Harry Reid Says He's Concerned PIPA Will Break The Internet, But We Must Move Forward With It, Because Of 'Jobs'

from the say-what-now? dept

In a short appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday, Senate leader Harry Reid continued to insist that the Senate intended to move forward with PIPA, despite the widespread concerns, despite the White House’s statement against the bill, and despite multiple Senators — including bill co-sponsors — asking him to hold off putting the bill to a vote.

What’s stunning is how misleading Senator Reid is being here. First, he claims that the bill is about “jobs,” despite a total lack of evidence that that’s true. In fact, as has been noted plenty of times here, the part of the economy that is creating jobs — the startup/tech sector — is the one who gets burdened by this bill. David Gregory then responds by pointing out that people keep pointing out to him online that this bill isn’t really about jobs, and will harm the internet. Reid then tries to pretend that this is a new revelation. He notes that it was “reported out of the committee unanimously” back in May. That’s true, but that was back before most people understood the bill, or the internet had spoken out. Even then, many of us were quite clear in speaking out about why this bill was a problem. But Harry Reid pretends that it’s “just in the last few weeks” that anyone has raised concerns.” That’s flat out ridiculous.

Next he claims that he’s working with Senator Feinstein on this, since she’s “in the middle” of the issue, representing both Northern and Southern California, where the issue is loudest. This would be the same Senator Feinstein who is so tone deaf to what’s happening in her own state, that just weeks ago she insisted that she didn’t know the tech industry was upset about the bill.

But the really stunning part? After these bizarre claims, he says, of those who have complained about the bill:

“I think they’re right. I think it could create some problems. That’s why I’ve spoken Senator Leahy, the Chairman of the Committee. I’ve written a letter to the ranking member Senator Grassley, saying that some issues have come up. I think this needs to be a winner for everyone — not just for the content people…. so we need to work on this.”

But then he still insists that they’re going forward with the bill! He notes that he’s expecting a “manager’s amendment” from Leahy — but Leahy has already said that the manager’s amendment is just going to delay the implementation of the DNS issues. If Senator Reid really wants to make sure the bill is a “winner for everyone” then shouldn’t we take some time to make sure that everyone’s happy? It’s doubly concerning that he appears to think these issues “just came up” in the past few weeks. That shows that he’s totally and completely out of touch on the many months that people were speaking out against the problems of this bill. If anything that’s even more reason to delay things, since Reid himself is admitting he’s totally ignorant of the many, many, many problems that people have been discussing for months now.

It’s such a politician’s response: he pretends that he’s in agreement with the concerns of everyone… but then immediately admits he’s ignoring those concerns and pushing forward with a bad bill, which he clearly never understood, and which it appears he just found out there was criticism around, despite the fact it’s been going on for months. Everything in this statement points to reasons not to vote on the bill on the 24th, and yet he wants to move forward with it. It’s just stunning.

Filed Under: concerns, harry reid, interent, jobs, pipa, protect ip, senate, sopa