Harry Reid: “I disagree with what my friend from New Hampshire has said about the content and the direction of the McCain-Edwards…”

“I disagree with what my friend from New Hampshire has said about the content and the direction of the McCain-Edwards legislation. Why don't we decide if he is right or I am right. And how you do that is you come to the Senate and you debate the issue. We are being prevented from doing that today. The Republicans have objected to our going forward to consider this bill. So this will necessitate our going through the procedure of filing a motion to invoke cloture which we will vote on Thursday. I believe rather than wasting that time, we should be here debating the principles enunciated by the Senator from New Hampshire and what we have been saying on this side all day. That seems to be the fair way to do it, rather than talking about all the scary points of this bill from their perspective and the positive points from our perspective. Let's debate the issues. This bill has been around for 5 years in one version or another. We believe that we have refined this legislation. Because of the courageous actions of the Senator from Arizona and the brilliant input of the Senator from North Carolina, we now have a piece of legislation that is extremely good. It is better than the ones that have come before us before. It is so good that on our side we are going to offer very few, if any, amendments because we believe this legislation is so good. This legislation deals with accountability. We spent 8 weeks in this body talking about education.”