I have come to the limit of my patience concerning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In an address to a Kentucky Rotary Club meeting on Aug. 7, he blamed Congress’ failure to accomplish much except for confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court to excessive expectations generated by President Donald Trump. He said this when almost every senator is on vacation in his or her state for an entire month. Senators won’t return until after Labor Day.

Does Sen. McConnell think we are morons? Nobody would characterize the Senate’s business week as lengthy. After seven months at this blistering pace, the Senate has only confirmed Neil Gorsuch, the new cabinet, some deputy directors, maybe some third-level appointees and very little else.

Mitch reminds me of Marie Antoinette, who said, after she was informed that French peasants couldn’t find bread, “let them eat cake.”

We have no 2018 budget, we have no action on raising the debt limit and there is no tax reform before the Senate. In July, the Senate fumbled the repeal or replace (I no longer can keep up with what the goal is presently) of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

I remember hearing the wise pundits in Washington refer to Mitch as a master of Senate rules and predict that he would figure out a way to get all this done.  Like a magician, he would pull the rabbit out of his hat.

Well, he pulled his hand out of the Obamacare hat this summer, and his hand was empty.

The Senate didn’t need months and months to come up with a plan to revoke or reform Obamacare. Why not go back less than two years to December 2015 and take the language out of “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015?”

The Senate passed it when President Obama was in office.  What has happened since December 2015?

The answer, of course, is that the senators fully expected President Obama to veto any Republican attempt to kill Obamacare, which he did in January 2016.

Now, there is a Republican president who will sign it. It takes a politician, or maybe a lawyer, to blame a president who would sign a piece of legislation for the failure of the Senate to pass that legislation.

The true explanation is that all Democrats really wanted Obamacare, but not all Republicans REALLY wanted to repeal it. So even after seven years of chanting “repeal or replace,” Republicans can’t do it.

I am aware of the intent of the U.S. Constitution that the Senate should act as a brake on the passions of the people and their representatives in the House of Representatives.

By the way, the filibuster was not foreseen by the Constitution. It is a rule of the Senate, and can be removed or altered by a majority of the Senators at any time.

Actually, the dusty rules of the Senate, including the filibuster, are not the problem.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the Senate Republican leadership is more culpable than the manner in which that most exclusive club, the U.S. Senate, operates.

More and more, it’s time for a new majority leader.

Michael Waldron is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, who was born and raised in Niles. He previously served on the Niles Community School Board of Education. He can be reached at ml.waldron@sbcglobal.net.