panel turned on last night. it spans an entire city block. ""inside story" is next. ♪ >> you know, election day didn't end the political year. the u.s.a. freedom act was turned back in congress as was the keystone xl pipeline. next up: executive action from the president on immigration. it's "inside story." ♪ hello. i am ray suarez. on election day, republicans padded their majority in the

house and became the majority /* majority party in the senate. before those choices take effect, there is still plenty of work to be done here in washington. in close votes, the senate turned back a bill which sought to rein in the national security agency surveillance of communications in the united states and by a hair, stopped the keystone xl pipeline from moving forward. different factions on the hill cheered and jeered at the resul results. up next: rumored before the end of the week, the president stepping up to where congress didn't. this time on "inside story." it's been a week since the lame-duck congress reconvened in washington and two major bills have already seen defeat. senate republicans flexed their muscles tuesday. they voted nay on a bill that would have scaled back the reach of surveillance by the national security agency and the f.b.i.

>> god-forbid tomorrow morning we wake up to the news that a member of isil is in the united states and federal agencies need to determine who this person is coordinating with to carry out a potential attack within the homeland of the one of the tools they will use is to see the people they have been calling and interact with so we can disrupt that cell before they carry out a horrifying attack. >> the u.s.a. freedom act did not get the 60 votes it needed to move forward despite an extensive transformation in the house and winning endorsements from the white house, tech titans and privacy advocates. >> if this was important to stop isil, isil never would have started. the u.s.a. 23r50e8d act provides for common sense reforms to government surveillance. it promotes greater accou accountability to transparency to the government's surveillance programs, improves the fisa courts. >> the defeat rings into question the fate of section 215 of the patriot act which allows

the oversight, both domestic phone records. >> requires reauthorization next year. also knocked out in the senate tuesday: the keystone xl oil pipeline. keystone attracted lop-sided support, 59-41, but fell one vote shy of the needed 60 to move final package and start construction. it was a surprise loss for republicans who expected an event annual whitehouse vet 0. >> when you look at this project, it's about energy. it's about jobs. it's about economic growth. >> and north america can be the super energy powerhouse of the planet. >> pushing that was was slauz democrat mary landrew despite a heated run-off election, coming up for her seat, three term senator could only muster 13 votes from mer party. >> misery follows the tarsands.

the keystone xl extra lethal pipeline. >> the biggest battle yet may come over immigration. the president is expected to announce new executive orders protecting the status of some 5 million undocumented men action women and children who want to stay in the u.s. >> i believe that america is a nation of immigrants. everybody agrees that the system is broken. and i indicated to speaker boehner several months ago that if, in fact, was congress failed to act, i would use all of the lawful authority that i possess to try to make the system work better. and that's going to happen. >> republicans have sworn to block the president. some have called unilateral action illegal. republicans promise to block any funding requests from the president. if he uses his pen and his phone on immigration issues.

>> the results of the two votes are fascinating. a reluctance to move against the nsa, even in the face of public backlash against wide-spread data collection. democrats declining to green-light the pipeline to get canadian crude to the gulf of mexico. looking ahead, the battle lines drawn over what looks like a major freak-out coming over the president doing, by decree, what congress sees as its prerogative. here to help me review the push and pull between the white house and capitol hill, "al jazeera america"'s senior washington correspond i want mike viqueira and lib by casey and joining me for a look at the u.s.a. freedom act, nathan lemur at the r street institute. he's a former aid to congressman justin amash. and nathan, what was the bill in question going to do to the status quo? how was it go to go change the

system that's in place now? >> thanks for having me. the u.s.a. freedom act was a modest reform that had the support of civil libertarians, bi-partisan support of many democrats and some libertarian leaning republicans and it would have brought back the bulk collection of data of information of mass surveillance of people's phone records but would have also allowed for companies to report what they are required to report to the federal government, to report to the public and, also, to establish a -- an advocate, special advocate for certain civil liberties. >> in your view, not a big deport tour? >> it was a great compromise to make the first step in reining in government surveillance and allowed the intelligence comm e community to do what they had to do. we had a letter from james clapper mvp and eric holder saying this would not have affected their operations calls

a modest change? >> they were. today, the white house, through the national security council, is expressing disappointment. remember, it was president obama who after a series of revelations involving edward snowden and then the follow-ons after that acted made the speech in some people's view too late and perhaps even too little where he put forward some of the proposals that we just heard a public advocate at the fisa court controversial, having a third party keep the phone records kept under section 215, perhaps the most controversial part of the act instead of having the nsa keep these bulk records. this is something that the white house wanted. it has sort of gotten lost in the shuffle, fwraifrnling all of the other noise an the politicalests happening around it from the mid-term elections to some of the other issues that we are going to be talking about but the white house is disappointed. there is no question about it. it's pretty much finished for this congress, perhaps anotherbrity apple next year. >> libby, what happened?

there are many people on capitol hill on both sides of the aisle expressing a did distaste once the snowden revelations were made by just how much the government was able to find out about our communications. >> as they say, politics makes strange bed fellows. there were some interesting coalitions being built because of this. an add vocat, one the authors, patrick leahy, a liberal had, also had the support of ted cruz who, of course, is one of the most outspoken conservative libertarians in the senate. it had a handful much of others on board but only a few. the mainstream republicans, mitch mcconnell were railing against this saying it could actually inhibit the u.s.'s ability to fight terrorism, to do in testament l, to fight isil. so you have created this interesting

right? >> you mentioned ted cruz and libertarianism. probably one of the best is mitch mcconnell's junior senator rand paul and he voted against this as well. how did he explain this? >> he said it doesn't go far enough. he brought up concerns it reauthorized aspects of the patriot act. >> that's questionable because the pat tree on the act ticks along regardless of a reauthorization process but he has taken an interesting stance here in pushing himself farther, saying it doesn't go to the place i want to. what a lot of the parties were advocating for change, though, and nathan, you can speak to

this, they wanted something. and at least it was seen as a step in the right direction. it would have been the biggest change to surveillance, of security of american citizenship in a decade. so many people said let's get something done. >> does congress get another bite at this, nathan, with the reauthorization of the pat tree on the act due in 2015? >> there is an opportunity here, upcoming. however, one of the questions that i have and a lot of other libertarian-leaning people have is if we can't agree to a modest reform now, what limiting principle do the senate republicans have? the question iss thif we are no going to make this change now, what other are they willing to pry into our lives? they talk about government overreach but we need to ask: can we bring back sur veillance in the upcoming year? and quite frankly f other republicans are voting no on this modest reform, i am not sure what it will look like in the near future. >> did they spent allotted of political capital on this? >> there has been ongoing

controversy with the senate intel zoning committee lend by dianne feinstein. there have been ongoing consultations over a host of issues. yeah, behind the scenes, great, just because we are not talking about it at the top of every hour because there are other bright shiny object stories that get in our way. there was a great deal going on behind the scenes but it's just been described. the votes simply were not there. remember, it was a 60-vote threshold as is just about everything in the senate. so technically, it fell victim to a filibuster. >> mike viqueira, stay with me. we are going to take a short break. when we come back with more "inside story," a closer look at the keystone xl pipeline. a close senate net vote may not be so close when the senanext se takes its seats. stay with us.

>> you are watching inside story on "al jazeera america." we are looking at two votes in the senate and looking ahead to the tug of war between congress and the president over immigrati immigration. tuesday, senate democrats blocked a bill to force construction of the keystone xl pipeline designed to bring crude oil from canada's tarsands to louisiana in the gulf of mexico. environmentalists won this round but the republican leadership promised to be back in the next congress when the numbers look much better for passage. libby casey and mike viqueira of "al jazeera america" are still with me and we are now joined by michaellindenburg, washington core respondents for the "dallas morning news" you have taken a deep dive in your paper. is this a significant vote except for the political defeat part of it, is it a significant

vote for the feint of the oil. >> the oil will find people to buy it no matter what. it's about how it's going to get to market. canada has a very large incentive to send all of that oil to the market it had hoped through this private, you know, $8 billion investment, to send it down by pipeline. it still may, of course. but it's going to get to market regardless. >> libby, given the territory, all of the contending interests staked out on this one, who are the winners, and who are the loosers in this vote is it. >> if you look at the papers, marylandrew do not seem to be a winner. there was some question if she could get it this far, show voters back home she could get the senate to take a vote, of course they have done this in the six years that this has been an ongoing fight, that it could have some kind of bounce. if you look at the papers, pretty negative coverage there. so, will she get some sort of a pick-up? did it raise her attention? a lot of procedures yesterday and the days leading up to the vote sounded like some speeches.

they sounded very much like she was trying to hold on to her senate seat. bill cassidy her rival in this run-offly had his name pegged to the house version of the bill. so republicans were throwing him a bump with that, as well. even as members of congress talked about this legislation, they were trying to help out the member of their respective party. we saw barbara boxer who is totally opposed to this, top democrat chairwoman of the senator energy calling this a lan drew bill as she railed against it saying keystone xl stands for extra lethal and mitch mcconnell calling it the cats debill. everyone was trying to make most out of this political moment. >> mary landrew did get some democrats. are they off of the hook when this comes back? >> some of those who voted this will be gone, mark begovich, he tried to convince other senators

in their private luncheon just hours before the vote to get on board. clearly couldn't do it. some of those will be gone. as you look at the numbers in the incoming freshmen and the one who are getting on, they don't have what it will take to overcome a presidential vet 0 threat. >> mike, is all of this much adieu about nothing as the president waited to veto this anyway? >> the politics didn't make any sense. you are trying to happy mary lan drew. she is a goner in the december 6th run-off, down 16 points in the latest poll. got the numbers a little bit confused there but the point is the same. i mean, if she had somehow wrangled the 60th vote, she needed 15 democrats. she got 14. there is no question about it. the president was going to veto it. if her entire -- the predicate of her entire campaign was to demonstrate how much power she had in washington and the president vet 0s it, it's doift see how she would have made that logical leap with voters. what this was more about, i

think, was harry reid before he was up for re-election in the internal democratic caucus tally for the leader of the democrats, the minority leader as it turns out in the next congress, he wanted to inject a bet of espritd 'cor. it worked against the politics of this, the larger democratic goals to 2016, of reinvigorating a demorallized base, much of which is the xrooms compromised of the environmental folks. >> the longer this hung out there, the more people started to, it seemed can take a look at what this was. this wasn't going to add much to the oil supply of the united states? >> it was going to send a lot of oil down this way that would have come some other way anyway, either by rail car or if it couldn't get to america, somewhere else in the world market t would then be sold to whoever is willing to buy it. you know, it's both a case of a lot about nothing and, also, about something really

important. i think if you take a step back, it's really kind of a vote over what the energy future of america ought to be. and so for environmentalists, it was sort of an all-in, but fairly symbolic vote. you know, if president obama is looking for reasons to veto this, he's got plenty. you know, he's just made a deal with china. he's just talked about climate change. he's got a very aggressive epa agenda. does it make sense to suddenly approve the keystone pipeline? on the other hand, you know, there is lots of folks that are looking at it from a totally different point of view. if it's going go anyway, why not let the oil come here and be closer source than saudi arabia and venzuela, et cetera. >> are there very many jobs attached to this? we heard republicans extolling this as a jobs bill. democrats trying to pour doubt on that? >> it's a good count. it pleases both sides. 42,000 jobs that could come as a

result of the construction of this pipeline, but they are basically jobs that will last a year, maybe a year and a half, up to two years. no more. >> that's pretty good if you are looking for work and you need 18 months worth of work. you got it. but, you know, permanently talking 35 jobs after this constructed. >> that's the most -- almost minificume. >> oil doesn't need anybody to paddle it down through the pipeline? >> right. exactly. >> what's it's heading from nebraska. >> the company will have some employees to operate it. but it's going to be 35 with a few, like maybe 15 temporary workers that would come on at different times throughout the year. >> that's from the company, itself. >> so this comes back. what are the mechanics of it coming back? >> well, come back in january. mitch mcconnell said it will be a priority speaker boehner has said it will as well. they plan to revise it. it will take the same path, pass the senate. the question is what does the

president do? vet 0 it as the white house was not outright saying he would but certainly not, you know, showering love on this legislation. the white house has said they want to see the process play out. there is a court case in nebraska we are watching to see about determination of the real concerns about the line going over some environmentally sensitive areas and the state department review process. the white house has said let the process go forward. the white house has not said it won't sign off on keystone. ultimately, a lot of this request will be timing. republicans think they have traction with this one to bring it back up in january citing jobs. >> mike, the canadian ambassador to the u.s. was a guest. he is very, very hot on keystone xl pipeline. understandable. canada, one of america's most important trade pefrz. is the president risking some real tension with a very important neighbor over this pipeline? >> i don't think so. and for two reasons. first of all, as you mentioned,

there is just too much at stake here between the u.s. andcapped. trans canada, the company that wants to build the pipeline said the time is now. let's get this over with. but when you consider the fact that part of that relationship between the united states, part of what minds us in the economic relationship is, we are canada's biggest customer for oil. we import a lot of oil from canada as it stands right now. just to go back to something michael said, i mean this issue got into the political realm. when it gets into the political realm, it's not about sweet reasons. it's not about how many barrels a day are going to be flowing down. it's about staking out a position, a hot-button issue that gets obvious striated and gets viscerally emotional and blown out of prop portion. at the end of the day, if you are talking about bilateral, no. >> michael lindenberger from the "dallas morning news" thank you. we will be back with more "inside story" in a moment. when we return, the long

rumored, long awaited by some, long dreaded by others executive order from president obama on immigration. republican leadership predict a cataclysm. immigration activists are wondering how short of their hopes, the president's order will come. stay with us.

♪ we are back with "inside story" on "al jazeera america." i am ray suarez. for a long time, president obama promised or threatened, depending upon your point of view, that if congress did not produce comprehensive immigration reform, he would act within the limits of presidential power to respond to the aspirations of millions living and working in this ku z country without legal

authorization. we have been told to expect the announcement thursday night, sure to set off a political change reaction. with us t al jazeera's libby casey and mike viqueira. mike, the president postponed the decision once. >> yeah. i think they regret that, too. >> has that actually started to dribble out a little bit? >> i think they regret not doing it before the election because you saw what happened to the democratic base. the base didn't turn out during the mid terms. >> is he going to go big? >> you know, they are very tight-lipped about the details. here is what we think is going to happen. you remember daka, of course, within the context of daka, that addressed the dreamers, the so-called. >> did he eveferred action for d arrivals. >> these are the people brought to the country tea tree through no choice of their own. the president said we are going to exercise the enforcement discretion is the term that is used and we are not going to

initiate deportation. we are going to instruct the various department agencies and law enforcement to lay off of these people. now, he's expected to do the same thing for their parents. >> that's at the very least. i think what's interesting about this, an the president and the white house have caught a lot of grief for this over the last couple of days. the president said repeatedly, time and time again, even being heckled at certain events. there was a famous event in san francisco last year where people said, you've got to stop all of these deportations. deportations have actually increased significantly, at least over the first term of president obama before tapering off and the president repeatedly said there is nothing i can do about it without congress. now, he is going around congress. >> congress not expected to be particularly happy about that. >> this has long been anticipated. everyone has their strategy ready to go as soon as word came out we were going to hear this from the president dome night. a lot of the words being thrown around by republicans are words like emperor, monarch, talking about the president making reference to him going it alone.

we are now seeing how republicans are thinking about responding. ted cruz has an editorial op-ed piece in "politico" today trying to come up with words for everything the president wants to do. this is the power of the purse. the congress has the ability to talk about the money and to sort of hold back on some of that. but ted cruz is talking about shutting down the nomination's process, since the senate has jurisdiction over that, not letting any nominations go through except those deemed for national security, and, you know, as i talk to folks about this question, the power of the purse, how effective can that be? some republicans are saying they can really use that to their advantage. others are saying, you run some risks of pushing it too hard because if you can't cut off the right purse strings, so to speak, you could then cut back on money used for the deportation, for border security. >> a year ago, the republicans were blamed it for the government shutdown. they paid absolutely no

political price for it in 2014. why not use that power to use it this time? i mean, there is nothing to scare them off from it, from having -- having done it the last time. >> i think there is one key difference. >> that's, as i was out during mid-terms talking to voters, they want one person to blame. it's so much easier to blame the president, to blame the commander and chief and 2016 is a year where voters get to choose that person. and so while the president wasn't on the ballot this time, he certainly might have well have been, might have well have been. when i was out in iowa talking to immigration advocates, people who were very concerned about the child migrant issue on the border as well as just deportations generally, latino activists in a state like iowa, middle america, were very disenchanted by the white house and they said, you know, we make up only 6% of iowa voters, but we will make up more in two years. we will make up more in four

years and we will not forget this and we are going to mobilize. you have two different constituent basis there. the latino community, the advocate community and then the average joe voter who wants someone to hold responsible. >> i am dying to hear the details as the president lays them out tomorrow because i know that my phone will be ringing and by social media lines will be humming as well. mike, and libby, thanks a lot. >> brings us to the ends of this edition of "inside story." thank you for being with us. in washington, i am ray suarez. ♪ ♪

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