https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/26/mitch-grim-reaper-mcconnell-meet-man-who-ruined-senate?fbclid=IwAR3abPEm02g8R_YyNmYLlr79vaSH7Stw8kV7GYsajdhw5GFBCVBrbT0RymU
"Senator McConnell built his Senate career and his rise to power on political money — opposing any and all efforts to curb political influence-money while raising massive amounts of campaign funds. During the 1990s, McConnell became his party’s most prolific fundraiser for Senate races. (He remains so today.) This combination of roles placed McConnell on the fast track into the Republican leadership. In 2003, he became Senate Majority Whip. In 2007, he became Senate Minority Leader. And in 2015, he attained the pinnacle of Senate power, becoming Senate Majority Leader. As Senate Minority Leader, McConnell’s use of the filibuster to obstruct Senate action hit full stride during President Obama’s first term. According to The Atlantic, “In 2009, there were a record 67 filibusters in the first half of the 111th Congress — double the number that occurred in the entire 20-year period between 1950 and 1969.” By the time Congress adjourned in December 2010, “the number of filibusters had swelled to 137 for the entire two-year term of the 111th Congress.” According to The Atlantic, during the 111th Congress, “over 400 bills that had been passed by the House of Representatives — many with broad bipartisan support — died in the Senate without ever having been debated or voted on because of the inability to obtain the 60 votes required by Rule XXII.” McConnell turned what in earlier decades had been a little used super majority requirement to end a filibuster into the operating rule for the Senate. A study by the Congressional Research Service in 2013 found that of the 168 cloture motions that had been filed on presidential nominations in all of American history, 82 of them, almost half, were undertaken by McConnell during the Obama presidency. As Majority Leader, McConnell has continued his decades of obstructionism, using his scheduling powers instead of the filibuster rules."
