Interview with Senator Reid on the Majority Report

Earlier this evening, Senator Harry Reid was interviewed by Sam Seder of the Majority Report on Air America Radio. The following is my transcript of that interview.

Sam Seder: Thank you for joining us, Senator.

Senator Harry Reid: My pleasure.

Seder: Now, I want to start off just by telling you that I’m a big fan of yours, and I think that the way you marshalled Democratic opposition to George Bush trying to tear apart Social Security was fantastic.

Reid: Well, I appreciate that compliment, but it was a team effort. It really was.

Seder: Well, I can tell you that our audience is very pleased that we’re going to have Social Security to count on in the years to come. But I want to turn to Iraq. As you know, things in Iraq have gone from worse to worse, and recently Senator Feingold from Wisconsin has called for a target date for withdrawal of U.S. troops, and today, Sentator Carl Levin of Michigan in an op-ed in the Washington Post, called for using U.S. troop withdrawal as leverage in forging some type of political solution on the ground, and meanwhile, President Bush has advocated basically doing nothing different, and maintaining an open end occupation. My question to you is, which plan do you think is more realistic in getting the U.S. out of Iraq, which I think has quickly become a quagmire?

Reid: Well, both Senators are, and I’m not exaggerating, they may not be geniuses but they’re very very smart. They’re both Harvard Law graduates, Feingold is a Rhodes Scholar, so this isn’t service station talk. These guys are very very smart, and their approaches are different. Feingold wants to set a definite time- first of all he wants to give the President a little time to get his act together..I guess these many years hasn’t been enough. Levin, however, wants to solve it politically with the Iraqis. I’ve spent a lot of time with him on this. If they, for example, the constitution doesn’t pass and the elections don’t go forward in January, he feels that should be a signal that we start drawing down troops.

But frankly, Sam, I think that if you listen to what the President’s own generals are saying, for example we had General Casey who testified just about a week ago, and he said that we’re going to start drawing down by the end of the year. So my point is, even the President’s own people recognize that this can’t go on forever. And as to whether you go for the Feingold plan, or you go for the plan set forward by Levin, you have to recognize that things aren’t going well. This is intractable war. And, what we have…more than 40 senators wrote to the President ten days ago and said, Mr. President, staying the course won’t work. Anything but staying the course, we have to change the course, and we’re asking you to tell us some of the things that we need to know. For example, how’s the money being spent? For example, how many troops are there really? Three months ago we were told that there were eight regiments…

Seder: You’re talking about Iraqi forces now.

Reid: Yes. Now we’re told there’s 1, so we’re kind of losing ground there. We need to know. We sent some specific questions, and I think as a result of this, we’ve raised the bar, because the Rumsfeld report, which is required by law, is supposed to be submitted tomorrow, and we believe that the President needs to change the course. This simply is not doing the trick. We’re spending upwards of two billion dollars a week there, we’re approaching 2000 dead American soldiers, probably 20,000 wounded, many of them grievously wounded, so staying the course isn’t the way we should go.

Seder: All right. Well, I also want to speak to you about the energy bill that recently passed in the House. This bill provides subsidies to builders of refineries, meanwhile, today, in Knight-Ridder, Shell Oil President John Hoffmeister said that there’s no need to build new refineries, and thinks that pushing for better mileage standards is a better idea. Tell us what you predict will happen with this bill in the Senate, and whether or not this bill addresses any of our short term or long term energy needs.

Reid: The House bill is a sell-out to big oil. It does a lot of things. It wipes out the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, endangered species…it’s just another sop to the oil companies. Now, keep in mind that whether it’s Shell Oil or British Petroleum, or Chevron, Standard, whichever company you talk about, they’ve made obscene profits. This year it’s estimated they’ll make as much as 80 billion dollars net profit. So, if the guy from Shell is crying poor mouth, that’s too bad, because they’ve got lots of dough.

Seder: Yeah, my understanding is the C.E.O. from Exxon is reported as saying their biggest business problem is what to do with all the extra cash they’re making.

Reid: Well, what they’re doing with a lot of the cash is buying back their stock. They don’t want to have any of the American people who own stock in those companies benefit at all, they want it to all go to the big company. Now, I would also say this regarding the so-called oil situation we have. If you consider that when someone goes down to fill up their car with gas, bells go off…something’s wrong some place. And to have the oil companies now say we should raise the efficiency standards, where were they when there was legislation that was introduced by Senator Durbin and others calling for increased CAFE standards? The oil companies were opposed to us. They and big automobile manufacturers were opposed to doing anything with CAFE standards. So, these people are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

And so I would hope that we put pressure on them. I have a web site that I’ve put up, Give Em Hell, Harry, and I tell your listeners that because if people go to that, you can help us by writing letters to editors, and frankly, it’s worked. We’ve had thousands of these since last Thursday, and the more the newspapers around the country, radio stations, the more they will recognize that oil companies can’t go on like they have been. The American people have to rise up against this.

Seder: All right, well, we’re going to put a link up on our blog at MajorityReportRadio.com to GiveEmHellHarry.com. Now, I have to ask you…and I appreciate your spending this time for us, particularly, I know you’re on a long weekend… You’ve been in politics a lot longer than I’ve been following them. Has it ever been this corrupt at a national level. I mean, literally every day it seems we’re talking about another indictment of someone, or another investigation-

Reid: The answer is no, and I have been in this a long time, going back to campaigning for McGovern for president a long time ago. But, you know, we have a very difficult situation here. They’re doing nothing about gas prices, doing nothing about Iraq, but we have the person that is in charge of the contracts for this administration, including those in Iraq and those for Katrina, who’s been led away in handcuffs. He’s been indicted.

Seder: You’re talking about David Safavian.

Reid: Yes, and we have Tim Flanagan who wanted to be the number two in charge, in fact, the Attorney General came and talked to me about him…while he worked at Tyco, he gave a contract to Abramahoff- -I never pronounce his name right, but everyone knows who he is.

Seder: Jack Abramoff

Reid: Yeah, I can’t say the name right. So he went through his nomination, that’s good, Karl Rove is under investigation, Michael Brown, you know, “Brownie”. Talk about cronyism, here’s a guy who specialized in Arabian horses, and they have him leading FEMA, and then you have Tom DeLay who’s been indicted for money laundering and conspiracy, and last night, we find out he’s still twisting arms to give money to oil companies instead of helping Americans with gas prices, it’s a corrupt-

Seder: Well, with all due respect, it’s understandable, ‘cause Tom DeLay’s going to need a new job soon, and one could suspect that it might come from the oil companies.

Reid: Well, that’s probably better than his previous business which was an exterminator for bugs.

Seder: Yes, and we all know the story of him getting into government, it was a function of him not liking the fact that government was protecting children and people from dangrous toxins.

Reid: Sam, the problem I have with all this, is I’ve always had a belief in government, since the time I was a little boy. I believed in government. I believed that government should serve the public good, do things that help people, make people’s lives better. And I’m very troubled that young people, and people not so young are going to become jaundiced on government. Everything that should be going up in government is going down…everything’s headed in the wrong direction. I want people to feel good about government because I think public service is something that’s important, I want people to think it’s a good place to go, and not a cesspool.

Seder: Well, Senator Harry Reid, thank you so much for joining us on the Majority Report.