U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, who has represented Rhode Island in the Senate since first winning election in 1996, is poised to become chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.
That’s after Democrat Raphael Warnock and David Ossoff won run-off races in Georgia Tuesday; both Democrats and Republicans will have 50 seats, but Vice President-elect Kamala Harris could cast tie-breaking votes for Democrats.
Reed spoke about the outlook in an interview from Washington, D.C. The interview took place about two hours before supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol and breached it.
Donnis: What will Democratic control of the Senate mean for the country?
Reed: I think it will be good for the country. I think you will have an opportunity for President-elect Biden to move forward on many of the initiatives he’s talking about. First is a much more effective response to COVID. Because without defeating COVID, we can’t really restore the economy. Second, I think he will look at another stimulus package, which would be very helpful, particularly to the states as well as the individuals.
Then I think longer term, he’s going to have to reestablish our positive relationships with allies all across the globe who have felt, I think, shunned or otherwise by President Trump. And then they’re the big issues of climate change, which have a huge effect on Rhode Island, the Ocean State. He will be reestablishing, I hope, a sensible policy to diminish the effects of climate change, as much as we can. Those initiatives I don’t think would be as strongly supported by a majority of Republicans in the in the Senate. They will get our support, and hopefully working with Republicans, because it’s very closely divided, we can make some progress. And again, I think a bipartisan bill would be in order and, and the vice president will call for that.
Donnis: You will become chairman of the Armed Services Committee, what would be the significance of that for you personally, and for Rhode Island?
Reed: It’s quite a responsibility. I mean, the personal significance is that overall, the the role of the committee is to ensure the men and women of the Armed Forces have the equipment and support and benefits they need. So as someone who served for 12 years in the Army that has a personal perspective to it. But overall there are huge issues here.
We are in a confrontational mode with China in parts of the Pacific, the Russians are trying to reestablish themselves in their near-perimeter, and also just undertook the most significant and severe cyber attack on the United States in the history of the country. And we’re still trying to figure out what we do with that. Those are just two issues. We still have ongoing operations in Afghanistan. And in the midst of all that we have to continue to transform the Department of Defense — make it more efficient, make sure that we’re investing in R&D so that we have the best technology, and that that technology will deter our opponents. So there is a significant number of issues that we have to address.
And I look forward to working with my colleagues. Sen. Inhofe, the Republican chairman, has been a very good and cooperative individual. We have differences, but we don’t let them stop us from getting the legislation done and working for the men and women of the Armed Forces and the nation.
Donnis: Even in Georgia, we see how the nation is so closely divided. President Trump attracted a crowd of thousands of people to Washington who believe his false claims that the election was stolen. How does the country come back from this level of division?
Reed: Well, that’s going to be one of the major task of President-elect Biden. He’s going to have to do it with tone. You know, not with the adversarial divisiveness that has been constant from President Trump, but one of the unity and searching for common ground, not differences. Then there has to be actions too. We have to have a program that’s pragmatic, that addresses the needs of people. we have to also and he has to also be constantly reaching out, trying to reach across the aisle reach across the gaps that exist in America today, to listen to people as much as to talk to them. That’s one of the reasons why I think he was elected. I think Americans thought that he could take this mission of unifying us, bring us together, and and together moving forward. And they saw four years of division in the business by President Trump and they rejected that.
Ian Donnis covers politics for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at idonnis@ripr.org. Sign up here for his weekly RI politics newsletter.
