Straight Talker

Harry Reid: Thank you very much for being here so bright and early on a Friday. I understand this is the first of a series and I'm glad to be the first. I'm happy that we're gathered here. One of the voids I think we've had in Washington for many years is the lack of progressive journalists.

I'll just briefly start by saying I've been involved in government for a long time. I first held office as the city attorney in what is now the second-largest city in Nevada, Henderson, so I've been involved in this business for a long time. They were all part-time jobs until 1982 when I was elected to Congress. Even lieutenant governor of Nevada was a part-time job.

Over the years, I've never been in an environment like we're in today. If you stop for just a little bit and think about that, we have the recent majority leader in the House convicted three times of ethics violations, indicted for money laundering. You have the majority leader in the Senate under investigation, as you know. First time in 135 years, someone indicted working in the White House, Safavian, an appointee of the president for government contracting, was led away in handcuffs as a result of his nefarious dealings with Jack Abramoff and others. And this culture that's developed here has really done some bad things to our country. The K Street Project, developed by Abramoff, Norquist, and Reed, was planned for many, many years. And I'm sure you've had friends who told you, “I was about to get a job when they were told they couldn't hire Democrats.” And it's spilled over now, so I believe it's had tremendous impact on what's going on legislatively.

I studied government in college and had mandatory readings like anyone else. I learned about Lord Acton, who I thought would never have any real relevance in my life, but it's here. Lord Acton said power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. That's what we see here in Washington. With the arrogance of power, it's no accident that the president hasn't vetoed a single bill because we haven't had a third branch of government. We haven't had congressional oversight hearings until last month. Five years -- no oversight.

And the ability, again, going back to my college days, to turn Washington into an Orwellian world! When the White House names something, it's just the opposite: the Clear Skies initiative pollutes the sky; the Healthy Forest damages our forests; the Leave No Child Behind Act leaves children behind -- ask any school superintendent any place in America. I met with all 17 in Nevada. One school district has more than 300,000 students, one has less than 200. And all said the Leave No Child Behind was bad. And the Budget Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which we still haven't finished, using the numbers from the White House, the Budget Deficit Reduction Act -- it's their name -- increases the deficit by $50 billion.

So, I'm confident and hopeful that as a result of the situation with Tom DeLay and Abramoff being arrested, that we're going to change things here. The legislation that we have in the Senate--I've asked Barack Obama to be our person on this -- is really good legislation. It's not fluff. It's not kicking lobbyists out of the gym. They're substantive changes; I'm going to meet with Senator Dodd this morning to talk about the Rules Committee.

And if you look at today's headlines in the newspaper -- we have one story in The New York Times where Chertoff knew of the water coming in with Katrina, well in advance. It's no accident with this arrogance of power that President Bush doesn't think he needs to deal with Congress in this NSA wiretapping. It's all part of the whole situation we have here in Washington. Even Abramoff now has indicated, you see in the paper, that he's met many times with the president. So, I am confident that things are going to get better here. Well, they can always get worse -- it's hard to comprehend.

But I think we Democrats … it's “what have you done?” Well, let me talk for a minute or two here about what we were able to stop. Privatization of Social Security is something the president wanted to do when he ran for Congress in the '70s. He said he wanted to privatize it then. He still wants to privatize it. And we were able to stop that. Now that wasn't easy. But the Democrats were united, the House and the Senate, first time in anyone's memory. Pelosi and I, Governor Dean, the mayors and the governors -- we had meetings, spent a lot of time and effort to come up with what we were going to do. Nuclear option -- all the arrogance of power wanted to change the Senate and turn it into another House of Representatives, but that's exactly what the nuclear option was all about. And we've had many votes that have been decided on straight party-line votes.

We're advancing our program -- honest leadership is first. We believe there should be energy independence by the year 2020. We believe there should be real security, which includes not only our homeland but interests we have outside the United States. So without belaboring the point, I'm optimistic that we can do better. I'm very happy with the way the midterm elections look. If the elections were held today, the Senate would be a 50-50 tie. We're ahead in Pennsylvania, Ohio, we're in great shape in Montana. Our candidate in Missouri is five points ahead. Of either one of … Rhode Island -- we're in pretty good shape there, that's an understatement. We have shots in Arizona and Tennessee. So we're comfortable; our incumbents are all more than 10 points ahead.

Okay. First question.

Michael Tomasky, Prospect: Let me ask you to address something in the AP story yesterday about you. The story was rather unclear about this; it tried to imply that in exchange for campaign funding you didn't press the higher minimum wage [in the Northern Marianas].

Reid: Well, let me just say this. I was a little boy in World War II. But I had nothing to do with the war, okay? Somebody else caused that war; I didn't have a thing to do with it. The Associated Press, a well-regarded news organization … but I have to say, wouldn't it have helped to have a little paragraph in there that said I was a co-sponsor of legislation to have a higher minimum wage in the Marianas? And that when it came up, I voted for it? A little paragraph in there wouldn't have hurt a thing. The story implied that I was somehow going around trying to keep the Marianas' minimum wage low in teamwork with Tom DeLay. I think a paragraph should have been there and he knew it and talked to him. The Jack Abramoff scandal is a Republican scandal. Now I know I'm the head Democrat around here and people love to try to involve me in the Abramoff stuff. He gave $250,000, a quarter-of-a-million dollars, to candidates. Not a single penny to Democrats.

I did an event in the Library of Congress a week or two ago and a woman came up to me and said, “I'm Jackie Johnson, could I have my picture taken with you?” And I said sure. She said “I'm the Chair of the National Congress of American Indians.” I think that's the name of the umbrella group for Native Americans. And she said, “I want you to know how proud we are of you for standing up for Native Americans. We have a right to come to Washington. We have a right to be part of the political process and you have stood up for us.” I wrote the Indian Gaming Act. I wrote it. I didn't want to, but the Supreme Court had said if you didn't the Indians could compete in Las Vegas. So I wrote that. Passed the Senate, passed the House. From that day to this day, I have opposed off-reservation gambling. And the article implies that I just happened to come along in the past couple of years opposing off-reservation gambling. All I've written -- lots and lots of letters -- I don't believe in it; I support Indian gaming but it should be on the reservation. So no one that gave me any money did anything wrong.

Joe Conason, Prospect: Even so, don't you think there's an appearance problem with the way things are done now? In other words, the AP story, if it's accurate, reports that you wrote letters and were receiving contributions at the time you wrote the letters. Now whether you or the donors did anything wrong, isn't there an appearance problem and don't we need a different kind of financing system?

Reid: I support the efforts of Senator Durbin. There was a meeting held in his office yesterday. I couldn't be there because I was involved in asbestos. But the present campaign-financing system is lousy. I was a great supporter of McCain-Feingold. It helped a lot. When I ran in 1998, a very tough and difficult race with Senator Ensign, people gave me as much as a quarter of a million dollars. Of course, it was legal. I ran all these horrible ads against Ensign, and he ran all these horrible ads against me because it was an equal-opportunity program -- he raised as much money as I did. And when I ran in 2004, I felt as though I just stepped out of the shower. I didn't have to go ask for that kind of money. That money may not have corrupted me but it's corrupting. When one individual can give unlimited amounts of money … $3 million … corporate money. We no longer have corporate money, a tremendous step forward.

I think the system is out of whack. In the state of Nevada, 2004, $10 million … If you push hard, we have two-and-a-half million people in the state. Dick Durbin has to raise $18 million to run in Illinois. So we need some type of campaign-finance reform. And I only know two ways to go. One is to pass a constitutional amendment as Fritz Hollings wanted to do for so many years. The other is to try to pass a law that withstands constitutional attack and have some type of public financing. I think we can do that constitutionally. I'm in favor of that.

For example, let's take the state of Arizona. They developed a type of public financing. That's why we have a Democratic governor there. Because she was able to compete with small contributors; and she's not only governor, she's really an outstanding governor. So I'm going to do what I can to change the present system. The present system isn't any good. It's difficult to … even though the federal system is … I don't want to belabor the question here for too long … when I first ran for statewide office in Nevada, Howard Hughes was in town and I got a call from his “person” -- “Can you come see me?” And oh, I was happy. And he gave me $10,000 in cash. Now, I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I mean, where do you put it? It's big wads of money. Now, it was totally legal. So, I've seen quite a bit of campaign changes in my life. But even though the money is listed -- the money we get -- it's very hard to overcome the appearance of … somebody does a fund-raiser for you -- does that mean that they own you, you know? It would sure be better if we had a system where you had to raise a certain amount of money before you could get certain money…anyway, good question. We're working on it. Started yesterday.

[The recording method didn't pick up this question, but Robert Kuttner of the Prospect asked here about the Medicare law, and how Reid planned to address the chaos the bill has created, and how he hopes to proceed in the face of a divided caucus, many of whose members supported the Bush bill.]

Reid: Well, we failed by one vote, as you know. We lost that by one vote; that was unfortunate. I look at Democrats … I got a lot of criticism for calling the former Chairman of the Fed the biggest political hack in Washington, but I really believe that, and so … one of my weaknesses is that I tell people how I feel, and one of my strengths in some people's minds … And I think we as Democrats have to tell people how we feel. We don't do enough of that.

My example of that is Russ Feingold. People run from … they don't want people to think that we're weak or friends with Osama bin Laden and all that kind of thing. But an example of how people really appreciate your standing for what you believe is Russ Feingold -- the only person to vote against the Patriot Act -- the only person. The Republicans in 2004 spent tons of money going after him on that one issue, and it didn't matter because people believed that Russ Feingold did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. And I've used him with my caucus as an example on a number of occasions. I so admire Russ Feingold, I've made him part of my leadership team. Every Monday morning we meet, oh sorry, Tuesday morning, he meets with my leadership team.

And I think on issues like that we have to just go forward. I was disappointed that we weren't able to stop that, but we didn't and we just have to go forward. We're doing our best to be very vocal and forthright on these issues. And, as I indicated earlier, we try hard to have a coherent message. It's very difficult when we don't control either house of Congress … there's no oversight hearings being held, the president has the power over the legislative branch -- they've forgotten that they're a separate and equal branch of government until about the last month, for example on the spy thing. But we're doing our best to have a message. I think it has to be one of non-intimidation; we just have to charge forward.

Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers' Group: May I follow up on that? One thing that could be done in the Senate, where the rules allow the opposition party to put stuff out on the floor, is, you could put a clear, straightforward bill on the floor of the Senate that says “this law is bad, it was bad from the start, We are going to have a Medicare drug benefit that is Medicare, that is financed directly by Medicare, that gives the same benefit to every Medicare beneficiary, that cuts out the private plans, that allows Medicare to directly purchase the drugs the same way it purchases hospital care and other kinds of care.” Why not put out a bill that says if we're going to have Medicare, let's make it Medicare?

Reid: Because it is extremely difficult to get a bill on the floor. What we have done, for example, when we had the tax aspect of reconciliation up recently and the rules there are somewhat unique. We offered an amendment; Bill Nelson was chosen to be the person offering that, and he got 52 votes on that, to change a lot of the Medicare problems that we're having right now. So we have tried to do that and, as I said, we got 52 votes and we needed 60. We got 52, which is a majority, the only vote we got with a majority during that.

My point is it's very hard to get legislation on the floor. You just can't do it. We can offer amendment to certain things and we've done that every chance we had. The problem with Medicare from a public perspective is much worse today than it was on January 1st. So we're doing our best. We have a couple of amendments we're going to offer -- Motions to Instruct -- they're not substantive in nature but they're the only thing we can do. Sending this thing to conference whenever Frist decides to put it on the floor, which I assume will be next week.

Ellen Ratner, Talk Radio News Service: There are issues that are somewhat related. One is this business of not swearing in witnesses, which I've seen, but also, the White House has been putting out things like “setting the record straight,” which is traditionally done by the RNC, and I don't know if there's been any investigation of the White House doing things which are really much more political in nature, but there seem to be some things recently that have been crossing the line that I don't the Democrats have underlined enough. So what are your thoughts and plans about this?

Reid: Well, Karl Rove's back, there's no question about that. He's so desperate, he's called me three times in the last few weeks. And he called me about … of the things the president is having trouble hiding is the money that's … we're spending more money than we have. Right now, we've exceeded the debt limit of 8.2 trillion dollars. And we have to do something about that and that's why he's been calling me. He knows that I'm not too sympathetic with this program and now what they're trying to do is set up a bipartisan task force to take a look at it. But their proposal is very typical. It's two to one Republican. So I've written a letter, we haven't sent it yet, in fact I haven't read it yet -- my staff briefed me on it yesterday. We're going to send it to the president saying, no thanks.

But in answer to your question, I think we have done a pretty good job, especially the DSCC, in protecting our people who are running. Every day we have things going out regarding the White House and it's helped us run the country.

Ratner: And the swearing-in issue?

Reid: I don't know if anyone saw the paper today, The Washington Post, and it had Arlen Specter saying a year ago we were going to swear in everybody, and they have the other statement where there's no need to swear in the attorney general.

Walter Shapiro, Salon.com: If I can go back to Russ Feingold. I read the papers this morning. Russ Feingold says that this compromise is totally inadequate. Dick Durbin says, basically, that this the best that we can get and we should vote for it. If Feingold is right, was the filibuster worth it? In other words, can Karl Rove use this continually to point out that the Democrats are unpatriotic, that they're against the Patriot Act?

Reid: Well, you see, I got in trouble a little while ago because I said at a gathering, the vote had just taken place, and I said, “We killed the Patriot Act,” and …

Shapiro: I've seen the ads.

Reid: They've run them all over the country. My staff said, “Don't say that,” and I said, “well, that's what I said.” I said that because I was happy that we were able to stop the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, passed the Senate unanimously, unanimously. Went over to the House and came back a different animal than what had left here. So we stopped it. And it was good we did.

Now the product that we have now certainly didn't accomplish all we had wanted, and that's an understatement. But there are some things that are better; the letters that you send ... now you can go get a lawyer and you don't have to disclose his name. There are a few improvements that Sununu was able to deal with. He's the one who dealt with Karl Rove and the White House. Progress was made. Russ Feingold called me. He's still really upset because there's still too much they can do without someone being a suspect. They can still get al kinds of personal information. And it will take awhile to get the bill through the Senate because Russ is going to do whatever he can to slow it down, but with the Republicans going with the White House -- we don't have enough votes. So yes, it was worth it, absolutely worth it because changes have been made from what we were originally given. Did we get everything we wanted? Absolutely not. We got a few things that were important.

Ari Berman, The Nation: Should Democrats advocate some sort of timetable for withdrawal of the troops?

Reid: One of the things I didn't mention and I should have--in my notes but I don't have any notes with me -- one of the things we did on a positive basis in addition to Social Security and the nuclear option was to change the course of the debate on Iraq. We did that in a number of ways. First of all, I recognized that Jay Rockefeller was being given the rope-a-dope on the Phase 2 investigation, that is, how did the White House manipulate the intelligence? So we closed down the Senate and that was really a big help to us.

Number two, we had a debate on the Defense Reauthorization Bill and we worked for four days to come up with an amendment. And there were quite a range of my Democrats in those series of meetings and we came up with what we thought was a very strong amendment. About an hour after we signed off on the amendment, Carl Levin called me. He said, “You mind if I show this to John Warner?” I said, “No, no, that's fine. Go ahead and do that.” He called me back a short time later and said that but for the last paragraph, Warner's going to co-sponsor the amendment.

I thought he had made a mistake. Levin didn't understand. But all of you who know Carl -- he didn't get into Harvard Law School by accident. He's very smart and reads everything. And we had a vote and it passed -- 79 votes. And what did that amendment say? We need to change the direction of the war in Iraq; we need to change course in Iraq. And, number two, the year 2006 must be a year of significant transition. That was the second thing we did to change the direction of the debate on Iraq.

And then the third thing was that Congressman Murtha came up with his proposal. No one else but a certified war hero, someone who's such a defense hawk, could have done what he did.

And then the fourth thing and the final thing is, was kind of a gift given to us, and that was when the Arab League met in Cairo and the Iraqi government said, “we want the Americans out of Iraq.”

So if you recognize that and then, for example, look at the paper today, there's a story about a man, Pollard or Pillar, but I've seen him on some national TV shows being interviewed. He worked for the CIA, different intelligence agencies for 29 years, and he said that the intelligence community prior to going to war in Iraq was run over. Everyone knew that what the president was doing was wrong, but it didn't matter, and that's news today. So, in Iraq … I think we're headed in the right direction in that the United States military, even though they won't say so publicly, privately they will tell you. I had a meeting with Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- troops are going to be pulled out of Iraq this year. We had a briefing yesterday in [Room] 407 upstairs by Negroponte and without disclosing what he said there, it's obvious to me, based on all the people that I've talked to, that there's going to be a drawdown of troops, a significant drawdown of troops this year. Iraq, as anyone knows, isn't doing very well. The oil -- they're pumping less oil now than before the war, producing less electricity than before the war, so it's a situation that's not getting better.

Kuttner: If we draw down troops and pursue a so-called garrison strategy, and the whole thing doesn't cave until after the election, doesn't that help Bush?

Reid: Well, I'm not too sure what election we're talking about. If we're talking about 2006, I don't things are going to be changed much; we're going to have months before those elections. I don't think it's going to hurt him. The answer is no. I think that if we pull back as Murtha has indicated and have folks out in outlying areas for, if something really bad goes wrong, I think things will … unless there's some big changes and it has to be done politically. Reconstruction has come to a standstill. There has to be some political changes, and the only thing that will work is if the Shias and Kurds give up some power and let the Sunnis in on things. I'm sorry, I interrupted someone.

Terence Samuel, AOL.com: Senator, you're ahead in Pennsylvania; you're ahead in Ohio. The news is good. I seem to remember that around this time in 2002 there was a euphoria on the Democratic side. How do you keep this momentum going, if that's what it is, and what do you expect the White House to do about it?

Reid: A couple of things I'm happy with in getting this job. First off, I never dreamed that Senator Daschle would lose. It wasn't anything that I was planning, but after having learned that I was going to be the Democratic leader, I knew that I had to do something with the DSCC. And I asked Chuck Schumer to be the chair. I knew that he could be the next governor of New York -- he wanted to be. He gave that up. And for we Democrats, it was so important. We have almost twice as much money in the bank as they have; now, they'll try to play a few games, transfer some money from the RNC, but we're in very good shape around the country with our candidates. There are a few things that we're concerned about.

Money-wise, Casey's doing just as well as Santorum, and in Ohio, it doesn't matter if it's Hackett or it's Brown, they both beat DeWine in the polls. There isn't much DeWine can do about that when the governor has the lowest approval rating since polling started; it's at 11 percent now. I think Montana, which is a state that's trending Democratic, it has an outstanding governor who we work with very closely -- we're going to win that state. We can handle the money in Montana; it's not an expensive state. The one state … we're now five points ahead in Missouri. We have a tremendous imbalance with money at this time there. Great candidate -- we're concentrating on her and on Arizona at this stage to make sure that we do what we can to make them financially competitive.

I've talked about Rhode Island. We're in good shape there. Tennessee's a long shot, but we have a shot. Tennessee used to be a long shot but my barometer there is Jim Cooper, who I came to the House with in '82. His father had been governor of Tennessee, and every time I talk to him … “how's the race going?” “Not good, not good.” Right before Christmas, he told me, “Ford's going to win the election.” So I think that we're going to surprise people.

Now, I was there in 2002. I was there in 2004. And in 2004, we had some real disappointments, but the victories we had … I would put our two freshmen senators … two of the best ever elected to the Senate. Ken Salazar -- he is a man who has such great potential. And we all know about Barack Obama. So quality-wise, we did great in 2004; quantity-wise, we didn't do as I had expected.

And we're aware they're trying to use the security thing, and as I indicated, speaking to Robert there earlier, we're going to do everything we can to make sure we're not afraid of that issue.

Shapiro: How do you defend yourself against the idea, “Republicans Strong, Democrats Weak,” “Republican Senate Protects America, Democratic Senators Help Osama bin Laden?”

Reid: I think what we'll see after 2006 when we have more people in the Senate, we're going to be able to change things dramatically. Forty-five is a tough number for us to work with. We lose five and we're in big trouble on most everything; fortunately we've been able to keep together on most things. But I think if we have, certainly if we control the Senate, I would be so happy. I used to say it would be a miracle if we controlled the Senate. It wouldn't be a miracle anymore. I said it would be a miracle during the nuclear option debate. I did that for two reasons: one is I recognized it would be hard for us to take control of the Senate, but the other reason I did it was to let the Republicans know, you guys can come back and do this stupid thing after the midterm elections, you don't have to do it now.

We are not worried about 2006, and that is … I did not support Howard Dean. I told him so. He wasn't my first choice, but he went out and did the old-fashioned way, made telephone calls, personal contacts, raised his own money, and I'm impressed with Howard Dean. Howard Dean understands that this is not like it's always been where the DNC is only interested in who's going to be elected president. He is setting up grassroots organizations all over the country, grassroots organizations are now in Nebraska, North Dakota -- never been done before. And I think you're going to see a sea change in how candidates handle grassroots in 2006 and I think we're going to do even better in 2008.

Shapiro: How do you feel about Karl Rove's arguing that the Democrats are weak on national security?

Reid: Again, I think that we cannot be afraid. We recognize … we see the numbers … that the president is good at campaigning, very bad at governing, and he'll continue to campaign on that issue. But we have so much more to go on than we had in 2004, 2002. The president doesn't have the clout that he had either time; in fact, he doesn't have much clout at all. And I don't think that Karl Rove's message -- if he's still out of jail by then -- that it's going to have the sound that it had before.

James Fallows, The Atlantic: It seems to me that there hasn't been a better time in 25 years to make an affirmative case against the Republicans on defense policy. They're actually weakening the military, actively doing foolish things. Twenty-five years ago that was a mantle Gary Hart picked up. Is there anybody actually developing a security policy now among your people?

Reid: The one senator that's doing an outstanding job is Jack Reed. Jack Reed's a West Point graduate and he's been our face on many of the talk shows and on the Senate floor. He's the person that we said go forward on this.

I would also say that we're doing other things. I have a group--Secretary Perry, Secretary Albright, a number of other people who are very familiar with defense-related matters, foreign-policy issues -- and they've done a number of outstanding reports. Some of you have seen some of the work that they've done. They're going to continue to do more and this has been a help to us. But it is an issue -- we're trying to get our arms around it. It's, it's frankly getting easier to do each day that goes by.

Cocco: Karl Rove says that Democrats have a pre - 9-11 mindset, and that is the type of short, easy, simple phrase that Republicans have used to great effect historically since 9-11. If you go back to the '80s, you could change that to Willie Horton. It's another one of these simple things that the American public seems to grasp. What is your simple thing as a Democrat that says we're better on security than they are?

Reid: We have rolled out the Honest Government plank of our platform. As you know, I'm sure you're sick of hearing it, we have our brand, which is Together, America Can Do Better.

The next issue we're going to focus on is what we call Real Security. Real Security will deal with what the president has not done to make us safer in America. Chemical plants unprotected. Nuclear power plants unprotected. Cargo ships coming into America not protected. The hulls in airplanes that we fly on, not protected. And we have tried and tried and tried with amendments to get a few dollars to take care of this. We're spending $2 billion a week in Iraq. We have offered amendments to spend a few dollars on these other projects, and on party-line votes, we're turned down. We're going to do everything we can to get this message to the American people.

We worked with an organization called Americans United to Preserve Social Security -- they did a great job. They helped us with the grassroots stuff and they even did some TV and radio around the country. That organization is still ongoing; it's now called Americans United. I don't know if you saw, but they ran some ads on cable prior to the president's State of the Union message. It's no accident that the president's State of the Union message was a flop. It's no accident that his budget message has been a flop--because we have hit that hard, we did our prebuttals and we were supported on radio and television, which had never been done before. So, we're loaded for bear. We're going to go at this as if we're arm-wrestling.

Paul Glastris, The Washington Monthly: Would the Democrats come out for expanding the manpower of the military?

Reid: First of all, I think we have made some progress in talking about the lack of homeland-security protection. But I would ask, in fact -- Jim [Manley, his communications director], make sure that the one-page that was done for me on Evan Bayh's speech on national defense -- he did it just last week. Someone on the staff gave me a one-pager on it. It was really quite a good speech on national defense. And Evan Bayh is not hiding what needs to be done for our defense. He calls for an additional 100,000 troops. Evan Bayh is not apologizing for speaking out that the military is not strong. Evan Bayh, in the speech that he gave last week, said that if something else happens in some other country, we don't have the troops to do anything about it. So I think you're going to see on the presidential run, which has already started, there's going to be a significant focus on that. And we in the Senate are going to pick this up and the person we're going to have out in front on this is Jack Reed.

I have time … I have to go on the Senate floor at 9:30, so a couple more questions.