Good Riddance to Harry Reid

Mr. Reid’s leadership changed the Senate dramatically but often carelessly. The upper chamber had traditionally been collegial, high-minded, cautious. During Mr. Reid’s tenure as majority leader from 2007 to 2015, it became more like the House. There was less time for serious floor debates and amendments. Decorum suffered. So did bipartisanship. The Nevadan’s contempt for his political foes didn’t help. Mr. Reid pursued personal vendettas from the Senate floor. He relentlessly attacked the conservative Koch brothers as if they were a threat to America’s survival. Though he was demoted to minority leader after Republicans took the Senate in 2015, Mr. Reid hasn’t given up these attacks. In September, he went after Joe Heck, the Nevada congressman running for the seat that Mr. Reid is vacating. The minority leader, speaking on the Senate floor, said that the Kochs had “anointed” Mr. Heck. “He is their puppet. He is their puppet. He is their puppet.” His nastiest attack came in 2012, when he claimed—as usual from the Senate floor—that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid federal income taxes for a decade. No evidence was offered. When it turned out that Mr. Romney had paid income taxes, Mr. Reid refused to apologize. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he told the Washington Post. To get his way, Mr. Reid was willing to go to extremes. In 2013, wanting to stack the appeals court in Washington, D.C., he pushed through the “nuclear option.” Mr. Reid altered Senate rules to bar filibusters on most judicial nominations, allowing approval with only a simple majority. That change didn’t apply to Supreme Court nominees, but Mr. Reid says he has laid the groundwork to kill the 60-vote requirement for them, too. If Republicans “mess with the Supreme Court, it’ll be changed just like that,” he told Talking Points Memo last week.

In his six years as Democratic majority leader, Reid has done more institutional damage to the Senate than any leader in history. Under his leadership, particularly in the last two years, the Senate has seen some of its most unproductive periods ever. Appropriations bills for national defense, agriculture, and transportation take months, instead of weeks, to pass​—​but at least they pass. Most legislation is issued directly from the majority leader or his surrogates instead of from the committees, where the parties have to deal with each other. The result has been two years of fruitless debate over partisan bills with little to show for it. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget​—​one of its most basic functions​—​since April 29, 2009. But it has been Reid’s abuse of power that has been the most destructive element of his tenure. In a deliberative body like the Senate, each member has two basic rights: to debate and to amend legislation. Unlike the House, where the majority party controls the debate and the amendment process, individual senators, even those in the minority, have considerable power. In addition, there’s no requirement in the Senate that an amendment be germane to the bill to which it’s attached (with some exceptions). In practice, this means minority senators can use the debate period to bring unrelated issues to the public square, and every senator has the opportunity to say his piece. In order to avoid the excessively long and unproductive debate known as a filibuster, Senate rules allow for the body to invoke cloture​—​a procedure to end debate on a pending bill or resolution so that the matter can be voted on.