WASHINGTON — A complex standoff over a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program that has pitted the White House against Senate Republican leaders against a Republican presidential candidate threatened to extend into the wee hours Saturday morning on Capitol Hill.

If senators don’t 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 impasse continued late into Friday, after the Senate passed contentious trade legislation, then recessed for several hours to allow the clock to run out on a procedural roadblock to the surveillance legislation.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the presidential candidate, tweeted his approval of the delay: “Will be seeing everyone overnight it seems. My filibuster continues to end NSA illegal spying.”

Votes were set for 1 a.m. Saturday. With Paul’s consent, Senate consideration of surveillance bills might have been accelerated by several hours.

Besides Paul’s parliamentary maneuvering, intrigue surrounded whether the Senate’s action, when it comes, would gain House approval before the surveillance authority’s expiration.

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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 phone records in private hands except under limited circumstances. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and most fellow Senate Republicans have fiercely opposed that legislation, calling it untested and potentially harmful to national security.

In unusually lengthy floor remarks kicking off the Senate’s business Friday morning, McConnell said the system established under the House bill is “untried” and would be “slower and more cumbersome than the one that currently helps keep us safe.”

“At a moment of elevated threat, it would be a mistake to take from our intelligence community any of the valuable tools needed to build a complete picture of terrorist networks and their plans,” McConnell said. “The intelligence community needs these tools to protect Americans.”

Later in the day, 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.


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