Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/senate-majority-leader-reid-weighs-partisan-divides-security-in-iraq Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., discusses how partisan differences have impacted the pace of recent legislative progress on Capitol Hill, the state of the Iraq war and the next steps for the Democratic-led Congress in an interview with Ray Suarez. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: Now, our Newsmaker interview with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. And to Ray Suarez. RAY SUAREZ: Senator Reid, welcome to the program.SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), Senate Majority Leader: Thank you very much for allowing me to be on your show. RAY SUAREZ: Well, at the beginning of this year, the Democrats returned to the majority after 12 years in the minority. You and Speaker Pelosi announced a very ambitious agenda. Now that one year has passed and you look back, how has it gone? SEN. HARRY REID: Well, we've been able to accomplish quite a bit, but not very much, certainly not as much as I wanted to. I'm kind of frustrated, like the American people.There are a lot of things that need to be done. We found a blockage on nearly everything we tried.But in spite of that, in spite of the fact that in just a few short months, rather than two years, the Republicans blocked us 62 times. The record for two years was 61. So in just a few short months, they had more filibusters than in the history of the Congress before.But in spite of that, we were able to get things done, with the most sweeping ethics and lobbying reform. We were able to get good things done as it relates to a balanced budget. We passed that.We were able to get relief for 9/11. We got the commission recommendations there. We were able to just recently get some good energy legislation passed, but not enough. We still have so much more to do.And what I've learned, I guess, during the past year is that we want to change and the Bush Republicans want to keep things the way they are. So we want to change things, and we're going to work very hard next year to see if we can get the Republicans to join with us more often than last year, and not have as many things blocked, and try to do some more things.