Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reached his limit with a Democrat senator’s shenanigans and led a walkout of Republicans from a Committee meeting.
Paul is the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
During the markup of the Fire Grants and Safety Act., Paul fired back over Chair Gary Peters’ (D-MI) antics.
Paul objected to Peters undermining his amendments with procedural moves.
Eventually, Paul had enough and fired back at the Democrat: “That doesn’t make any sense.
“This is legislative legerdemain to obscure the fact that you’re trying to not vote directly on this.
“This is the first time we’ve had a hearing since I’ve been here that I know of that we’ve gotten second-degree amendments on every one of our amendments.
“If this is the way you’re going to run the committee, I would suggest that Republicans leave.
“I don’t see why we should stick around if you’re going to make up the rules.”
Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-AZ), who is now an Independent and leaving the Democrats, tried to calm the situation down by saying:
“We all take a couple of minutes, lower the temperature, just figure out the procedure.
“There’s no need for us to turn this committee hearing into a partisan, ugly place like we’ve seen in other committees.”
While Peters did not apologize, he said later:
“I look forward to working with Sen. Paul and hopefully we can find common ground to go forward.
“Some of the amendments he offered were not germane to the substance of the bill that we were dealing with.”
According to Mediate:
Paul was angry over Peters using secondary amendments to effectively undo amendments he offered to the bill that reauthorizes the U.S. Fire Administration, the Assistance to Firefighters (AFG) Grants Program and the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant Program.
Watch Dems stymie my amendment to forbid grants to fire departments that fired the unvaxxed. pic.twitter.com/2e0Kg1lk77
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) March 16, 2023
