Senator John Fetterman complained on Monday about missing a family beach trip to vote on President Donald Trump’s spending bill.
The Senate is debating Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” which promises to deliver sweeping tax cuts while leaving nearly 12 million Americans on Medicaid uninsured by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Senators are voting on changes to the bill Monday before taking a final vote to pass, which is expected late Monday or the early hours of Tuesday.
Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, told a small gaggle of reporters, including CBS’ Alan He, during the marathon voting session Monday, “Oh my God, I just want to go home. I’ve already my I’ve missed our entire trip to to the beach.”
“I’m gonna vote no. There’s no drama that we know the votes are going to go,” Fetterman said, adding, “I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here till some ungodly hour.”
A “vote-a-rama” on amendments to the bill kicked off Monday morning after the Senate voted to begin debate on the bill Saturday night. If the Senate votes to pass the bill, it will move back to the House for another vote.
While Democrats are expected to oppose the bill, there are several Republican holdouts, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. It’s also unclear whether GOP moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska will vote with their party on the bill.
Fetterman’s comments come after he faced scrutiny for routinely not showing up to hearings and procedural votes that he sees as a waste of time for a year.
The senator was shamed into returning to what he called “performative” duties after his mental health issues were “weaponized” against him by the media, he said in a May interview with The New York Times.
“My doctor warned years ago: After it’s public that you are getting help for depression, people will weaponize that,” Fetterman said, adding, “Simple things are turned. That’s exactly what happened.”
Fetterman said the media used his absences from Capitol Hill as a way to portray him as mentally unfit for office. But he claims his absences were out of a want to spend more time at home rather than on senatorial duties he deems useless.
