Harry Reid: “this week we are going to take up one of the most important pieces of legislation that will occur this entire…”

“this week we are going to take up one of the most important pieces of legislation that will occur this entire Congress--not this year, not next year, but the entire Congress. That is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--extremely important. In the last Congress, we did not complete it. We were refused the opportunity to debate and amend this legislation--we, the Democrats, in the minority. Things have changed now. The Senate is divided 50-50. The time has come that we work together on this and all legislation. Last week, we did some very important work. We only had one vote last week, but it was an extremely important vote. It was on brownfields legislation, legislation that will allow people all over the State of Nevada and all over the State of Minnesota to clean up spots that are lightly polluted. They are not Superfund sites, but they are sites that right now people are afraid to go onto and develop a shopping center or a park, the reason being, if they go upon the land, there will be a liability under the Superfund legislation. So the brownfields legislation, which passed last week 99-0, will allow these approximately 600,000 sites all over America to be cleaned up. It will create over half a million jobs. It will create tax revenues for local governments of about $2.5 billion. It is important legislation. It is not the number of votes we have; it is what we do with them.”