Mitch McConnell: Senate Stonewaller

The Daily Beast has compiled a list of the Senate's biggest obstructionists. Sadly, our own Mitch McConnell comes in at number four:

As the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has set the stage for the numerous procedural difficulties Democrats have faced in moving legislation forward. “Mitch McConnell is the architect of the Republican filibuster, which now is applied to virtually all controversial bills,” Thomas Mann, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast. While a Republican filibuster on major legislation like health-care reform are hardly surprising, critics have accused McConnell of going overboard by flexing the muscle on less objectionable legislation. This month, the GOP filibustered an extension of an unemployment bill; when they finally relented, it passed 98-0. Republican leaders said they did it to protest what they saw as a lack of consideration for their proposed amendments. But arguments over parliamentary procedure were likely little comfort for the 200,000 laid-off workers who temporarily lost their unemployment benefits thanks to the delay. Majority Leader Harry Reid has gone after the Republican leadership in recent days over a host of alleged delays, including putting off confirming the surgeon general during the H1N1 crisis.