Safer at Home?

This is a partial transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," December 8, 2004, that was edited for clarity.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: We are joined now by Congressman Steven King who voted against the intelligence reform bill (search), all but saying it's literally a license to launch another terror attack.

Congressman, what do you mean by that?

REP. STEVE KING, R-IOWA: Well, we have 19 terrorists that came into the country [on Sept. 11, 2001], some legally, most illegally. And when they attacked this country, they killed 3,000 Americans. And in the first legislation we passed and called it homeland security, we should have closed the loopholes.

Still, with the legislation that passed the House floor last night and is being voted on currently in the Senate, the score sheet would read Americans 0, terrorists 19 as far as how many of those we would prevent from coming into this country and staying in this country.

CAVUTO: So let me understand this, though, Congressman, as far as you're saying there's nothing in this bill that would prevent terrorists from collecting driver's licenses (search), much as the September 11, 19 did, collect 60-some odd licenses, right?

KING: There are still 10 states in the country that choose to give people licenses to people who cannot demonstrate a lawful presence in the United States. And terrorists, like electricity, will follow the path of least resistance to go to those states.

As they collected their 64 licenses, 364 aliases, that's we're 0-19 if we project the scorecard out. If Mohammed Atta came back to life, he doesn't have to go to school to devise another method to attack Americans. All he has to do to is find a way to get on an airplane with a weapon.

And the open borders people have taken a position they want to have open borders, and as long as they let millions come into this country and don't check any of them, if they can keep them off the airplane, somehow they believe we'll be safe as a country, and that is certainly not the case.

CAVUTO: Congressman, they're also arguing that better a bill with flaws that no bill at all. What do you say?

KING: Well, there's a certain thing about the pressure cooker concept, too. And that is if you take the lid off the pressure cooker, you lose the heat that it takes to cook the meal.

And we cook the lid off the pressure cooker off the House last night and passed some things that had to do with the national intelligence director, most of them not substantive, some of them chillingly substantive. But the balance of it now, the lid has been off. I don't know how we get the energy to provide the national security at the border level that we need to.

CAVUTO: All right. Now, this licensing thing is the one thing that fascinates me the most, Congressman.

How is it that even in these 10 states, you suspect, continue to do this sort of thing? Is it possible for a guy to collect multiple licenses? In other words, have multiple pieces of proof that they're either U.S. citizens or can go anywhere they want?

KING: Well, a driver's license has become the de facto national identification card that gets you on an airplane and lets you rent anything you want to do, a car, buy a weapon, any of those things.

And so if you can go to Virginia and get a driver's license, if you can go to Wisconsin and get a driver's license -- actually, Virginia has tightened that up since that period of time...

CAVUTO: But there's nothing stopping those guys, at least in those states, from doing and continuing to do just that.

KING: Nothing stopping them. In fact, their policy the to grant driver's licenses to illegals, because they argue that if you give them a driver's license, then maybe they'll buy some insurance and maybe we can track them. And maybe they'll go to work and maybe they'll pay a little money into Social Security.

But in the meantime, our entire national security is at risk. It's beyond my comprehension that we'd have to debate something of this nature, yet we're being defeated on the floors of Congress by the economic and the political interests of those that are for open borders.

CAVUTO: All right. Congressman King, thank you very much.

KING: Thank you.

Content and Programming Copyright 2004 Fox News Network, L.L.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Transcription Copyright 2004 eMediaMillWorks, Inc. (f/k/a Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.), which takes sole responsibility for the accuracy of the transcription. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No license is granted to the user of this material except for the user's personal or internal use and, in such case, only one copy may be printed, nor shall user use any material for commercial purposes or in any fashion that may infringe upon Fox News Network, L.L.C.'s and eMediaMillWorks, Inc.'s copyrights or other proprietary rights or interests in the material. This is not a legal transcript for purposes of litigation.