Face the Nation transcripts February 17, 2013: McDonough, Barbour, Booker, Wuerl

(CBS News) Below is a transcript of "Face the Nation" on February 17, 2013, hosted by CBS News' Bob Schieffer. Guests include White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Newark Democratic Mayor Cory Booker, former Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, and Time Magazine senior science editor Jeffrey Kluger. Plus, a foreign policy panel featuring David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy Magazine, and CBS State Department correspondent Margaret Brennan, and a political roundtable featuring the Cook Political Report's Amy Walter, Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, and CBS Political Director John Dickerson.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, what a week it was. Lightning struck the Vatican. A meteorite struck the Earth. And, oh, yeah, Congress and the President left town. We'll talk about it with the President's new chief of staff, Denis McDonough. Then we'll hear from two political heavyweights, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour. In the wake of the Pope's resignation, we'll talk about what's ahead for the Catholic Church with Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington. We'll get the latest on that meteorite from Jeffrey Kluger, senior science editor of TIME magazine. We'll get analysis from David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Tom Ricks of Foreign Policy magazine, and State Department correspondent Margaret Brennan. We'll round it out with Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report, Michael Gerson of the Washington Post, and our political director John Dickerson. From out in space to here on Earth, this is FACE THE NATION.

ANNOUNCER: From CBS News in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again on a day when there is no shortage of questions. We welcome Denis McDonough, President Obama's new chief of staff, who I presume has brought many answers with him--

DENIS MCDONOUGH (White House Chief of Staff): Let's hope.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --this morning. Nice to have you, Mister McDonough.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm really looking forward to it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The sequester, these draconian across-the-- across-the-board spending cuts that are supposed to go into effect March the first. It appears to me that this is going to happen. It looks to me as if both the President and-- and the congressional leaders have given up on each other. Can this possibly happen?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Well, we've not given up on this, Bob, and the reason we've not given up on it is because it's going to have a real impact, on middle-class families. And the kinds of investments--

BOB SCHIEFFER: It's going to have an impact on everybody.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Across the board. And-- but the focus for the President, the lens through which he's going to see this fight is the same lens he's seen on all-- each of these fights, which is, what is the impact on middle-class families and the kinds of investments that we expect for the economy to grow from the middle out. So our hope is that this does not happen, that we choose-- rather than make this an ideological fight as it appears to be right now among some--

BOB SCHIEFFER: But--

DENIS MCDONOUGH: --on the Republican caucus that we just do it a balanced approach to fix this problem.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I-- I agree with all that but when you have the speaker of the House saying, look, I can't work with the President any more. Every time I work with him I get burned. When he says, you know, he won't take on the liberals in his own party on reforming the social programs, and then you see the President, he's not talking to anybody; he's out making speeches around the country.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Oh, I think that the president--

BOB SCHIEFFER: So--

DENIS MCDONOUGH: --is but he laid out it in very complete detail, I thought.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But what is he doing? I mean what are the two sides doing to keep this from happening?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Well, you saw what he did on Tuesday night in the State of the Union where he laid out in very clear detail exactly what he is prepared to do, Bob, as it relates to fixing this problem. Over the course of the last several months we've got agreement on 2.5 trillion dollars in deficit reduction over the next ten years. We're ready to do another trillion and a half to get to the four-trillion-dollar mark that every economist in the country says we need to do-- to do to stabilize the debt problem.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Would you say this morning that the President of the United States will not let this happen?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: The President of the United States is doing everything he can to not let this happen. We need to work with our friends on the Hill. When you look at the Senate Democratic Plan and the President's plan, both very balanced plans that gets some savings in this deficit fight from spending cuts and some savings from increased revenues. What our friends in the House have told us is that they will not even consider anything that includes increased revenues, not even closing loopholes for corporate jets, closing loopholes for oil and gas companies. That seems to me to be a position that we ought to have them reexamine and come to the table and let's have a real discussion about it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Oh, USA Today is reporting that the White House has been circulating its own immigration plan which provides some path to citizenship for some of the people who are already here. Speaker Boehner said his great fear was that the President would get in the way, that he thought there were already bipartisan efforts under way on the Hill. Has the White House, in fact, circulated its own plan behind the scenes or-- or where is all that?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: The President's great fear is we don't take this opportunity to-- to meet immigration reform comprehensively in four ways. Resolve-- continue with the great progress we've made on border security. Continue to crack down on businesses that game the system and hire illegal workers. Three, have a path to earned citizenship for people that they earn their citizenship if they pay back taxes, pass background check, pass national security background check and learn English. And lastly, so we reform the legal immigration system so that people who play by the rules have reasonable opportunity to get to this country. All of us are descendants of immigrants. We want to make sure the whole system works.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So is this a new plan that the President is circulating?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: I think the report said-- Bob, I'd have to check-- but it says that it's been circulating inside the administration. And I think the President laid out in-- in Las Vegas just last week that we will be prepared with our own plan if these ongoing talks between Republicans and Democrats up on Capitol Hill break down. There is no evidence that they've broken down yet. We're continuing to support that. We are involved in those-- those efforts by providing them technical assistance and providing them ideas and I hope that Republicans and Democrats up there don't get involved in some kind of typical Washington back-and-forth sideshow here and rather just get-- roll up their sleeves and get to work on writing a comprehensive immigration reform.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You really think something could happen on this?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: I think something needs to happen. I think the system is broken. I think our opportunity to tap into qualified immigrants in this economy over the course of time is a great opportunity for us. And I think we just have to fix the border security situation, making the progress that we have over the last four years permanent.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The White House finally acknowledged last week that the President did not make a call to the Libyan government on that night when four Americans died in-- in-- in Benghazi. Republicans wanted to know why. I want to ask you. You were the deputy national security adviser. It's my understanding. We learned last week that the President got a briefing early on the afternoon and seemed to have no more participation in anything. We know he didn't talk to the secretary of Defense, or didn't talk to the CIA chief after that. What was the President doing that night?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Boy, I just-- I don't remember it that way, Bob. And in fact, the letter that we sent to Capitol Hill earlier this week said that Secretary of State Clinton called the Libyans--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, we know that.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: --on behalf of the President and we carried out a very robust reaction to that situation at the direction of the President. So the President--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, were you briefing him on what was happening?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Throughout the night, absolutely.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You worked.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Not only briefing him, but we were-- we were convening that United States government, the Deputies Committee, and the National Security Council and we worked this throughout the night. The secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, worked this throughout the night. But here's the important thing here I think, Bob, which is we did everything we could that night-- which, by the way, was borne out by the accountability review board which Secretary Clinton stood up to look at this. They said that though, Washington-based effort was a good effort that did everything it possibly could have. But the question from the President now is how-- what have we done to make sure this does not happen again? And he's demanded of us his team be that at the State Department, be that at the White House, or be that at the Pentagon or the intelligence community to make sure this never happens again, and he won't put up with it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: One of the reasons that Congress is holding up your nominations of both John Brennan for the CIA, and Chuck Hagel at the Defense Department, they tell us that there were seventy emails that went back and forth during that week on what Susan Rice should say on this broadcast and on the other Sunday talk shows the following Sunday, and that somewhere along the way the idea that this was the work of terrorists, what happened in Benghazi was taken out. Why don't you, number one, give the senators those emails and let them find out what they say they want to find out about this? And who, in fact, did take the connection to al Qaeda and the terrorists out of those talking points?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Well, I think there's-- there is an ongoing effort between the administration and the intelligence committees to resolve exactly what they need to get. In addition to everything else we've already done, Bob, twenty hearings or briefings with members of Congress, ten thousand pages of documents that we've provided and so we'll resolve whatever it is on this question--

BOB SCHIEFFER: You'll give him the emails?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: We'll resolve it. I don't know exactly how it will get resolved. But we'll resolve it. In fact, I think we are well on our way to resolving it, but here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to have our director of Central Intelligence Agency, our nominee John Brennan, thirty-year veteran of national security matters in this town, a person of unbelievable character and commitment and-- and patriotic feeling for this country, hung up in the midst of the situation we have right now--threats from North Korea, threats in Afghanistan, threats in Pakistan, threats in North Africa. Let's get the President's director of Central Intelligence over into the seat so he can work these matters. Let's not let this become another--

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: --political football at a town that at the moment seems very focused on political football, a little-- a little less focused frankly on national security and middle-class families the way it should be.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I have to ask you quickly. You're talking about the director of the CIA. Do you mean-- is it also is critical for your nominee to head the Pentagon?

DENIS MCDONOUGH: No question about it. No question about it. And what we just sent up the letter-- we sent up in response the questions on Benghazi, as I said, was a latest interaction and ten thousand pages of documents that we've provided to the Congress on this matter. The President's focus is, okay, let's account for what happened. Let's reform and make sure it never happens again. Let's get our guys in the position so they can help us make sure it never happens--

BOB SCHIEFFER: And you said you'd let them see these emails. The seventy emails recorded as talking points.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Look, there's an ongoing effort. I'm not going to negotiate that here with you, Bob.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: But there's an ongoing effort, and I think we're making very good progress on that.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Chief of Staff, thank you so much. I hope you will come back.

DENIS MCDONOUGH: Thanks for having me, Bob. I'll be happy to come back anytime.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we want to go outside Washington now to talk about what Denis McDonough just talked about. Haley Barbour is a former Republican Party chairman, former governor of Mississippi. He is in Jackson this morning, and Cory Booker, of course, is the mayor of Newark, and he is in our New York studio. Governor Barbour, let me just start with you, and I want to go back to the top. He says that he hopes the sequester, these draconian cuts, don't go into effect. But from where I see it it looks to me like this is all going to happen because Congress and the White House just can't figure out how not to let it happen. What's your take?

HALEY BARBOUR (Former Mississippi Governor): Well, first of all, it was the President's idea when this sequester was-- was proposed to be put into law a couple of years ago and there are plenty of reasons to not wanted to go into effect, particularly, in defense spending. But the Democrats want is another excuse to raise taxes. Their answer to every question is raise taxes. They apparently think what's wrong with the country and President Obama, Mrs. Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Tom Harkin, all prominent Democrats have all said, "We don't have a spending problem in this country." They think what's wrong with our country is we tax too little. Well, most Americans who are watching today, Bob, don't think we have a trillion-dollar deficit for four consecutive years because we tax too little. They know it's because we spend too much.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But isn't what you're saying, Governor, just what people say is wrong with Washington. Here we go again. Governor Barbour says it's all the fault of the Democrats, the White House says, it's all the fault of the Republicans and there we are. I want to know where there is some ground here where the two sides could actually get together and get something done. Is there such a place?

HALEY BARBOUR: Well, you're going to see on the sequester-- I believe you're correct that the sequester will go into effect.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You do think it's going to happen.

HALEY BARBOUR: There are a lot of Republicans that don't-- I do, and there are a lot of Republicans that don't like parts of it, but they understand we've come to a point where we've got to take action about spending. And that the Democrats say, well, the real answer is to have fifty percent more tax increases. The answer to every question for the Democrats is let's raise somebody's taxes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Well, we've got a Democrat with us this morning, the Mayor of Newark. Mayor Booker, what do you-- do you see this thing happening and what do you think the consequences will be if it does happen?

CORY BOOKER (Newark Mayor): Well, I pray it doesn't. The consequences are real and I see them on the ground. If this sequester goes into play, it's going to hurt small businesses in my community in getting them access to capital. It's going to hurt kids. It's going to knock so many kids off of things like head-starts. And, for me, on a daily fight against crime it's going to hurt law enforcements. It's going to hurt the FBI and others. This is a threat to the nation that every independent economist says would hurt the United States of America, would hurt our economy, would hurt real people on the field. And there's no excuse for it. You know there's a level of brinksmanship that's being played in Congress. I've seen it over the debt ceiling. I've seen it over the fiscal cliff that is just unnecessary. There needs to be a level of pragmatism back to our politics. And, frankly, I give a lot of credit to the President because he's not saying let's just raise taxes. He said the obvious that we, in America, cannot continue to spend more than we take in. It's something that I don't have the luxury of as mayor of doing. And so what I see the President doing is putting tremendous cuts on the table, trillions of dollars of cuts. You just heard the chief of staff say they're willing to put over four trillion dollars worth of cuts but it has to be in a balanced way. And the-- and the challenge that I see right now is if this-- if this happens, if the sequester happens, the cuts will be blunt, brutal, and blind as opposed to being intelligent and insightful. And it will not invest. It will stop us from investing in those critical areas in America we must invest on if we want long-term economic growth.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Mayor, let me ask you one thing, Frank Lautenberg, the longtime Senator from New Jersey, says he is not going to seek reelection. You have said you're thinking about it. I think you put together some sort of a pact. Are you, in fact, going to seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat in New Jersey?

CORY BOOKER: Clearly, it's a job that I'm interested in. We did what we had to do by law and file the federal account. I'll spend the coming months working on and exploring that, but right now we have one election in New Jersey, which is our statewide gubernatorial and legislative elections. As a Democratic in New Jersey, that's where my focus is. Next year's election for Senate will take care of itself. And again I hope to be one of those people that the residents of New Jersey will consider giving that honor, fighting for them on the federal level.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But you're not in any way, shape, or form think about running for governor as a Democrat, are you? No. Okay.

CORY BOOKER: No, no, I'm thinking about supporting. Look, New Jersey's going to have a big election. We-- we, in New Jersey, take one election at a time.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I got you.

CORY BOOKER: Two thousand fourteen is a long way off. Let's focus on supporting the-- the-- the Democratic nominee for governor and, frankly, a lot of legislative races are up for grabs right now in New Jersey.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me go back to Governor Barbour. Quickly, Governor, if you had one piece of advice for both sides right now on how to avoid the sequester, what would it be? Would it be to put it off? There-- I understand Speaker Boehner is talking about maybe passing some sort of resolution to keep the government funded at the current levels until August, which is just another way to kick it down the road. Is that the best that-- that the both sides can do right now?

HALEY BARBOUR: I don't believe Speaker Boehner is thinking about doing that. That-- we have a-- a continuing resolution that comes up the end of March, March twenty-seventh to twenty-eighth. Bob, remember, while the President talks like he's real concerned about the deficit and spending, we haven't had a budget in three years in the United States. Now, how serious can you be about our fiscal issues when there hasn't even been a budget passed in three years. And I think Boehner and the Republicans and I think Democrats who are concerned about this need to realize we didn't take any action on the debt ceiling because we didn't want to hurt the credit of the country. But the sequester and then the continuing resolutions at the end of March, these are the two times when the American people need to understand is there anybody in Washington serious about getting control of spending. Remember when the President proposed the sequester nearly two years ago, it was all about spending restraint. It didn't have a thing to do with raising taxes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Governor, Mister Mayor, thanks to both of you. We'll back-- be back in just a minute to talk about the departing pope and who the new one's going to be.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And joining us now-- we've been talking about problems on Earth. We're going to talk about heaven and Earth on this broadcast, and the Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl is with us this morning. Your Eminence, thank you so much. I know this is a work day for you. We appreciate you finding the time to talk about it with us. What happens now? The Pope, first time in what six hundred years--

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL (Archbishop of Washington): Six hundred years.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --that a Pope has resigned. What's going to happen here?

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: Well, as we-- as we know, the next step will be the-- the conclave.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: Now, we even have a little bit of-- of hesitancy on when exactly that will start because the-- the regulations all called for and anticipated a conclave with the death of the Pope.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: So what we have here is the retirement of the Pope. So we have to probably move up the conclave since there won't be that period of mourning.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So this will be mid-March when--

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: I expect maybe even a little bit earlier into March because we have to start actually gathering on the first of March.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What happens when all of you get together over there? Is this, I mean, and I mean-- I do not mean this to be any way disrespectful toward religion but is it like a political convention? Or do you have people getting together feeling each other out because one of you is going to be elected to this job. How-- what's it like inside one of those conclaves?

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: Well, before the conclave actually starts, there are a number of days when all the cardinals come together so that we can actually talk among ourselves, begin to get a better sense of one another. There are going to be a hundred and seventeen of us there--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: --with the right to vote. And just to get to know a little bit better personally one another, there will be four or five days of these meetings. But it--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Will you in any way, could you be the nominee?

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: No, that-- that enters into the world of fantasy.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: But when we get back into the-- into the real world, I think what will happen is a number of cardinals will begin to-- to surface in the-- in the conversation among all of us as particularly appealing candidates. It's not like a political process, though. There aren't nominations, and you don't have people saying, "I vote for"--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: --and "my-- my favorite son is." When we go into the conclave, all of that stops. It's a silence inside the conclave and the real focus is on the power of the Holy Spirit. I am looking to this as sort of a very, very super retreat. You just start to pray and the only indication you get of how things are going is when they count the votes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think there's any chance that an American could be pope? Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, is the name that comes up a lot. But in the past the church has sort of shied away from popes-- who came from superpowers.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: I think it would be-- I think you are absolutely right, Bob. I think it would be very difficult for the-- the Pope to come from the United States, not because we don't have qualified people and I have a great affection for-- for Cardinal Dolan, but because we are the one, great superpower. However, there's another-- there's another Roman saying, "Never put limits on divine providence.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What-- what do you see as the major problems confronting whoever becomes the next pope? We've had these scandals in the church and all of that.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: I think the real challenge that the-- the church faces today and that the next pope will have to lead us in addressing is the overwhelming influence of secularism that's-- that's really drowning out the voice of religion, the voice of faith. Each one of us is called to a relationship with God in whatever tradition we belong. We're all called to that relationship. And we have to keep focusing on that. I think it's going to be the task of the Pope to say there's a spiritual mission, and that's the work of the church.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Your Eminence, thank you so much for helping us with this.

CARDINAL DONALD WUERL: It's my pleasure.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And we'll be back in a moment with some personal thoughts.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Ronald Reagan used to say that for all our differences, if we were attacked by aliens from outer space, Earth's people would come together and defend the planet. All that space junk crashing into Siberia made me wonder, though, was he right? Well, probably. But after watching Washington's blundering effort to deal with the so-called sequester, I wouldn't bet the ranch on it. Mind you, these automatic cuts in spending that go into effect March first are Washington's own doing. The law cut spending programs to the bone. It ends head start, reduces the number of food inspectors, ensures longer lines at airports because of massive furloughs of federal workers, not to mention layoffs at shipyards and on and on and on. All of which would probably cause a recession. The idea was that no sane person would allow such cuts to happen, which was theorized, would force Congress and the White House to take responsible steps to slow down deficit spending. Well, guess what? Even Washington managed to underestimate its own ineptitude. The sequester and the draconian cuts are about to happen because the White House and Congress cannot close the partisan divide and figure out what to do about them. Well, there is at least some good news. If aliens do attack, our leaders will be well rested to meet that challenge after Congress left town on Friday for yet another vacation. The President flew to Florida for some golf. Back in a minute.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, some of our stations are leaving us now, but for most of you, we'll be right back with a lot more and more on that debris falling out of the sky. FACE THE NATION, stay with us.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And welcome back to FACE THE NATION. Joining us now to talk about some of the challenges facing the country on the foreign policy front some of the best foreign policy reporters in the business, David Ignatius is with the Washington Post, of course; Tom Ricks used to work for the Post, is now a contributing editor to-- to Foreign Policy magazine; and Margaret Brennan is our CBS News State Department correspondent. But before we get to foreign subjects here on Earth, I want to talk about matters from outer space, and that meteorite that fell over Siberia and injured over a thousand people. So we're going back to New York to talk with the science editor and senior editor of TIME Magazine Jeffrey Kluger. Jeffrey, let me just start with the obvious. I mean this-- this thing caught our attention. There's no question about that. But should we be worried about this? Is-- do these things pose a danger to those of us here on Earth?

JEFFREY KLUGER (TIME Magazine): Well, they do and they don't. There's some comfort to be taken as we report in TIME Magazine this week that the Earth has been playing in traffic for about four billion years now, especially back in the time that was called the heavy bombardment period when the solar system hadn't quite created yet. But, even today, about a hundred tons of space degree-- debris pour into our atmosphere every twenty-four hours and that includes one object at least as big as a basketball. Every couple of months, we get something as big as a Volkswagen. We don't necessarily see them coming or we see them as a little streak across the sky, but we're getting bombarded all the time.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, should we be worried about that? I mean, you know, if-- if-- if what I understand about science is correct, it was when one of these things hit the Earth that wiped out all the dinosaurs way back when?

JEFFREY KLUGER: That-- that's right and that was a six-mile-wide object. The good news is there aren't any objects that big left anymore, at least scientists don't think so. The bad news is there's a whole lot of rubble out there. The rock that just passed by Earth in the Southern Hemisphere on Friday and missed us by seventeen thousand miles which is just a rounding error in the standards of-- of space distances, had it hit, it would have unleashed a blast of about 2.4 megatons, or a hundred and eighty Hiroshimas, so that's a nasty bit of business. A hundred years ago in 1908, Russia, poor Russia, got clobbered one other time when a rock about three hundred and thirty feet across exploded over the Tunguska region, unleashed a thirty-megaton blast or about a thousand Hiroshimas. So these things do happen.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, what is the likelihood of something like that happening again? I mean we-- we have a pretty good idea of what's out there but not a one hundred percent idea of what's out there on the other hand?

JEFFREY KLUGER: No. That's absolutely true. The likelihood of say the kind of rock that just passed by, we get one of them about every forty years and it hits the ground about every twelve hundred years. Well, now even though that's a whole lot of human lifetimes, that's something you want to avoid. We do know that in the hundred to a hundred and fifty-foot range there are about a million such objects out there. Now NASA is doing a very good job of cataloging all the ones they can. But so far they've been able to find just about ten thousand of them. So we're little ways away from having the complete inventory.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you this question--is there something the government ought to be doing or that science ought to be doing that it's not doing?

JEFFREY KLUGER: Actually, believe it or not, we are handling this one well. In 1995 NASA authorized-- or rather, Congress authorized NASA to scan the skies twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to look for these objects. And we're doing it at three observatories in California, New Mexico, and-- and Puerto Rico. And those three observatories have accounted for about ninety-eight percent of the bodies that-- that we know are out there. Now there are ways to defend ourselves once we know it's out there. And we have the technology to do it. It's just a question of putting the money together and deciding to do that.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Jeffrey Kluger that-- that is a little bit reassuring. And thank you very much for helping us on something that most of us know absolutely nothing about. Thank-- thank you so much.

JEFFREY KLUGER: Thank you.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to turn now to our panel. Tom Ricks, it strikes me that one of the dangers is that in this age of intercontinental ballistic missiles, a nation might pick up something like this on their radar and before they identify it as a rock, would fire our own missiles back in retaliation that you might accidentally trigger a nuclear exchange?

TOM RICKS (Foreign Policy Magazine): It was always a concern in the Cold War that the Russians would think we had come up with some new weapon that they didn't know about and hit them with a surprise attack and then they would respond. This is why communication back and forth is so essential, hot lines and so on to say, hey, that wasn't us. That was somebody nasty in outer space. My worry here is that since we've now wasted billions of dollars on missile defense. Now the defense industry can say, hey, we need asteroid defense. Let's spend billions more on that.

BOB SCHIEFFER: David, what's your take on this?

DAVID IGNATIUS (Washington Post): Well, I don't-- I don't know about asteroid defense but I-- I think it is true that technology has advanced to the point that radars can dis-- dis-- distinguish pretty much where an object is-- is originating. You know, when I think about-- about foreign policy, I-- I don't think about the intergalactic version, but the--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Maybe we should?

DAVID IGNATIUS: --but the meteors that are coming right at this administration now and there's a meteor called Syria heading fast. There's a meteor called Iran, and a real confrontation with Iran over-- over its nuclear policy. The administration has got to deal with this year. And then there's the perennial issue of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. We've-- we've the President-- and he made an interesting decision to go to Israel and then to the West Bank and Jordan next month. It will be his first trip to Israel as President. So in these three areas, in particular, the foreign policy challenges of 2013 are obvious and we can talk about what the administration is going to do but, as I say, these-- these are coming at us, can't-- we can't really stop them.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let's talk about that Margaret. You're over at the State Department. You got a new secretary there. Is it different?

MARGARET BRENNAN (CBS News State Department Correspondent): Well, we were given Red Sox caps. That's different, certainly, with Secretary Kerry there. But, no, I would say what David just highlighted in terms of confrontations to come, he is certainly right in highlighting those. I don't know that we'll get to confrontation other than the slow walk of diplomacy. That seems to be the focus, particularly, on the issue of Syria. Senator Kerry had some ideas about what to do. Can Secretary Kerry actually implement them? He has said on this trip he's expected to make within the next few weeks that he will go to the region. That he will try to push, as he says, things that will change the calculus of Bashar al-Assad right now. But as a senior Arab diplomat told me just this week here in Washington they think that the Syrian military remains very well armed and fiercely loyal to Bashar al-Assad. So, the reality on the ground is going to dictate what is actually possible. But it seems like the focus is going to be trying to keep Syria together and trying to get a diplomatic deal done.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, we-- we learned last week during these various hearings on Capitol Hill that the President overruled all of his foreign advisors on-- on helping Syria and giving more-- more aid to Syria. Tom, what do you-- how do you see this thing breaking down?

TOM RICKS: I see Obama as being like President Eisenhower. This is a guy who is really determined to avoid foreign crises. Eisenhower came into office, gets us out of the Korean War, avoids getting into the-- the ground in the Middle East or in the Suez crisis, shuns helping the Hungarian Revolution despite a lot of calls in this country for that. And probably, most importantly, rejects the advice of the Joint Chiefs when they want to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam in 1956 to support the French at Dien Bien Phu. I see Obama very much that pattern. He has a whole string of foreign policy crises, but I think given this Eisenhower pattern you're not going to see him intervene in Syria. You're going to see him get us out of Afghanistan and try to avoid foreign crises as much as possible or minimize them, and only use ground forces as a very, very last resort.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let's talk about Afghanistan, David, because the President made it pretty clear. He said-- he said our war in Afghanistan is over. But that seems to me a little bit different than saying the war in Afghanistan is over. And, in fact, I have had people say to me they sort of cringed when the President said that. They said-- Tom Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist in the New York Times, he said that was the one thing that made me cringe when he said that because he said you just ought not ever say that because it just suggesting it gives al Qaeda ideas.

DAVID IGNATIUS: This is a President who in every recent speech has stressed I am ending the wars that America has and by implication I don't want to start new ones. So Tom is right to say that he's approaching the question of Syria and any kind of serious American intervention there very, very skeptically. That said, Tom, I think there-- there are new proposals before the administration for a more robust U.S. position, and I think he may sign off-- off on them. On the question of Afghanistan, Bob, what I was struck by in his State of the Union speech was something a little different. He said that the United States is committed after the withdrawal of our combat troops at the end of 2014 to two missions, and the two missions are counterterrorism and training the Afghan army. Those two missions almost by-- by definition require a significant American presence. Is it five thousand? Is it six thousand? Is it eight thousand? That's what there's a lot of discussion about. But the fact that the President named the two missions a lot of the analysts say mean it's going to be more rather than less U.S. troops staying on. So in that sense, even though the President was talking about ending the-- the war in Afghanistan, he-- the mission is continuing, and as Margaret knows and follows, there's a lot of diplomacy going on in secret now to see if you could bring the Taliban into real peace negotiations so that we would leave with something like a settlement. We could say, "Here, look, you know, we're leaving but there's an agreement among these factions."

BOB SCHIEFFER: And you just had the President of Afghanistan, Karzai, saying he's going to forbid anymore American airstrikes. He won't allow his own people to call in airstrikes because a recent one took some civilian lives.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Concern about hitting civilian areas. That's-- that's right. I think one of the other offshoots of this drawdown, while there will be a continued presence in some form, is where those assets go. And the theory keeps getting floated that what leaves Afghanistan may go to the benefit of AFRICOM, to forces within Africa because of this new threat that has come to the fore and really been highlighted in terms of AQIM, their presence in Libya, their presence in Algeria as we saw with that hostage crisis that just happened. But what that means it's certainly not boots on the ground, it's just assets being deployed there.

BOB SCHIEFFER: President didn't have much to say about Iran or North Korea during his State of the Union.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There is-- as we-- we've said there's diplomacy behind closed doors on both fronts. Next week you do have Iran coming back to negotiating table. There will be talks with the world powers in Kazakhstan about those efforts to get Iran to be more revealing about its nuclear program, but I don't expect Iran to get what it's asking for which is for them to do anything they want sanctions lifted and the U.S. just last week put more sanctions on Iran. They've now started highlighting human rights abuses that expanded those.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Are these sanctions working?

DAVID IGNATIUS: They-- well, there was a very interesting statement a day ago from the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei in which he-- he said, "Don't keep this gun to our head. Don't try to force us to-- to talk." It was like, you know, when a boxer gets punched and they go, "You know, I didn't get hurt." So he'll try to tell you he didn't get hurt even as you can see he got hurt. Well, I think that's the case with the Iran. They're trying to say, "No, it didn't touch us." But-- but if you read the-- if-- as the White House reads the Ayatollah's words, they are a kind of political fencing. But what he's saying is, "I know talks with the U.S. are coming, and here's the position I want to lay down. I think that's how he is--

BOB SCHIEFFER: It does seem to make life harder in Iran for the Iranian people, these sanctions. But-- but Tom, has it slowed down their nuclear program? They seem to be going straight ahead.

TOM RICKS: Well, I think what slowed down the nuclear program was Stuxnet, this computer virus that was injected into them. I think it's interesting that the Iranian people seem to remain so pro-American, perhaps most pro-American people in the Middle East despite all this.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask I want to-- because I want to get in about Chuck Hagel. Is chuck Hagel going to be confirmed as a secretary of Defense and-- and also John Brennan is still hanging out there. What do you guys think?

TOM RICKS: If he is, I think he will be a very weakened secretary of Defense. He has not given a good performance so far. My larger concern about the Obama administration is they've gone from national security professionals like Bob Gates or Jim Jones at the beginning of the administration to basically pals of the President, cronies from Senate, people who have never really run or anything. So I'm not so worried about the policies as I am by the people.

DAVID IGNATIUS: I'd-- I'd guess that Tom is-- is right that he-- he will be confirmed. This has been become an extremely partisan debate, unusual for secretary of Defense. He-- he will be significantly weakened, especially in what he's going to need to do. You have a real battle shaping up now over who gets-- how the pie is divided in terms of military spending, and Congress will play a big role, and his ability to work with Congress, sadly, after the-- this confirmation process, is reduced.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And, Margaret, are we ever going to get the answer to what the President knew what that night that those four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi? I mean you heard Denis McDonough say this morning, yes, he was engaged throughout the evening but there seems to be no record of him having talked to anyone.

MARGARET BRENNAN: No record as in photos released or moments and statements like that. But it's not clear in the debate that you hear within the administration is well, what is it that we could deliver that would stop these questions? And do you engage and provide the second half, because then it really becomes an argument? You could also say, hey, we're almost six months out now. This is still going. You've got to provide more clarity there. But Secretary Clinton did place that call to Libyan president last night whether that counts on behalf of the President or not.

BOB SCHIEFFER: The next day he placed the call.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Secretary Clinton that evening--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Secretary Clinton called that night.

MARGARET BRENNAN: --did place the call.

BOB SCHIEFFER: President didn't call him until the next day.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. We could talk about this forever and ever but we're going to change the cast here and we'll be back in just a minute.

BOB SCHIEFFER: We're back now with our politics panel. Politics, I'm shocked, in Washington. Michael Gerson used to work for George Bush, he used to write a lot of speeches for him and has written a few State of the Union speeches himself, now a columnist for the Washington Post; Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report. We're also joined by our old friend and our political director John Dickerson. Let me just go around the table here. Is this sequester going to happen? I think it is.

MICHAEL GERSON (Washington Post): Well, both sides are responsible for it and both sides seem resigned to it. And some of the reason is it's not like the shutdown in '96. It's a five-percent cut for domestic programs. It's going to have the serious consequence for a lot of people, but it's not like shutting down the government. And there are some expectations that maybe this issue could be rolled into the CR, the-- the continuing resolution debate in March and you might get some resolution. But all that said this is an absurd way to do budgeting. Across-the-board cuts, they do waste, but they also do meat inspectors. It really is a heartless, mindless, brainless way to do budgeting, but it's the path of least resistance right now.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, if they start laying off people at the airports, you're going to have airline lines like we have never seen before. And I don't know very many people who think things are really going great at the airport these days.

AMY WALTER (Cook Political Report): Yeah, I mean I think he's exactly-- Michael is exactly right that there is a resignation that it's going to happen and now the only question is who's going to get the blame? And that's really where both sides are positioning now. You heard on this show, right, Governor Haley Barbour saying, "Well, this was the President's idea."

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

AMY WALTER: And then you also hear from Democrats saying, it's going to be terrible, terrible things are going to happen, TSA lines, meat inspection, the world is going to collapse, dogs and cats are going to live together. Republicans say it's not going to be that bad. People are-- most people aren't even going to notice it. So it's not just that the expectations of what should happen are different; it's the expectation of what is going to happen is different.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, John, we heard these reports seeping out of Capitol Hill this week that John Boehner, the Republican leader, is already talking about let's just pass the continuing resolution to keep the government funded into August, which is just another way of saying this is the "kick the can down the road again" bill.

JOHN DICKERSON: Right, this goes to Michael's point--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Which says to me that maybe that is what's going to happen because they can't figure out what to do?

JOHN DICKERSON (CBS News Political Director): And this is no way to run a railroad. That would at least take a horrible option and replace it with just a bad option. Just to go back, I mean this was-- because they couldn't get their homework done in the first place, they said, let's launch a meteorite at Washington that will be so terrible that everybody will-- will do something, and they have done nothing. And two points that are interesting is, Congressional Budget Office put out a report and said based on the current trends, the country is not going to get back to its growth where it should be till 2017. That's the economy here that we're in. And-- and on this question of blame, the President feels he's got the high hand. His approval ratings are twenty, thirty points ahead of the Republicans. But at the end of his term we're-- we're at 2017, people will look back at the Obama economy and if this sequester has the economic effect, the head of the CBO said seven hundred and fifty thousand jobs possibly if this doesn't get averted, a million jobs other people have said, that will hurt the President. Regardless of whether it's the Republicans' fault, regardless if he didn't have a willing partner, that's just the way history looks at things. And that's the pressure on the White House. We all know about the pressure on the Republicans. So that's why John Boehner wants to maybe move to something that's not as bad. We'll see what the President wants to do. But right now it looks like it's going to happen.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What about this whole question on immigration, a lot of people seem to think that something could actually happen. At least they were saying that before the President made his State of the Union speech. He says it's a big high-priority item. But, you know, John Boehner said to us the other day at breakfast. He said, "Look, my greatest fear here is that the President will get in the way." He said, you know, there is a good, solid, bipartisan effort going on on the Hill to do this. He said, "I just hope the President would let that work its will." Now we learn that the White House is leaking its own plan. Is there-- what's the politics of all?

MICHAEL GERSON: Well, I think in the State of the Union he didn't get in the way. He was very centrist and conciliatory in that speech. And I think Republicans were happy that they were getting some cover there.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

MICHAEL GERSON: This week the question is whether it's accidental or purposeful. Some Republicans I talked to this morning thought it was accidental but it does feed a fear, which is a lot of Republicans think, well, eventually he's going to pull the rug out from under us. And this I think adds to that-- that concern. It also highlights a point that there is a internal Democratic debate because this leak did not include a guest worker program, which is what unions object to, and which Republicans insist on. So that's going to be a big issue coming up about how the White House positions itself on that type of issue.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What about the whole situation within the Republican Party, Amy? Here you had Rand Paul make his own State of the Union--

AMY WALTER: Right.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --response, speaking, I guess, for-- he would say for the Tea Party side. Don't the Republicans have-- have a lot to work out here amongst themselves?

AMY WALTER: On immigration and a whole lot of other issues. I mean they understand intellectually that demographics are catching up with them and they have to find a way to reach out to Hispanic voters. They cannot lose them by forty-four points like Mitt Romney did. At the same time their party base is not where they need-- that the leaders need them to be-- to be able to accept a lot of the changes, not just on immigration but I think what's even more interesting is regardless of whether an immigration bill passes, being able to win over Hispanic voters means that you can reach them on other issues, and when you look at where the base of the Republican Party is eighty percent of them say we want smaller government, fewer services. This was a Washington Post-Kaiser poll. Sixty-seven percent of Hispanics say we want bigger government, more services. So on the fundamental role of government, you have a party, the Republican Party, that's not going to be able to reach where Hispanics are. That's going to be a tougher problem even than immigration.

BOB SCHIEFFER: John, what happens-- I mean I hate this word sequester, I wish we could think of another word.

AMY WALTER: Meteorite is good.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I remember who was that guy that worked for Jimmy Carter, remember, and he-- he kept talking about inflation and they said you can't use that word and so he said, okay, I'll call it a banana, and they went on. But let's say the sequester happens, which it-- it appears is going to happen, what happens after that? I mean, will Congress then do something try to cobble together something?

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, only if the two sides can get past this fundamental debate. And we saw it in the State of the Union. The President was saying smarter government. What Republicans heard, when they heard those of some thirty-odd programs was, no, bigger government. When the President says it's not going to add one dime to the de-- deficit, that's a laugh line for Republicans. There is a debate abut how to grow the economy. Republicans believe you shrink government that creates free enterprise, that grows the economy. The President said you-- says you have to invest. You can't grow the economy through cuts alone. As long as that fundamental debate still exists, we'll keep having these moments of crisis. And then you add to that, of course, the hyper-partisanship.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. I think what they'll do is it will happen and then they'll kick the can down the road by passing a continuing resolution to keep funding the government. We'll be right back.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And that's it for us today. I hope you'll join us on Sunday when we'll be checking in with some of the nation's governors, including South Carolina Republican Nikki Haley and Maryland Democrat, Martin O'Malley, right here FACE THE NATION.