[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11684-11685]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         A COOPERATIVE MINORITY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I commend Senators Murray and Alexander for 
their good work on this education bill. But I want the Record to be 
spread with this. The bill is passing this Congress because we have had 
a constructive minority during this Congress.
  Senator Harkin, who was chair of that committee, had indicated--and I 
said this on the Record last week--that on two separate occasions they 
reported the bill out of the education committee, but it was 
filibustered and never got to the floor.
  So I understand why my friend the Republican leader is beating his 
chest about how great the Senate works, because it does work if you 
have a cooperative minority, and that is what we have done. We have 
worked very hard to try to get this done, and as a result of our work 
together, we have been able to get it done. But please save everyone 
the lack of history. My friend keeps bringing up: Boy, the Senate is 
working so well. It is very cynical what my friends did in stopping 
everything for the last 4 years. They stopped everything. Hundreds of 
times they stopped bills from moving to the floor. So my friend comes 
to the floor and

[[Page 11685]]

says: Oh man, things are working so great now. Isn't it great the 
Senate is working?
  Cynical as it was, the Republicans had a plan, and that was to oppose 
everything. We had a Democratic President, we had a Democratic Senate, 
and if they opposed everything, it would work out great for them, and 
it did. It wasn't good for the country, but they are now in the 
majority. Now, how long they stay there remains to be seen.
  If you look at the poll numbers about how well my friend is doing, 
the Republican leader is not doing very well, with the lowest numbers 
since they started doing polling on leaders--Democratic or Republican 
leaders.
  So we will continue to cooperate when we can. The highway bill is 
coming up, and I hope we can work together to get something done on 
that. It is something that is long overdue. We have tried to get that 
done in the past, but we had Republican objections on everything we 
tried.
  We have had 33 short-term extensions on the highway bill--33. We used 
to do them as a matter of routine every 5 years. But that isn't the way 
it is any longer. But we are going to cooperate as much as we can on 
the highway bill and everything else.

                          ____________________