FBI Director Expressing Concerns over House Refugee Legislation; House Overwhelmingly Passes New Refugee Vetting Legislation.
BLITZER: We have breaking news. The House of Representatives has just voted to change the vetting process for Syrian refugees entering the United States. Take a look at the roll call. No time really left to vote. Overwhelmingly, it has passed the legislation that the House speaker -- let's listen in quickly to hear what he says.</s>BLITZER: All right, well, we just heard from the president pro-tem of the House of Representatives that the legislation has passed overwhelmingly, not just by Republicans but Democrats as well. Joe Johns was monitoring it. Joe, what's the final roll call tally?</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: It looks like 289 people voted for the legislation. The question right now is, how many seats are open in the House of Representatives, because we are trying to see -- there we go. I'm told this is a veto-proof majority, but because John Boehner, who left the House of Representatives, his seat has not been filled. It means that if this bill were to come back to the president of the United States, he vetoed it, then the House would be able to override that veto. So that's the important. Nonetheless, there are other factors to consider on this legislation that would block refugees from Syria and Iraq from coming in the United States until the certain members of the administration are able to certify that those individuals are not terrorists. But the other important consideration here is that the White House has threatened a veto. The Senate today we heard from Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, saying Democrats will do everything in their power to try to block this legislation from ever reaching the president's desk. So huge questions about what will happen to this legislation, and down the road the possibility, we're told, that Republicans might consider putting this on the big spending bill that has to be passed around December 11th, setting up at least, in theory, the possibility there could be a showdown that led to parts of the government being shut down if this it were pushed through by Republicans. A lot of questions here. The important thing is that it is passed by a huge majority in the House of Representatives, pushed through by the new speaker of the House, Paul Ryan -- Wolf?</s>BLITZER: Paul Ryan was clearly in favor of this. He made it -- in a statement yesterday he wanted this it pause, as they say, in the vetting process as far as letting refugees coming into the United States from Syria and Iraq. All the Republicans, with the exception of three -- three Republicans voted against the legislation. But the Republicans were joined by about 45 Democrats who voted in favor. As a result, there would be that potential veto-proof majority in the House of Representatives, a two-thirds majority if the president were to veto it. But before that process goes forward, it still has to go to the U.S. Senate. It goes from the House to the Senate. The question is, are there 60 members in the U.S. Senate that will support this now House- approved legislation?</s>JOHNS: And, Wolf, the other thing you have to say, and while people will say the issue of politics ends at the water's edge here on Capitol Hill, we are approaching an election season and there will be some heartburn as we get closer to the idea of voting against a national security bill if you're up for reelection in a particular House district or up for reelection in a state. So that's a thing that's going to have to be considered down the road. We do know, also, that a couple top officials from the administration, the chief of staff, as well as the Homeland Security secretary, met with some House Democrats today to try to talk them through the reasons for voting against this bill. There were a lot of concerns that the administration's positions were not thought out that well, because typically in many cases, administration officials actually have to certify other things to Congress, why not certify on the important issue of not letting Iraqi and Syrian individuals who might be terrorists get through into the United States. So there are some questions about this bill and a little bit of heartburn demonstrated on the House side about whether this thing should be shot down because the administration doesn't like it.</s>BLITZER: Joe Johns, thank you very much. That's all the time we have. The news continues next on CNN.