Capitol Words a project of the Sunlight Foundation

Sen. Harry Reid

Mr. President, Winston Churchill said:

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

I know each of my colleagues in the Senate--regardless of political party--has the courage to stand up and speak in defense of his or her principles. This year I hope we each find the courage and faith to listen and cooperate as well.

The Founders, in their wisdom, when drafting our Constitution, created a divided government. That is what they did with this bicameral legislature they envisioned. They also looked to see a robust debate on important issues. I do not believe they envisioned the obstructionism and gridlock that ground the Senate to a halt last year. Influenced by the tea party voices, Republicans forced us to waste months on routine legislation, they nearly shut down our government, and they held hostage the full faith and credit of the United States.

So I remind my Republican colleagues that not every discussion, every matter we deal with, should collapse into a fight. We do not have to fight about everything. Every piece of legislation we consider should not result in a political battle.

When we work together, we achieve greater results for the American people. That is why this year Democrats and Republicans must seek common ground. We must also admit it when we find that common ground, and work on that common ground we have discovered.

We should all be able to agree that Congress must do whatever it takes to help create jobs and strengthen our economy. Democrats believe it will take commonsense policies that protect the middle class and smart investments that rebuild our roads, bridges, and schools, our water and sewer systems.

We must combat income inequality now or the rich will keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer, while the middle class disappears. That is not fiction; it is fact.

I watched on public television within the past week or so a wonderful piece on ``Bill Moyers Journal.'' I was so impressed with that, I called and spoke with him afterwards. I am not in the habit of calling people like that very often, but over the years we have spoken a couple times--three or four times probably over the many years I have been here.

The reason I was so impressed with what he said is that it reminded me I think of what a lot of people should be reminded. He talked about going to a public elementary school, he talked about going to a public high school, a State-supported university, and during all this time of going to libraries, public libraries.

We have to understand that government has been so helpful to most of us, and we cannot turn away from institutions of government which have been so important to us over the years.

So I repeat, we must combat income inequality and combat it now or the rich will keep getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and the middle class being squeezed all the more. I repeat, that is not fiction; it is a fact.

We Democrats will continue to defend working Americans, and we hope Republicans will join us in that regard. But if they allow the tea party to turn every issue into an all-or-nothing battle, we cannot back down--we should not back down--and we will always side with the middle class.

We saw the results of Republican brinkmanship in December.

I was on a--well, I will not talk about TV shows--but as soon as we had the vote here, I walked up to the press gallery, as I was requested to do, and complimented publicly my Republican colleague Senator McConnell--and I was happy it did get some press--because Senator McConnell and I made an arrangement here to complete this legislation, and he stuck by that. I know he had tremendous pressure, and I cannot understand all the pressure he did have. But I admire and appreciate what he did in sticking with what the Senate did. So we then refused to give up on a tax cut for hard-working families, and it turned out well because Members of Congress came to the realization that the American people said they could not afford a thousand-dollar tax hike. Putting money back in the pockets of 160 million American workers should not have been so difficult. It should not have been a fight in the first place. I hope we all learned a lesson in this battle.

It is time for us to stop fighting. I repeat, we do not have to fight about everything. There comes a time--and that time is now--when we need to have the courage to stand up and fight for what is right.

This year it will be as important that we summon the courage to sit down and listen. Rather than standing up and fighting, we need to sit down and listen more often.