Guests included Michael Tomasky, The Guardian of London; Ellen Ratner, Talk Radio News Service; Adele Stan, The Media Consortium; Lizzy Ratner, Freelance Journalist; Dana Goldstein, The American Prospect; Steven Clemons, The Washington Note; Elana Schor, The Guardian of London; Mike Madden, Salon.com; Terence Samuel, The American Prospect; Michael Rogers, PageOne News Media; Joe Sudbay, AmericaBLOG.com and Diane Straus Tucker, The American Prospect. Please refer to the audio file before quoting from this transcript:
SEN. HARRY REID: So I'm happy to be here and respond to any questions you might
have. The book that I wrote is not a regular Washington book about how
I saved the government. It is basically a, it's a story about me. And
I wrote the book for two reasons. One is to, since I grew up went to
elementary school in Searchlight, went to high school, moved away form
Searchlight, went to college, to law school, practiced law.
The state has grown tremendously. When I grew up there, in
Searchlight, the state of Nevada had 100,000 people in it, now it's
about 3 million. And people see my name and they don't know much about
me other than the articles they read, what they see on TV and listen
to on the radio. So, this will help in Nevada let people know a little
bit who I am, but it's the same on the national level. People see my
name and don't know much about me. And this book will sell a few
copies and people will know about that.
The other reason I wrote the book is when I grew up I pretty well
understood what was going on. I was uncomfortable on occasion, but I
thought it was basically that way for every kid. But as I got older I
came to the realization that wasn't the case. And, uh, it took me a
while to accept Searchlight. I wanted it out of my life. I was kind of
embarrassed about it. My home had no inside toilet. We had no hot
water. My parents were uneducated. My dad didn't graduate from the
eighth grade. My mother never graduated from high school. One teacher
taught all eight grades and we were, as I look back, kind of poor. But
I, trying to run from Searchlight I came, as a young adult and then
some to the realization that's who I was. I couldn't run from who I
was. So I put my arms around Searchlight and I think it made me a
better person. But that's the second reason for writing the book. If
someone like me can make it, this is a pretty good country. One of my
goals in government is to make sure that the country remains at least
as good as when I was a kid, so people can make it through the system
situated like I was in that little dessert community, or some other
rural place in Nevada or being lost in one of our big cities.
MICHAEL TOMASKY (The Guardian of London): I want to ask about
something you said on Stephanopoulos yesterday. You said if I heard it
correctly that Democratic enrollment in Nevada now outnumbers
Republican enrollment. So I'd like you to talk about that, what are
the numbers Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated and what are the
Democratic realistically chances in November at the presidential
level.
REID: I have been one of the big cheerleaders of this primary
election. I have not lamented the fact it's taken so long. I have been
aware of what has happened this primary election. In Nevada for the
first time in a generation we have tens of thousands more Democrats
than Republicans, about 50,000. In about that, what are the numbers
Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated and what are the Pennsylvania for
the first time ever we have more than 4 million Democrats who are
registered. In the last three years Arkansas Democratic registration
has gone up 18 percent. In Kansas, listen to this, Democratic
registration has gone up 2,500 percent.
Q (off mic): In Kansas?
REID: In Kansas. 2,500 percent. It's happening all over the country.
We have young people involved for the first time since people can
remember. College campuses are alive with this election. And campaign
spending we have tried to change the law here and we change it once in
a while but it's been changing without our doing anything back here,
as a result of the internet. Huge amounts of money. Obama's an
example, he's raised over $130 million, average contribution: 90
bucks. That's good for the system and it's taken a long time, of
course it has. But remember Bill Clinton didn't get the nomination
until June 2nd. June 3rd the last primary's gonna be over and Obama
and Clinton will have how many uncommitted are left at the time. Now
there's about 250 about at third of the super delegates have not
committed. As we know a few of them are committing as we gone. So when
it's over with three or four weeks from now they'll have a couple days
to make their case to those that are uncommitted and it will be all
over with. There'll be a five month general election. That's a pretty
good general election in length.
ELLEN RATNER (Talk Radio News Service): I'm Ellen Ratner and I'm the
bureau chief at the Talk Radio News Service and I'm going to ask you a
question from "The Good Fight," which is, your father had the disease
of alcoholism, and you, we have seen recently whether it be
Congressman Fosella, certainly senators are not immune to this. I
happen to be a liberal who employes former Congressman Bob Ney and
what have you done, or what can be done, to prevent members of
Congress from self destructing from diseases of alcoholism or other
things. What have you done in terms of an EAP program?
REID: I don't know what EAP means.
RATNER: Employee Assistance, in other words helping members to prevent
themselves from self destruction.
REID: I was a Capitol policeman here many years ago. Worked the night
shift, I went to law school during the daytime. I was a policeman from
three until 11 at night. The reason I say that and smile a little bit
is alcoholism has gone on in this building, in these buildings for a
long time. One of my responsibilities was to walk congressmen home, I
didn't drive them home, but I would help them home. We had a lot of
congressmen who drank a lot then. I talked about in my book there's a
picture of me with my patronage, Walter S. Baring from Nevada, a
Jeffersonian Democrat, another buzz word for being far to the right,
way before his time probably. And I talked about here I would come
down to his office on a number of occasions in the evening in my
uniform. And he would always have a drink in the evening. Um, and I
talked about in the book after Kennedy was shot, it came down, and he
told me it was a good thing he was dead, he was a Communist anyway.
So I think that alcoholism today is so much less than it was, it's so
much less than it was when I first came to the Capitol. We used to
have bars set up in these offices. Where people would come in at night
and you'd pull out the bar and one of the places people would go is
who had the best bar. Which committee chair, usually it was a
committee chair, who had the best bar. I don't know.
Q (off mic): Who did?
REID: (Pause. Laughter) But case anymore it's really not the case.
It's really not the case. I think that they're probably...I don't know
of an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that meets here in Capitol Hill,
you now we have several thousand people who work here and I'm sure
there's an Alcoholics here. But I'll talk to Admiral Black that's a
good suggestion, to see if we should have...and I'll talk to Nancy,
our secretary of the Senate, to see if there are programs that we
could come up with, there may be programs going on now. But I only can
look at it in a relative basis and it's much better now than it was
even just a few years ago.
STEVE CLEMENS (The Washington Note): Senator Reid, Steve Clemens with
the New America Foundation and I write the blog "The Washington Note"
and it's great to see you.
REID: From here?
CLEMENS: Ah yes, and we appreciate, you've spoken for New America
several times appreciate that. Um, I'm interested in the foreign
policy work that the Senate may still have yet to do. Sources of mine
in the White House, if you characterize the battles recently in the
White House between essentially no-conservatives and some realists and
pragmatists trying to do some things before the president goes out.
Those realists, pragmatists tell me that they're again loosing all the
battles, which is real shocking, no one has written this. They're
worried about Iran, the White House is deferring to people like, to
John McCain on postponing the Law of the Seas. John McCain has
flip-flopped and is now opposed to the Law of the Seas treaty.
REID: He was in favor before?
CLEMENS: He was in favor of it before. Very clearly in favor of it.
And I'm interested in the time we have left in this particular session
what features of foreign policy strategy do you think that the Senate
can bring to bear to not only make a difference in policy but also to
profile this slippage in the White House and some of the more
stridently anti-internationalist positions that John McCain is now
taking.
REID: First of all folks understand that the Republicans in the Senate
do not represent mainstream Republicanism in the country. Mainstream
Republicanism in the country is moderate. The Republicans in the
Senate are not moderates, with the one exception of Olympia Snowe are
not moderates, they're right wing. And that includes some people who
in the past have been moderates, someone you'd think like Arlen
Specter. I talk about Arlen Specter in my book briefly and say that
he's with us when we don't need him. (Laughter) Which is true, he
never votes with us on an important vote. The only one who does is
Olympia Snowe. So having said that, understand the Senate doesn't
represent what's going on in the country either with Democrats or
Republicans. As a result of that we're not getting much done in
foreign policy. You will once in a while get a Republican like
Brownback, who as a sensitive man in some respects will work hard on
an issue like AIDS, um, but his position on choice is so far to the
right it interferes with his doing a lot of other things. Now, there
are many things that need to be done, the Law of the Seas is one. I do
not have two weeks to spend on the Senate floor. I should do it, if
for no other reason than to embarrass John McCain with his
flip-flopping. I've spoken over the weekend to Stephen Hadley about a
couple of foreign policy issues that are extremely important. One is a
treaty called the 1-2-3 Treaty, how it got that name I have no idea,
but it is to work with the Soviet Union (sic) for further cooperation
for taking down our military...our atomic weapons, and that's
something we need to do. I hope they send it down soon, statutorily,
if they do, we have 90 days to take actions. I will do my very best to
make sure we take action on it.
There's certainly other things that are important that we need to work
on. I was trying to think of the other issue he talked to me about and
I can't come up with it right now...I think we have one of the finest
senators leading the foreign policy of this Senate than we've had in a
long, long time and that's Joe Biden. I think he does a very good job.
You would think he'd get more help from Lugar but he doesn't. Lugar
just takes his direction from the White House. But there are a lot of
things we need to do, but I don't see much being done.
Our schedule here is really short. We have one more week after this
week and then we take a break for Memorial Day. Then we come back with
four weeks. Then we take a week and then we come back with four weeks.
And we go to out August recess. So that's nine weeks to do everything,
and we have so much to do. The Republicans slow walk everything
because they are trying to do the status quo as indicated in the Wall
Street Journal Friday by McConnell. So I wish we could do more foreign
policy stuff, that's kind of my passion, but we're not going to do
much.
TERRENCE SAMUEL (The American Prospect): Hi Senator Reid. I'm Terrance
Samuel, I write column at The American Prospect, I work at
theroot.com, I spend way too much time up here. In any case I saw an
interesting little tidbit this morning where House Republicans are
saying that they are going to attempt to tag Democrats as being
incumbents who have, subject to he question of change, that they
haven't done enough and so Republicans are going to go to the country
and say "We represent change." Can you talk a little bit about the
time so far in the majority and how susceptible you are to that charge
that you haven't done enough?
REID: This most recent outpouring from the House Republicans, that
where this came from, is just as Orwellian as President Bush saying
I'm a uniter not a divider, it's Orwellian. Because they have stalled,
they even stalled on trying to pass a resolution on Mother's Day.
Which is true. So this is Orwellian. We have tried to effect change.
Let's talk about what we have here in the Senate. Before my nine new
Democratic senators were sworn in a year ago last January, Tim Johnson
from South Dakota had a very bad bleed on the brain, nearly died, in a
coma for five weeks, out of work for ten months, my majority dropped
from 51 to 50 to 49. With Lieberman voting with the Republicans on the
war and on a number of security issues, voting with us on other
things, consistently, I had no majority. It was 49, I was the 49. So
it has been extremely difficult because as indicated in the Washington
Post, I'm sorry, the Wall Street Journal article by McConnell on
Friday they want to do nothing. That's there job, that's their goal,
is to maintain the status quo and complain about our not being able to
change things. In the first ten months of this new Congress they broke
all filibuster records for a two-year period of time. In spite of that
we've been able to do some things. It's been difficult because we've
had to jump through so many procedural hoops. Passed the most sweeping
ethics and lobbying reform in the history of the country. Passed a
budget for the first time in a number of years, even though they had a
huge majority, 55, we didn't we had, 49 when we passed out budget.
We've raised CAFE standards for the first time in 30 years. So we have
done...higher education, most sweeping education changes in higher
education since the GI bill of rights. So I don't buy that. Bush has
taught his puppets up here in Capitol Hill to be as Orwellian as he
is.
NICO PITNEY (The Huffington Post): Thank you, thank you. I'm with the
Huffington Post, I oversee their politics coverage. We work out of the
Watergate, which is kind of strange.
REID: What's that?
PITNEY: We work out of the Watergate, um, I have two questions. One is
you've been more outspoken than most senators about John McCain's
temper and I was wondering kind of what the motivation was for that.
Seen any incidences of that? And, uh...
REID: Anyone that's worked in the Senate has seen it, so it's just not
me, anyone that's worked here, Republicans or Democrats.
PITNEY: Yeah, and also there's now a lot of talk about Hillary
Clinton, if her campaign is in fact over and she has eyes for the
majority leader's spot, how long do you see yourself in this position,
do you enjoy it now?
REID: I'm elected by 50 Democrats, this is a job that I have done the
best I can, I have the full support of my senators. As you know, I
agreed with General Petraeus when he said that the war can't be won
militarily. I said that war is lost and that's, I was paraphrasing
what Gen. Petraeus said and there was a lot of uproar. All 50 senators
said they support me so I feel very comfortable with my job. Keep in
mind also a senator coming back that's running for president is not
very unique around here. Ah, John Kerry ran, he's back. Chris Dodd ran
and he's back. Joe Biden ran, he's back. So this is not unique coming
back. So I think if Biden has a lot to do, I've talk a little bit
about up here, Dodd has a lot to do. Clinton has a lot of fine
committee assignments, she has plenty to do. Notwithstanding the $20
million debt if she does come back that somebody's going to have to
pay back.
ADELE STAN (The Media Consortium): Senator Reid, I'm Adele Stan with
the Media consortium and we're a small syndicated reporting project
for liberal and progressive media.
REID: But you don't sound small if it's a consortium. (Laughter)
STAN: (Laughing) There you go. I'm interested, if you could give me
your thoughts in the state of the FISA legislation. And not simply
where the legislation is and how that's likely to play out, but how
that might be used in the election because I suspect. All thoughts on
the other side are looking toward the elections and how these security
issues will play out in the presidential race.
REID: The Republicans are trying to conduct this coming election as
they have past elections, going after people for being unpatriotic.
For example Max Cleland who is missing three limbs as a result of
being hurt in Vietnam. Tom Daschle, being unpatriotic. So this is a
record they are dusting off and going back and playing it again. But
as we've seen it hasn't played so well in the last three months.
Everyone was panicked, we didn't pass FISA before one of our recesses
and the world was going to fall apart. It didn't. And so I believe you
are going to find, the press today is reporting that ever since 9/11,
Americans have never been wiretapped more, that's in the press today.
In spite of all that prosecutions for terrorists are down, not up. The
FISA bill, you said you didn't want to know where it is, but I'll tell
you anyway. There's a conference going on and the House is trying to
work something out with the Senate. As you know the Senate passed a
bill that granted immunity, I and the majority of the Democrats
opposed that, but there were still enough Democrats to join with the
Republicans to pass it. I personally don't believe that the phone
companies should have immunity and I certainly don't think Bush and
Cheney should have immunity. And that's where we are. They are trying
to work something out. These are public hearings, public negotiations
most of the time, not all of the time, but remember this is not going
to happen unless we have Chairman Conyers and others sign off on it,
otherwise you can't get it done. So I think we have some good people
involved in this. Hopefully we'll work something out on it. As I said,
I think the mad rush for immunity was not intense as it was.
ELANA SCHOR (The Guardian of London) Hi Senator Reid, Elana Schor, I
work with Mr. Tomasky at the Guardian, formerly of the Hill. Uh my
question actually stems from your comment on Senator Lieberman, not
voting with you guys on the war and sort of making things difficult at
the beginning of the session. He said that he would consider speaking
at the Republican convention if Senator McCain asks him to. Naturally,
this is...
REID: You can bet that McCain will ask him to.
SCHOR: You can bet that perhaps he will. So I'm curious if you guys
continue your successful run, get close to or up to 60 next year,
would you consider saying "Joe, you're my friend but you spoke at
their convention, you can't caucus with us."
REID: I'll consider anything. I think at this stage though, if you
look at Joe Lieberman's voting record other than issues dealing with
the war, he's pretty good. In fact the record I think I saw last week
was that he votes with us 85, 90 percent of the the time. That's
pretty good. We have an interesting caucus. The few thing you've
talked about of course we'll consider it, of course I will. We'll have
to see how this goes on. We're going to have a presidential candidate,
we'll be concerned, and I'm sure they might have some opinion. But
remember a one vote difference in the ability to organize is really
important. The numbers in the Senate are very, very slim and we have
in the state of Connecticut a Republican governor so we have to be
very careful.
Off mic: Anybody not ask a question?
JOE SUDBAY (Americablog.com): Hi I'm Joe Sudbay from Americablog,
based here in DC. And I'm interested in the issue of presidential
nominations particularly the FEC and what will happen with that. We
saw last week that Bush withdrew David Mason who was quoted in the
Washington Post earlier this year, saying that John McCain was
basically breaking the law. So what do you foresee in general with
presidential nominations going forward this session and particularly
with the FEC.
REID: I've had private discussions with Bolten, Josh Bolten. I've had
many things public in nature, in fact most publicly, we've exchanged a
number of letters back and forth. Here's where we are now. We have
three Democrats that we are happy to have on the Federal Election
Commission. They have three Republicans they're happy to have on the
Federal Election Commission. We will not let one of them be approved.
His name is Von Splotsky or something like that. (Laughter) So they're
going to have to make a decision, they're going to have to replace him
or there will be no FEC. And they need it worse than we do. I will
also say this, Mason had an uncharacteristic trait, he was fair. And I
have tried to be fair in the people I choose to go on the FEC, for
example Steve Walther, he's not even a Democrat, he's an independent.
He's one of the Democrats on the Federal Election Commission. I think
the Federal Election Commission is important, I wish it had more
power, more teeth than what it has legislatively. But it still is a
lot better than nothing. And the Republicans have always hated the
FEC, but now when McCain needs something, they're rushing around
trying to get something done. We'll do it our way or it won't get
done.
STEVEN CLEMONS (The Washington Note): Senator let me ask you a
question now about economic issues. I just finished reading George
Sorros's new book in which he scares the heck out of me with concern
about $45 trillion dollar unregulated market and credit default swaps
and worries about other unwinding of...
REID: Don't you just hate it when somebody writes a book that knows
what they're talking about it.
CLEMONS:...synthetic debt instruments and of course at the level of
the person at the pump and to some degree Democrats during the last
administration became the fiscal conservatives in the political sphere
and you look ahead and you look at infrastructure and a lot of the
issues that needed to be sorted out for people and how they are
dealing with the turmoil of the economy which this administration has
helped generate. It's very, very hard to imagine how the Democrats
reclaim a politics of optimism if you look at the clear dollars and
cents side when you look at the micro level but then when you look at
the macro level of the things that need to be done. It's very hard for
me to imagine any scenario where the American middle class doesn't get
gut punched for the need for public policy players to restore balance.
I know that this may be too much to ask but I'm wondering how much of
that is discussed among your colleagues and in this election and even
post election--let's hope that the Democrats retake the White House,
what kind of adjustments need to be made in the narrative so that we
can think about infrastructure but we can also solve some of the
problems that Sorros outlines?
REID: Some of you recall my comments and feelings about Alan
Greenspan, as some of you recall, I call him the "biggest political
hack in Washington." And I believe that to be the case. Here's a man
who came to us when we were in power with a Democratic president and
we had majorities in the House and the Senate who said the number one
issue was deficit. So we did away with the deficit. And then he comes
back with Bush and says, "deficits are OK." Well I think it's
somewhere in between K? I think it sends a terrible powerful note to
the American people and the world, that during the last three years of
the Bush admin--I'm sorry, the Clinton administration we were actually
paying down the debt, paying down the national debt to the tune of
almost half a trillion dollars. We have to look at things that need to
be done. Every week, I get, on Friday something called the "Week in
Review" my staff puts together.
Every staff member tells me in short synopsis what they did during the
week. And on of my staff talked about a meeting that he had with a Dr.
Powell from MIT. Well, I was so interested in that because I knew the
name because Danby and Powell invented magnetic levitation. That is
they were stuck in traffic in New York, these two scientists, and they
said "we need to do something about that." They went back to the
laboratories, and invented, in the early 70's, magnetic levitation.
Wonderful, and it's what will happen in the future. It's a vehicle
that looks like a train that flies through the air a fraction of an
inch off the ground going 250-300 miles an hour. Perfect for travel up
to 250-300 miles to alleviate the traffic in airports and highways.
America during those years after this invention spent money on
research and development, important in something as ingenious, as
important as this we dropped it. After four or five year of doing this
we dropped it. That technology is now in China, it's now in Japan,
it's now in Germany. It's our technology, but they're doing it. For a
few bucks that the federal government should have continue spending.
We have infrastructure in America that is in distress, highways,
roads, bridges, damns, water systems, sewer systems. We have every
municipality in America, with rare exception, blueprints waiting to be
executed. Why? No money. Well, for every billion dollars we spend we
create 470,500 high paid jobs and the spin off in lower paid jobs is
tremendous. So I am in favor of a massive program, a public works
program. Putting people to work, high paying jobs and bringing this
country to where it should be with infrastructure. Can we get that
done? I don't know. The House is being run to a large degree to the
so-called Blue Dogs who want everything paid for and economists from
John Kenneth Galbraith to some of the more modern economists say that
there are times when you have to do some deficit spending so I think
that as I indicated before we need to get back, we can't have these
runaway programs that has gone with Bush, every bit of this war that's
costing us $5,000 a second is borrowed money and of course we've got
to get away from that. So you ask a very, very important question. And
yes is it something we're very concerned about. One more question then
I've got to go, to a 10:15 appointment.
Off mic: Is there somebody who hasn't asked a question
TERENCE SAMUEL (The American Prospect): Senator can you handicap some
of the crucial Senate races and your chances...
REID: I'd be happy to do that.
SAMUEL: And one thing, did you write about Woody Guthrie in this book?
REID: No, I didn't no. But I could step into any course, college level
course, any level course and they would give me a multiple choice,
essay on Woodie Guthrie and I would get an A. (Laughter) I'm pretty
much an expert on Woodie Guthrie.
Um, we're going to pick up seats. We've got a very good organization,
Schumer, it's the second time he's done that. It's very rare you have
anyone do the DSCC twice. We have a consistent crew, we have a very
good program, we're raising lots of money. We've protected all of our
incumbents. The only one who has any kind of a race-- and she's ten
points ahead-- is Mary Landrieu. Other than that our incumbents are
home free. We expected concern in Arkansas, Pryor did not even get an
opponent, he's running free, clear, no one's in the race. So if he
votes for himself he wins.
Um, Tim Johnson, we were worried about him, but he's in very good
shape. Around the country if the election were held today I don't know
how many seats we would pick up, but we'd pick up quite a few. We're
ahead in Massachusetts by double digits, we're ahead in Virginia, I
mean Virginia's not even close. We're ahead in New Mexico. We'll
probably win in Colorado. We're very concerned about that state always
even though Mark Udall's way ahead, because the Republicans, there's
more than 100,000 more Republicans than Democrats in that state. It's
changing significantly, you have a Democratic legislature, a
Democratic governor so we're doing OK in Colorado and I think Udall
will win. As we speak we're ten points ahead of Stevens in Alaska.
Mayor Begich is in town today, I'm going to go to an event for him
later on this morning. We have a primary in Oregon. We believe that
Merkley who's speaker of the Assembly, can beat Smith. We believe that
Elizabeth Dole is going to be beaten.
The niece of Lawton Chiles, governor and senator from Florida, who is
running, she's a state senator, and she's only two or three points
behind her right now and I think she's going to win that race, she
meaning Kay Hagan. We have, we got poll results back out of Texas,
we're only four points behind in Texas. We're tied in Mississippi as
we speak. We just have a lot of places to look that are very
important. I believe that Maine is going to be our Rhode Island this
time. I think Sue Collins who has favorability not nearly as high as
Chaffe's, but once Alan starts tying her to what Bush has done Maine
which has a very progressive state, are, they're going to turn her out
So we're going to pick up some seats I've only gone over a few of
them. We're as I, I think I told you we're competitive as I speak in
11 seats, so I hope that we'll pick up a number, a few of them. I'm
kind of a cynic about everything that way I'm not disappointed as
often. So I think we'll pick up four seats, five seats.
Off mic: Thank you.
REID: Thank you very much everybody.