Harry Reid: “Representative James Garfield, who later became President of the United States, in trying to get a bill through…”

“Representative James Garfield, who later became President of the United States, in trying to get a bill through Congress, said in a letter to an adviser: When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted, we shall, I hope, be in a better temper to legislate. I hope that we would all keep that in mind. We have congressional elections and we have a Presidential election upcoming. I hope we can work our way through to get to some of the issues we need to be talking about. I hope that the majority would allow us, if we are going to talk about education, to go to an education bill and offer amendments and work our way through the process. The fact that we are in the midst of Presidential primaries and congressional elections coming should not prevent us from going to the things we need to be doing. Education is certainly one of them. I hope we could do that in a full and fair debate on education.”