The US Senate was poised for an all-night voting session on NSA reform after the Republican leadership was unable to ram through a temporary extension of surveillance powers.
Senate leader Mitch McConnell had been hoping to get unanimous consent to push through an extension of the controversial Patriot Act for either one or two weeks to allow senators to return home for Memorial Day recess.
However, such a deal requires the consent of all 100 senators and Kentucky Republican Rand Paul made clear he was opposed.
Will be seeing everyone overnight it seems. My filibuster continues to end NSA illegal spying.
— Dr. Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 23, 2015
The result is that, under Senate rules, that body cannot take under consideration the USA Freedom Act, the NSA reform bill overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives last week, until 1AM EDT on Saturday morning.
As of Friday afternoon, the USA Freedom Act was expected to fall just shy of the 60 vote supermajority needed to proceed with debate under Senate rules.
However, the opposition of many waverers was based on a desire to get out of Washington and return home as quickly as possible.
As Nevada Republican Dean Heller, a co-sponsor of the bill, told reporters on Friday: “We’re losing the ‘politics of going home’ argument with our conference.”
He added that proponents of a short-term extension were able to say that supporting the Freedom Act would mean “you’re staying all week. So how do you win that argument?”.
The answer may just be by forcing them to stay in Washington regardless of how they vote, which is precisely what Paul seems to be doing.
If the Senate does nothing, the controversial provisions of the Patriot Act opposed by the Kentucky expire automatically at the end of May.
