On Friday, after Mr. McConnell scheduled the Ex-Im vote, Mr. Cruz took to the Senate floor to say that Mr. McConnell had assured him that he had made no deal to bring the bank to a vote.

“Not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again was a simple lie,” Mr. Cruz said.

That brought the most senior Senate Republicans to the floor on Sunday to rebuke Mr. Cruz.

“Squabbling and sanctimony may be tolerated on the campaign trail, but not in here,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the most senior Republican. “We are not here on some frolic or to pursue personal ambitions. We are here because the people of the United States have entrusted us with the solemn responsibility to act on their behalf.”

“It is a sacred trust in which pettiness or grandstanding should have no part,” he added.

Unrepentant, Mr. Cruz responded, “It is entirely consistent with decorum and with the nature of this body traditionally as the world’s greatest deliberative body to speak the truth.”

The Senate then beat back a novel effort by Mr. Cruz to break Senate legislative rules and force a vote on an amendment he hoped to attach to the highway bill. That amendment would have blocked the lifting of sanctions on Iran — part of a broad deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program — until Tehran recognized the State of Israel and released American prisoners from its jails.

On Friday, the lawmaker presiding over the Senate at the time, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, had ruled Mr. Cruz’s amendment out of order. He had hoped to get a simple majority to reject that ruling, a “nuclear option” that Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican, said would usher in “chaos.”

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, then joined Mr. Cruz, moving to amend the highway bill with a measure to defund Planned Parenthood. When that was ruled out of order, he too asked the Senate to vote to disregard that ruling. Again, most Republicans refused to back him up.