Harry Reid: ‘I Would Rather Be Taken To Singapore And Caned’
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“It’s not going to affect our relationship,” Reid said of the president during an interview Thursday. “We’ve been to the dance together lots of times, and just because he didn’t take me home this time, I’m not mad at him.”
Sitting back in his chair and wearing sunglasses covering his blinded right eye, a relaxed Reid was resigned to the outcome of the trade fight, which cleared a filibuster that he supported on Thursday. Reid said he “tried not to be an obstacle” to Obama’s trade agenda, even though he staunchly opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the “fast-track” trade bill.
“I knew what the outcome’s going to be for a long time,” Reid said. “In my caucus, we have a dozen people who have been pro-trade. That’s why I’ve been very careful in trying to understand them, and of course the vast majority of Democrats who are against the trade bill. So I’ve tried not to be an obstacle to the bill passing.”
Asked why he didn’t try to line up the votes to kill legislation he strongly opposes, Reid shrugged and said, “Well, maybe I didn’t want to.”
How the 75-year-old Reid handled the issue showcases the challenge of overseeing a caucus that’s still adjusting to minority status after huge election losses last fall. He’s had to balance the demands of liberal hard-liners and moderates who are hungry for compromise and blamed Reid’s tight grip of the legislative process for some of their political problems.
Reid is also contending, of course, with a president who is eager to solidify his legacy during his final two years — even if that means, at times, dividing his party on Capitol Hill. The tensions hit a high mark a few weeks ago when the president dismissed Warren as a “politician like everybody else.”
Reid said he wasn’t upset with Obama over the remarks.
“He was at some press event and spoke out,” Reid said. “He’s frustrated. I understand that, I’ve been that way a few times myself.”
Warren also downplayed the episode.
“This is not personal,” she said in an interview. “This is about issues that powerfully affect working families all across this country.”
Warren, who sits on Reid’s leadership team, defended the senior senator’s handling of the trade legislation. Should he have taken a stronger stand to buttress opposition?
“He’s managing the caucus the way he should,” Warren responded. “He’s the kind of leader we need. He listens to all sides, and he stands up for what he believes in.”
So far this Congress, Reid has succeeded, at times, in forcing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bend to his demands, notably to drop an effort to kill Obama’s immigration actions and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security. But his caucus has also had its share of missteps, such as its handling of a human trafficking bill that contained abortion language Democrats failed to notice.
And after demanding that McConnell finish surveillance and highway measures before taking up the trade bill, Reid backed down, bowing to pressure from pro-trade Democrats.
Last week, Reid lined up his caucus to oppose taking up the trade bill over concerns that enforcement issues were not being taken seriously, causing an embarrassing setback for the president. The next day, however, Reid and his successor, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), cut a deal to bring the fast-track bill to the floor in exchange for some concessions. Whether Democrats got anything significant out of the exercise is a matter of debate.
Still, Reid contends that such deal-making would never have occurred if Republicans were still in the minority.
“If we think that something is good, we just move to it, we don’t mess around with it,” Reid said. “If we feel there’s things that should be slowed, we should slow them down, as we did on trade … We’ll continue to do that. But I wish I’d had 3 percent of the cooperation that I’ve given them when they were stopping everything.”
Republicans and some moderate Democrats, though, say that’s a charitable interpretation of recent events. In fact, many of them say there’s been a noticeable uptick in pace since the GOP took over — after years of gridlock, the chamber has passed several bipartisan bills as well as a GOP budget the past few months.
Some say flatly it’s because Reid is no longer in charge.
“I’m not impressed,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of Reid’s remarks. “The Senate’s finally starting to work. And you know what? The Democratic members are enjoying it, too, ‘cause they can actually do what they were elected to do. … I don’t agree with the revisionist history.”
“Things appear to be moving along with Mitch,” said one Democratic senator, who asked not to be named to avoid upsetting Reid.
Schumer defended his close friend in an interview.
“There are lots of strong, opinionated voices in the caucus,” he said, “but Leader Reid always does a great job listening to people, trying to bring people together and moving the caucus forward.”
It’s true that the Republican Senate has been voting more than the last Congress. Just this year, the Senate has voted on more amendments through Thursday than during the same period in 2014 and 2013 combined. It has taken 185 roll call votes through May 21, more than the 161 in 2013 and 131 in 2014 over the same number of days.
But new majorities frequently exhibit a youthful exuberance. When Democrats took the Senate in 2007 and made Reid the majority leader, the Senate ended up voting on more than 200 amendments. Through all of 2014, the last year of the Democratic majority, Reid’s Senate voted on just 15 amendments — though both parties bore responsibility for the meager activity.
There are already signs McConnell’s Senate is struggling to keep up the pace set in January, when the GOP took up more than 30 amendments to legislation concerning the Keystone XL pipeline. Just two amendments apiece have been considered for the trade bill and an Iran nuclear deal review bill.
Reid said that’s the nature of running the Senate. Open debate is important, but the majority leader has to keep the process moving.
“I knew that would come, it had to,” Reid said, referring to repeated moves by McConnell to shut down debate and limit amendments. “It makes it obvious that things are not as easy as McConnell thought they would be.”
And perhaps not surprisingly, Reid is less than impressed with McConnell’s record as leader, saying several bipartisan bills that have passed were ones held up in the last Congress, sometimes by Republicans.
“The few things that have passed are things that we would have passed easily,” he contended.
For Reid, the last several months have been some of the more personally challenging of his three-decade rise to the pinnacle of congressional power. On New Year’s Day, he was injured in a freak exercise accident at his Nevada home, breaking multiple bones and damaging his right eye.
When he returned after multiple surgeries, he temporarily wore glasses with frosted shades over his injured eye. But since they don’t look “very good in pictures,” he now wears shades full-time. He said he can only see “a little bit of light in his eye.”
He noted that “maybe someday” his vision would return if research on retina transplants advances.
“If my other eye was like this, I’d need a seeing-eye dog,” he said.
Since Reid stunned the political world two months ago by announcing plans to retire at the end of this term, a spirited race has emerged in Nevada for his seat. Reid has endorsed the former Nevada attorney general, Catherine Cortez Masto, even as Democratic Rep. Dina Titus is considering a run. He said Titus “can make her own decision” and said the two were “friends.” He even praised the Republican who may run for his seat — Rep. Joe Heck.
“I like him,” Reid said. “I like everybody.”
Reid indicated that he intends to split time in retirement between his home state and D.C. But he said a lobbying career is definitely not in his future.
“I would rather be taken to Singapore and caned,” he said.
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