Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid became the 34th person to lie in state in the US Capitol Rotunda Wednesday, with his former lieutenant, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), saying “few have shaped the workings of this building” like the pugnacious Nevadan.
Reid, who died Dec. 28 at the age of 82 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, spent 30 years in the Senate and was the Silver State’s longest-serving member of Congress.
“Few have dedicated their lives to the work of the people quite like Harry did,” said Schumer, the current Senate majority leader. “And today, our feelings of both loss and gratitude are immense.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hailed what she called Reid’s “brilliant strategic mind,” adding “to see him lead and legislate was to see a master at work.”
President Biden did not attend the Capitol ceremony, having eulogized Reid at a weekend memorial service in Las Vegas, but stopped by the Rotunda Wednesday afternoon to pay respects to his Senate colleague.
Reid achieved national prominence during his eight-year tenure as majority leader, during which he changed the Senate rules to lower the threshold for confirming President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority.
The move promptly backfired on Reid and the Democrats when Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014 expanded the use of the so-called “nuclear option” to get all three of President Donald Trump’s nominees confirmed to the highest court in the land.
Reid also played a key role in securing the passage of ObamaCare and an economic stimulus bill at the outset of the Great Recession, but he may be best remembered for his combative, win-at-all-costs attitude toward politics.
Most famously, Reid falsely claimed on the Senate floor during the 2012 presidential campaign that GOP nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes during the previous decade, a lie he never retracted. When asked about the accusation in a 2015 CNN interview, Reid retorted: “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
The following year, Reid tripled down in an interview with the Washington Post, calling it “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
In an October 2020 interview with the Associated Press, Reid said Biden should allow just three weeks to try to work with Republicans if he were elected president. After that, Reid said, “the time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the [Senate] filibuster” — a course of action Biden advocated during a Tuesday speech in Atlanta.
Reid is the second former Senate majority leader to lie in state at the Capitol in as many months, following the late Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, who died Dec. 5 at the age of 98.
