BILLY SURATT/GETTY IMAGES
KENTUCKY’S
KING
quences has overrun Washington.
McConnell has more than doubled
the previous high-water mark for
the number of filibusters deployed
to block legislation, infamously declaring that his “top political priority” was to make President Barack
Obama a one-term president. This
obstruction has had serious consequences, as the Great Recession
grinds on and large-scale problems
like climate change march inexora-
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
bly forward. Congress has failed to
address the nation’s most pressing
challenges, and America has come
to look more and more like McConnell’s Kentucky.
At the Paducah plant, and
throughout the Bluegrass State,
McConnell’s influence is a complicated, even poisonous one.
As other aging nuclear facilities
have been shuttered, Paducah
has groaned its way into the 21st
century. The plant has become
a barely functional relic in the
midst of a decades-long power
U.S. Senator
Mitch
McConnell
(left) talks
with U.S.
Enrichment
Corp. General
Manager
Howard
Pulley during
a media
tour of the
uraniumenrichment
Paducah
Gaseous
Diffusion
Plant on
Thursday,
Aug. 12,
1999.