitting out here, is to be able to shut down government. I just don't believe that that's true. I think there are ways to be able to fund everything, and I don't think the president has the high ground.

He has this perception that everyone in the country thinks like him, and that is not correct. I represent millions of people. Tom Cotton represents millions of people. There are millions of people scatter around the United States that think like us, and, though, the president thinks only these few crazy conservatives in Congress think this way and no one else does, he's misjudged the American people.

The American people really do believe in the rule of law. They don't have a problem with immigration. They have a problem with illegal immigration. And for the president to step up and say, I'm just going to remove the word "illegal" and to be able to transition this and ignore the law, a lot of people have a problem with that, Republicans and Democrats alike.

WALLACE: All right. Let met change to another subject that you guys are going to have to deal with, and that's ObamaCare. And the big news this week were those comments by MIT professor Jonathan Gruber who was one of the architects of ObamaCare.

Let's take a look at one of the things he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN GRUBER, MIT PROFESSOR: Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupid of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Senator-elect Lankford, what do you think that professor Gruber's comments show? And what is it that you think, given the fact that the president will certainly veto any outside right repeal of ObamaCare, what do you think the new Republican majorities on both the House and the Senate can actually accomplish in ObamaCare over the next few years?

LANKFORD: I think Gruber's comments show what is consistent in Washington, is this arrogance of centralized government. This administration really believes they are smarter than everyone else and they need to just create the policy and impose the policy, and states exist only to be able to carry out their wishes from the central government. And I think that's exactly backwards.

The best thing that we can actually do is return health care decisions back to states, back to local authorities. Health care compacts, all the different things that actually return those authorities back to the states.

We have $50 billion -- $50 billion last year in Medicare fraud, $50 billion. That doesn't get corrected by continuing to centralize control. So, we've got to take care of the independent payment advisory board, we have to get rid of that; medical device tax, we have to get rid of that, we get rid of things like the mandates on individuals. People are really frustrated with that and they're going to watch their taxes go up next year even more than last year.

People want to have real answers. It's time to stop messaging on these bills. People need some solutions on it, because it really affects their lives.

WALLACE: But Senator-elect Cotton, realistically, what do you think you can get down about ObamaCare while President Obama is still in office?

COTTON: Well, Arkansans are conservative people, but they're practical people as well. They realize it's going to be hard to repeal a law named ObamaCare when the president is named Barack Obama. What they want is relief from the immediate harms.

The House of Representatives has already passed a lot of bills that would stop those harms, like preventing people from having to pay a tax that they can't afford in ObamaCare plan, or business from having to pay a tax if they can't provide an ObamaCare plan, or letting people keep their plans as was promised. Those passed the House with bipartisan support. The president has taken some of those steps as an administration measure. I think we could pass that legislation again and the president would be hard pressed to explain why he wants to veto it if he's already done it as an administrative measure and it has broad bipartisan support.

WALLACE: Senators-elect and I'm tired of saying that, so you could get to be senators so I don't have to put the elect on there.

Senators-elect Cotton and Lankford, thank you both. Thanks for coming in. We'll follow both of you on your Senate adventures. Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source