Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal
Sen. Harry Reid made it clear Tuesday he believes he can and will win in November despite polls showing him trailing his major Republican competitors.
"If the election were held today, I'd win," he said during an interview on his rural tour bus between stops in Minden and Carson City.
Reid pointed out that the general election ballot could have eight candidates for U.S. senator: himself, the Republican primary survivor, four independents, an Independent American Party candidate and a Tea Party candidate. Some frustrated voters may choose the ballot's ninth option: None of the above.
"Do the math," said Reid candidly.
The Democratic senator is on a three-day tour through the state during his run for a fifth six-year term.
In Carson City, Mayor Bob Crowell told a crowd of 150 people some of the things Reid has brought to the capital.
"It's amazing what Carson City has to offer and a lot of that is because of this gentleman," said Crowell. He listed funding to build the Boys & Girls Club, more than $10 million to reconstruct and modernize the Carson airport, money for the V&T Railway project and 6,000 acres of federal land coming to the city from the lands bill as examples.
Facing low approval ratings and fervent backlash to the recently passed health care reform, Reid said he intends to get the word out on the positive things he has done for Nevada.
"I'm not very good at blowing my own horn," he said. "Some other people will help me do that, I hope."
Reid blamed much of the opposition to the health care debate on lobbying and misinformation by the health insurance industry.
"We haven't had an opportunity to tell people what is in this bill because of the millions of dollars health care companies are spending to confuse people," he said.
But now, he said, the shoe is on the other foot.
"It's no longer a bill. It's the law," he said.
Repealing it, Reid said, would mean cutting people off of insurance, taking tax credits away from businesses that provide health benefits and again letting insurers deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. He said repeal would also re-open the "doughnut hole" - the gap in Medicare coverage that often hits seniors with unexpected medical bills.
"You no longer have to worry about the doughnut hole," he said. "We filled it."
Reid told audiences in Minden and Carson City that 750,000 people in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008, 70 percent because of health care bills they couldn't pay.
"Eighty percent of that 70 percent had health insurance," Reid said.
He said health care insurers denying care is one of the driving forces behind the new law.
"We have to make sure when people get sick or hurt, going to a doctor is a right, not a privilege," he said.
Reid also rejected claims the law will cost billions, saying the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cut the deficit $143 billion the first decade and $1.3 trillion the second decade.
On the subject of the deficit, Reid said, "I don't want to be partisan but in the last months of the Clinton Administration, we were paying down the debt."
He said that was before "trillions of dollars in tax cuts and two wars unpaid for" during the Bush presidency.
Reid said despite the vehement opposition by Congressional Republicans during the health care debate, he has no plans to change how he deals with them.
He said health care was "a unique piece of legislation at a unique time in our country," and that the bill "was near death a lot of times."
"When I went to Washington, we had lots of moderate Republicans," he said. "That's not the case now."
Other major issues, he said, are different.
"I think the Republicans will have to help us on some of this stuff," he said.
The next big issue for the House and Senate, he said, is reforming regulation of Wall Street.
"We owe them a punch or two," Reid said. "No regulation didn't work. We also know that too much regulation is bad too."
Another major issue Congress must deal with, he said, is the nation's energy dependence and climate change. He touted construction of a huge solar generating station in southern Nevada and plans for another major solar project.
Third on his list, he said, is immigration reform, which includes protecting U.S. borders and developing a meaningful guest worker program.
Asked when the nation will bring troops home from Iraq, Reid said he supports doing just that and, after spending $1 trillion to free the Iraqi people and establish a government, "it's time to take the training wheels off."
But he had an additional comment on the subject: "I disliked Saddam Hussein as much as anyone but the Iraq War was a war of choice, not a war of necessity."
Finally, asked about the status of the Yucca Mountain project, he said the story all along has been, "No matter what I do it's not enough."
"I cut funding to the project. It wasn't enough. Then President Obama eliminated funding. That wasn't good enough. Now people are saying repeal the law. Why? It's dead," he said.