John McCain Goes After Fellow GOPer On Senate Floor: He ‘Ought To Learn’ How Congress Operates

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was visibly frustrated when he spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday, responding to Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)’s objection to House-Senate budget negotiations. Lee and others have rejected the negotiations, unless a debt limit increase is taken out of the equation. McCain had harsh words for Lee in response.

The proposed conditionality would “paralyze the process,” McCain stated.

“The senator from Utah keeps talking about back-room, closed-door deals,” he continued, countering with an explanation that that is simply the Senate’s process. If Lee wants to get rid of that, he asked, “then what is the process? … How do we reconcile legislation that is passed by one body and the other body? That’s what we’ve been doing for a couple hundred years.”

Does Lee have another way of doing so? “Of course he doesn’t,” McCain repeated several times.

“Perhaps the senator from Utah doesn’t know about that — the fact that even if they did raise the debt limit, it could not become law because it doesn’t go to the president of the United States,” he added. “So again, maybe the senator from Utah ought to learn a little bit more about how business has been done in the Congress of the United States.”

Oof.

Watch below, via C-SPAN:

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