WASHINGTON — The Senate headed into its August recess on Wednesday without voting on a cybersecurity bill, adding it to a contentious to-do list for September that includes a push to disapprove the Iran nuclear deal and a spending fight mired in abortion politics.
The delay of the cybersecurity bill followed a pattern that has marked the Senate since the Republicans took control this year. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has struggled to accelerate the legislative track while still permitting members of both parties to amend bills on the floor, as he has repeatedly promised to do.
In addition, Republicans’ return to the thorny abortion debate — this time by inserting a bill to defund Planned Parenthood into the calendar ahead of the cybersecurity measure — left too little time to finish the computer security legislation. Presidential politics has also frequently played a part, with four Republican senators set to participate in primary debates on Thursday.
Mr. McConnell tried this summer to attach the cybersecurity measure to a broader defense bill as a way to mousetrap Democrats into voting for it, but that effort failed. Mr. McConnell then went on to other legislative matters, including a major trade package. When the Senate finally turned to the cybersecurity bill, Mr. McConnell could not get an easy agreement on amendments, which further delayed the action, as did objections from some privacy advocates.
Negotiating amendment deals may have slowed legislation far more than Mr. McConnell anticipated when he took the Senate’s reins, even though he repeatedly used filibuster tactics based on amendment disagreements to block legislation when he was in the minority. He promised to deliver a different culture while in the majority, but getting consent among 100 senators is no easier for him than it was for his predecessor, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
This has sometimes produced dire results for Congress. A fight over changes to the Patriot Act — led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who wanted a long list of amendments — led to a short-term expiration of the law.
Few senators wanted to stick around beyond Wednesday, noting that the House was long gone. But senators in both parties said they feared that another cyberattack could hit the government or the private sector while they were home for the monthlong break. “There should be concern about that,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. Should there be a major attack in August, he said, voters could wonder “why government didn’t try to do something to prevent it.”
In April, the House passed a measure that would push companies to share access to their computer networks and records with federal investigators. Neither the House legislation nor the bill to be considered by the Senate would have prevented attacks such as the recent theft of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management.
But the House measure was the legislative branch’s most aggressive response yet to a spate of private-sector computer attacks, including a major breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment, the exposure of credit card numbers of tens of thousands of Target customers, and the compromising of personal records of millions of people who did business with the health insurer Anthem.
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