Reid Tells Democrats Not to Gloat After Homeland Security Win

Wall Street Journal

By Siobhan Hughes and Michael Crittenden

March 5, 2015

Reid Tells Democrats Not to Gloat After Homeland Security Win 

Senate Democrats think they have had a good couple of weeks, including a win in a battle over immigration and homeland security funding, but their leader is warning members of his caucus against taking any victory laps.

“We cannot be gloating,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said he told his caucus at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

“We have a lot of things we have to work on, and we have to be able to work with” Senate Republicans, who control 54 seats, Mr. Reid said in an interview in his Capitol office Wednesday.

A CONVERSATION WITH HARRY REID

Harry Reid on Vetoes, Trade and Democratic Party Unity

Mr. Reid, 75 years old and in his fifth term, is acutely aware of the perils of either party overreaching in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance most legislation. The coming months will bring a new round of fights in areas that could be both bigger and harder, such as over federal spending, trade and raising the government’s borrowing limit.

Those tough issues will test Mr. Reid’s ability to manage his caucus and to walk the fine line between getting what they want and looking like the obstructionists they accused of Republicans of being when the GOP was in the minority.

Current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has pledged to run the Senate as a place with open debate and more consideration of members’ amendments. But tensions between the two parties remain, and habits die hard.

So far, Mr. Reid hasn’t been shy about using the filibuster—the tool available to the minority party to block bills from advancing. He used it to block the homeland security funding bill several times.

Mr. Reid said he planned to use the filibuster in the future with caution, though he made the point with a jab at Mr. McConnell. “We’re going to work with the Republicans to pass things when it needs to be done,” he said. “The difference between what we’re doing and what they did—they opposed everything. We’re not going to do that.”

On the occasions when Mr. Reid, a former boxer who relishes a fight, criticizes the majority’s tactics, one complicating factor might be his own reputation as a leader who exercised so much control over the Senate floor that even members of his own caucus complained they couldn’t get their voices heard.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) acknowledged that Democrats’ ability to operate in the minority thus far has been “impressive,” but said blocking Republicans can’t be the party’s only goal.

“Democrats eventually have to decide where their future lies: Does it lie in voting en masse to protect the president, or does it lie in working with us?” Mr. Graham said.

Trade policy will pose one of the biggest tests for Mr. Reid, who must balance his own opposition to trade deals against President Barack Obama ’s request for fast-track authority to approve trade deals, starting with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As majority leader, Mr. Reid did nothing to help the president advance the measure. But as minority leader, the avowed opponent of trade deals said he wouldn’t automatically try to block it. At the same time, he isn’t being shy about saying moving a trade bill through the Senate could be more challenging than people expect, noting that many conservative Republicans also oppose giving Mr. Obama fast-track authority.

“It doesn’t matter who the president is, they always seem to want a trade deal—and they’ve been able to get it done in the past,” Mr. Reid said. “I’m not sure it’s going to get done that easily this time.”

Mr. Reid showed less patience for another fight over raising the nation’s debt ceiling after the nation’s borrowing limit is reached later this year. Criticizing previous GOP efforts to extract policy gains in return for raising the nation’s borrowing authority, Mr. Reid suggested Mr. Obama should use the powers of his office to act without Congress. “I thought he should have just done it,” Mr. Reid said of previous debt-limit fights, “but he disagreed with me.”

Mr. Reid said he is counting on the president to use his veto pen if Democrats can’t hold together, noting that the founding fathers anticipated cases in which the president and legislative branch disagree by giving the president the veto power. “Obama has vetoed almost nothing to this point. He’s going to veto a lot of stuff now, and I think we will support him on most everything,” he said.

Mr. Reid’s challenge will be to keep Democrats unified, a reality demonstrated on Wednesday when eight Democrats broke ranks to vote in favor of overriding Mr. Obama’s veto of a Keystone XL pipeline bill. In the end, the 62-37 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.

In attempting to hold his caucus together, Mr. Reid is known to constantly take the pulse—and the calls—of his caucus, and he says he frequently takes 30-40 calls a day.

Mr. Reid has scores of one-on-one conversations each day with the senators in his caucus, with the calls starting early in the morning and lasting until about 10 p.m. “My senators know that if they call me, I’m available. If they want to walk in here, I see everybody,” he said.

The most frequent caller is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who has memorized several of Mr. Reid’s phone numbers. “He knows all the tricks,” Mr. Reid said. “If my wife takes the phone of the hook,” Mr. Reid said, “he just calls” on the other line. “But if that didn’t work he’d call my cellphone.”

Mr. Reid said his job is much less difficult than when he was in charge—something he told Mr. McConnell a week ago. “I did your job for eight years…. That was pretty hard,” he recounted saying. “I said this job I have is easy. So you just have to be careful you don’t push too hard.”

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