Spotlight: Expiration of NSA's spying program looms as GOP infighting continues

As the Capitol Hill is stumbling towards the imminent deadline on a reform bill on the U. S. spy agency's bulk phone metadata collection program, Republican infighting again steals the limelight.

"I want to reassure everybody that there are plenty of safeguards in this program, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, on ABC News on Sunday. " Nobody at the NSA (National Security Agency) is routinely listening to your telephone conversations."

Though the Republican-controlled House passed last week by an overwhelming vote of 338 to 88 a surveillance reform bill the USA Freedom Act - which would end NSA's spying program, the Republican leader in the upper chamber, a strong advocate spearheading an ill-fated effort to reauthorize through 2020 NSA's surveillance program without any reforms, refused to budge.

"I think it (NSA program) is an important tool if we're going to have the maximum opportunity to defend our people here at home, and I don't think the House bill does that," McConnell told ABC. " I think it basically leads us to the end of the program."

And that is exactly what Republican Senator Rand Paul wants. Also hailing from the state of Kentucky, Paul just recently announced his 2016 presidential bid.

While expressing his dissent from the House-passed surveillance reform bill, Paul's aversion to his fellow Kentucky Republican's proposal to reauthorize the program without reform is even stronger.

"If the President's obeying the law, he should stop it (NSA's surveillance program) immediately and we shouldn't be doing this," Paul told the U.S. TV network NBC on Sunday. "I don't want to replace it with another system."

What Paul referred to was a court decision made on May 7 that ruled NSA's surveillance program illegal.

"...(Patriot Act provisions) have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," said a verdict by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

However, the court did not go so far as to mandate termination of the program, leaving it to Congress to pass reforms.

The White House, together with the Justice Department and NSA itself have been vocal in its support for the USA Freedom Act which preserves the administration's ability to obtain more limited amount of records while ending the controversial practice of collecting information on millions of American phone calls.

Two weeks from now, without action from the Congress, NSA's bulk spying program, first revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, would expire.

Sensing dim prospect of a clean reauthorization of the Section 215 in the post 9/11 Patriot Act, a key provision that has been enabling the NSA to collect Americans' phone metadata for years, McConnell has already filed a short-term extension of the existing law.

But his last resort is likely to unravel as at least two senators, including Paul, have threatened to filibuster extension of the NSA program either in short-term or in long-term.

Meanwhile, shortly before the House passed the reform bill last week, House Speaker John Boehner called on his fellow Republicans in the Senate to act promptly.

"I'm not going to speculate what the Senate will or will not do, " Boehner told reporters. "All I know is that these programs expire at the end of this month."

"The House is going to act and I hope the Senate will act soon as well," said Boehner, in an appeal most likely to fall on deaf ears in Senate.

With other two competing priorities - a trade bill and a highway bill - cramming the Senate schedule before lawmakers leave town on Friday for a week-long Memorial Day recess, inaction from the Senate as regards to the surveillance reform bill is becoming increasingly likely. Endite