New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer today. Transcript highlights follow…

BLITZER: Should illegal immigrants — maybe a million of them in New York State, have driver’s licenses, New York State driver’s licenses?

BLOOMBERG: I do not believe they should. I think and I have expressed to the governor an objection I had to do it and my police commissioner have had to this for a long time when I’ve been asked this question. The governor’s first proposal, I thought, was inappropriate. And should not have been enacted. And I told him so privately which is the way I should deal with him.

His second proposal of three different kinds of licenses are something that I have — I think a step in the right direction. But I still don’t think that it is where we should be. The bottom line is we should be giving driver’s licenses to people knowing who they are and making sure that they have a right to have them and we should make sure particularly when it comes to guns that you can only use a secure driver’s license to buy guns…

BLITZER: Am I hearing you right, on this issue, driver’s license in New York State, you tend to agree more with Lou Dobbs than Eliot Spitzer?

BLOOMBERG: Lou is an old friend of mine that I agree with seldom but nevertheless in this case Lou happens to be right.

On running for president

BLOOMBERG: What you have to ask is why can’t we get the candidates that are running, and there are plenty declared candidates, both Democrat and Republican why can’t they stop this partisan bicker in Washington? Why can’t they address the issues? Why do we have this continued money and influence kind of politics that is wrong?…

BLITZER: I’m not hearing a Shermanesque answer.

BLOOMBERG: You are asking a person whose not candidate. I have 791 days left to go in my job. And I plan to finish that.

BLITZER: You plan to finish it. But — zero chance you would run for president this time around?

BLOOMBERG: This country does not need another candidate and I’m not a candidate. And I told you — I’m going to speak out. I have every intention of speaking out and traveling around this country and trying to get people to say look, you — you know who are running. Tell us what you will do and how do you stop the constant fighting that has immobilized Congress? Both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

We have to get a federal government that gets us to rebuild relations internationally in a global world because we have to fight terrorism globally and trade globally and have science globally. We have got to have answers to how we are going to fund medical care and social security. And I don’t hear any of this stuff.