Goodbye, Harry Reid

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), after 34 years in Congress, including 30 years as a Senator from Nevada, leaves public office in January. Attention should be paid, because Mr. Reid’s career has been a remarkable one. 

Few people in history have left as distinct a mark on the United States Senate. Whether that mark is for better or worse is an open question.

Mr. Reid became leader of the Democratic caucus in 2004, and he has not been a shrinking violet. In 2012, Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney were battling for the presidency, and there were demands that Romney disclose his tax returns. (Sound familiar?)

 Reid then announced, from the well of the Senate, that he knew why Romney had not disclosed any returns: because he had not paid any taxes in ten years.

{mosads}Reid said this: “As we know, he has refused to release his tax returns. If a person coming before this body wanted to be a Cabinet officer, he couldn’t be if he had the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns. So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove he has paid taxes, because he has not.”

Romney ultimately released his two most recent tax returns.

In 2011, Romney had paid $1.9 million in taxes, and in 2010 he paid a shade more than $3 million. Not exactly zero. Did Reid retract his statement and perhaps even apologize for it?

Nope. Instead, Reid insisted on repeating what he then knew to be false: “People bring that up, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. Why? Because I knew what he had done was not be transparent and forthright about his taxes and to this day he hasn’t released his tax returns.”

Romney never did release ten years’ tax returns, but he did release two years’ returns, and those proved that Reid was reckless and untruthful on the Senate floor. 

And that, by his own reckoning, is “one of the best things” Reid has ever done.

Another thing Reid has done is attack the Koch brothers, who are billionaire business owners. They also actively support conservative causes, none of which are favored by Reid.

In the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections, they financed advertisements criticizing Obamacare.

Again speaking from the floor of the Senate, Reid roundly attacked the Koch brothers. “It’s too bad that they’re trying to buy America, and it’s time that the American people spoke out against this terrible dishonesty of these two brothers who are about as un-American as anyone I can imagine.”

Labeling people as “un-American” is not something Reid invented; Joe McCarthy did the same thing decades ago.

Apparently, Reid was proud to follow in McCarthy’s footsteps. No apology was ever forthcoming.

Reid’s “best” accomplishments are not limited to attacking people in speeches in the Senate (where he enjoys complete legislative privilege to say any outrageous thing, without risk of lawsuits for defamation). He has also changed the operation of the Senate in a fundamental way.

In 2013, Reid was unhappy because a number of Obama nominations for judges for the U.S. Courts of Appeals and other administrative positions were being filibustered by Senate Republicans.

These filibusters could not be ended, under Senate rules then in place, unless 60 senators voted for cloture. But the Democrats at the time had only 55 votes.

So, the Democratic majority under Reid’s leadership voted, 52 to 48 (with 3 Democrats joining Republicans in opposition), to change the rules so that, for all nominations other than those to the U.S. Supreme Court, cloture would require only a simple majority vote.

This change was made despite the opinion of the Senate parliamentarian, appointed by the Democratic majority, that the proposed change violated Senate rules, which required a two-thirds vote to change the cloture rule.

It is enormously ironic that the Democratic Senate caucus will for the first time begin to feel the sharp end of Reid’s rule change at the very moment he leaves the chamber forever.

In January 2017, a Republican will be president, and, thanks to the new cloture rule, the 52-seat Republican Senate majority will be able to approve the new president’s nominees without any Democratic votes. Moreover, when the time comes to confirm a justice for the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Reid has provided the Republicans with a blueprint for changing cloture rules with only a majority vote.

When a senator retires, speeches are made to commemorate his or her service. This month, there was a ceremony for Vice President Joe Biden, who served in the Senate for 37 years and then, as vice president, served as its presiding officer for another eight years. 

There was also a ceremony for Reid. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell participated in both.

Here is what McConnell said about Vice Pres. Biden: “We’ve…negotiated in good faith when the country needed bipartisan leadership. We got results that would not have been possible without a negotiating partner like Joe Biden. I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him implicitly. He doesn’t break his word…. There’s a reason ‘get Joe on the phone’ is shorthand for ‘time to get serious’ in my office.”

Here is what he said about Reid: “It’s clear that Harry and I have two very different worldviews, two different ways of doing things, and two different sets of legislative priorities. But, through the years, we’ve come to understand some things about one another, and we’ve endeavored to keep our disagreements professional, rather than personal.”

Some difference.

David E. Weisberg is a semi-retired attorney and a member of the NYS Bar. He currently resides in Cary, NC and has published pieces on the Social Science Research Network and The Times of Israel.

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.