“Is there enough they can do to help Wall Street? I don’t think so. Big banks? I don’t think so,” Reid told the New York Times in an exit interview published Wednesday. “That’s where the new battle is going to be.”
The 75-year-old Nevada Democrat said Republicans are at odds with Americans when it comes to environmental protection laws.
“They want to eviscerate Clean Air, Clean Water, EPA,” Reid said.
Democrats lost control of the Senate during last month's midterm elections, losing a total of nine seats. Republicans now control both the House and Senate, where they will have a 54-44 majority. (Two members of the Senate are independents.)
Reid told the Times that he is willing to make compromises with Republican lawmakers but not simply to rack up political points.
"I’m happy to work with them,” Reid said of his GOP counterparts. “But I’m not going to throw middle-class America overboard.”
His "somewhat belligerent tone," as the Times described it, seems to be in contrast with postelection comments made by McConnell, the incoming majority leader, who told Yahoo News last week that he hopes to work with Senate Democrats, despite their differences.
"There's not going to be a government shutdown," McConnell said before a meeting with President Obama at the White House. "The president has been way out of line with his executive amnesty, [but] shutting down the government is not the way to respond."
Reid said he plans to run for reelection in 2016, when some of his Senate colleagues — including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — may be running for the Republican presidential nomination.
When asked by the Times whether any of them could become president, Reid replied: “Of what?”
Culled from Yahoo News.
By Dylan Stableford.
No comments:
Post a Comment