Senate is ‘playing chicken’ with NSA spy program, White House says

The White House and top Republican Senators traded dire warnings as a standoff over a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program threatened to continue into the weekend. If Senators do not act before leaving Washington for a week-long recess, the legal authority underpinning the NSA’s bulk collection of private telephone records will expire at midnight May 31. The House, now on an extended recess of its own, passed a White House-backed bill replacing the existing program with one that would keep the records in private hands except under limited circumstances.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has fiercely opposed that legislation, calling it untested and potentially harmful to national security. White House press secretary Josh Earnest renewed calls to pass the House bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, saying any other legislation would lead to a lapse in legal authority for the phone records program -- which would phase out over a six-month period -- as well as other less-controversial investigative tools. “We’ve got people in the US Senate right now who are playing chicken with us,” he said, adding that “there is no plan B” if the House bill is not passed.