N.S.A. and Other Matters Leave McConnell's Senate in Disarray By J. Steinhauer and J. Weisman | nytimes.com | May 23, 2015 Excerpts: WASHINGTON - "The sleepy United States senators thought they were done voting. But then, around 1 a.m. on the Saturday before Memorial Day, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and presidential candidate, marched spryly to the Senate floor to let it be known that, no, he would not agree to extend the federal government's bulk collection of phone records program. Not even for one day." "With that, Senator Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican who only a few hours before was ebullient with the passage of a major trade package, was reduced to ordering his colleagues back to Washington next Sunday to try again to prevent the act from expiring. The unexpected legislative collapse on the Senate floor, and Mr. McConnells morose departure, pointed up the quandary that has emerged since Republicans took control." ....... "They have had successes, like passage of the hard-fought bill that could pave the way to the largest trade agreement in a generation and a bill to give Congress a voice in the Iran nuclear negotiations. But as senators raced for the airport on Saturday after a six-week session that ended in disarray, they left behind a wreck of promises made by Mr. McConnell on how a renewed Senate would operate. Mr. McConnell has found himself vexed by Democratic delaying tactics he honed in the minority, five presidential aspirants with their own agendas and a new crop of conservative firebrands demanding their say." "Mr. McConnell promised that his party would instill more discipline, avoiding the last-minute legislative cliffhangers that have long marked Congress and left government workers and the capital markets in a state of constant unease. Instead, he allowed the Senate to depart with a key national security program dangling on the precipice of extinction. Senators also failed again to find a long-term solution for fixing the nation's crumbling roads. In a measure to give Congress a say in any global deal on Iran's nuclear program, Mr. McConnell's efforts were felled by his own party." read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/u...ers-vex-senate-leader-and-leave-disarray.html ....... IMO: Well, Mr. McConnell promised a lot of things he couldn't follow through with, and as a result, he left the holiday weekend a mosh pit of incomplete worked on bills that are important to this country, while Congress went flying out of Washington in a miasma of undone legislation that America needs to survive. Letting the Patriot Act experience a natural death, passing bills to upgrade the infrastructure of our highways, railways, creating jobs for Americans, instead of foreign countries, a new minimum wage for all American workers would have been constructive legislation. While giving their yearly tax cuts, perks and incentives to the wealthy, republicans continue to cut vital social programs for the poor and unemployed, and cannot make a clear budget that will be sufficient to remedy the huge deficit the republicans are building for the American taxpayers to pay, so while republicans spout about austerity, they are spending like the average citizens can readily pay for their extravagances. In an effort to reclaim some of that money, the republicans feel they can mask the expensive government they run for the American citizens to pay for, ceasing to fund programs, allowing other programs to run out, and flatly looking to raising bigger taxes on gas, bigger taxes on sales of cars, and wherever they can siphon a few bucks in their frantic search to lower the deficit before the 2016 elections. All of this unfairness, discrimination in order to pay the wealthy their yearly tax cuts seems like an unusual case of discrimination toward the dwindling middle working class in America. Mitch McConnell has shown he cannot run the Senate and it is doomed to negligible infighting tactics, an unusually high deficit, and fierce infighting for power that republicans can never seem to master. McConnell's colossal errors in judgment has marred his effectiveness. Like, why not deal with the N.S.A. statutory deadline legislation first. N.S.A., since Mitch McConnell's arrival as Majority leader, was never the subject of a public hearing or a formal drafting of a bill.
