Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell Forces Vote on Keystone XL Pipeline: Senate to Vote by Next Week as Some Worry of Environnmental Impact

The Senate is on track to vote on the Keystone pipeline project before the end of next week after its new majority leader, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, forced the body through what Politico called a "frantic nighttime series" aimed at killing Democratic amendments.

The Republican leader on Thursday followed through on his threat to keep his colleagues working late, insisting on two so-called live quorum calls requiring senators to come to the floor, an "unusual step," according to Fox News.

Sergeant-at-Arms Frank Larkin was also instructed to request the presence of absent lawmakers.

GOP and Democratic senators had been unable to come to an agreement that would have allowed for up-or-down votes on the various amendments to the pipeline-project bill In the end, the Republican majority managed to kill the proposals; among other things, Democrats wanted to put an 8-cent fee on every barrel of oil that moves through the pipeline and require financial disclosure of those who benefit from the tar-sands project in Canada.

Keystone faces opposition from environmentalists, and President Barack Obama in 2012 rejected its permit amid protests about the pipeline's impact on Nebraska's environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region. If Republicans in Congress approve the project as expected, Obama is expected to veto the resulting bill, according to Politico.

In the meantime, however, the congressional battle drew heated reactions from both sides of the aisle.

"Forcing the Senate to vote on amendments they haven't had a chance to read and denying senators the chance to speak on their own amendments for a single minute is a severe breach of Senate norms and protocol," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, now the Senate's minority leader. "[It] certainly [is] not in keeping with the Senate's traditions of open debate."

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, however, did not buy the outrage.

"Apparently the Democrats' objection to voting on their own amendments was that they needed more time to review...their own amendments," he said via Twitter.