Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) called Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) a “peckerhead” for forcing colleagues to grind through procedural votes Friday night and Super Bowl Sunday in order to pass a funding package for Ukraine and Israel.
Fetterman, who often sports a Pittsburgh Steelers beanie around the Senate, didn’t seem pleased at all over Paul’s threat to keep senators churning through votes during the Super Bowl to make the process of passing an emergency defense spending supplemental as arduous as possible.
“Really, the biggest story is we’re all here tonight at 8 o’clock on Friday night because of just one peckerhead,” Fetterman fumed to reporters outside the Senate chamber.
The Pennsylvania senator than joked that he should wear a tee-shirt that just says: “It’s because of the Republicans.”
“That’s the answer. No border? Well, because of the Republicans,” he said, referring to most of the Senate Republican conference voting this week to block a bipartisan border security deal that Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) negotiated with the White House and Senate Democrats over four months.
Fetterman vented his frustration over Paul’s tactics after the Kentucky senator repeated his threat not to let Senate colleagues speed up the timeline for passing the aid package.
“I’m doing everything I can to slow down and stop this horrible bill,” Paul wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
He said 32 Senate Republicans “want to keep fighting” to add strict border security reforms to the Ukraine and Israel funding package.
“The leadership of the Senate under [Senate Republican Leader] Mitch McConnell [Ky.] is more concerned with sending your money to Ukraine than they are with the invasion of the southern border and I’ve had enough,” Paul told Fox Business.
“I’ve told them they can vote when hell freezes over,” he declared.