Harry Reid: “earlier today a number of the minority held a press conference. I have not spoken to Senator Daschle, but I know what…”

“earlier today a number of the minority held a press conference. I have not spoken to Senator Daschle, but I know what took place at that press conference. It was all directed toward Tom Daschle. I think it was so unfair what they did. They went to some printer and got a little thing printed up, and they passed this out to the press as a progress report on what has happened in the Senate. Of course, they selectively picked some things that are not totally completed at this time. But it is interesting how they did this. For example, they talked about judicial nominations. I talked to Senator Leahy yesterday. I think we have done 73, or something like that, judicial nominations--way ahead of what has ever been done before. We have a batch of them we are going to do today. They complained about the Defense appropriations conference, that it is incomplete. We just finished the bill yesterday, Mr. President, in record time. Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye did this in record time. The largest Defense bill in the history of the world, and we completed it yesterday in record time. Homeland security, we have worked out an arrangement that we are going to go to that immediately when we return. The minute we get back here there will be a debate on that and we will be on the bill on Wednesday, the second day we are back. Prescription drugs, they criticize Senator Daschle for not doing something on prescription drugs.”