To quote Sen. Pat Toomey, today in 1809, one of our greatest presidents was born in a tiny log cabin. Happy birthday Mr. Lincoln. And thank you.
Category: Toomey
ObamaCare Unworkable Says Toomey
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa) has issued the below statement regarding ObamaCare. He spells it out rather well. 
This week, the Obama Administration announced enrollment numbers for the President’s health care law. Just 106,185 Americans have been able to sign up. As NBC News reporter Luke Russert tweeted, Penn State’s Beaver Stadium can comfortably seat all of those enrollees.
These enrollment numbers are further evidence that the President’s health care law is a train wreck. Even more troubling, millions are losing health coverage they like because the President deemed those plans inadequate and failed to make good on his promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”
Even the President recognized this was a problem. Yesterday, he announced what is, at best, a temporary fix to postpone this disaster until after the next election. This is little comfort to the millions of Americans who will now lose their insurance coverage next year.
The faulty website is only the tip of the iceberg. It is not technical glitches that will doom this system; it is the fact that the President’s health care law forces people to buy overpriced health plans they don’t want, hikes taxes, and puts important, personal health care decisions in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats instead of patients and their doctors. The whole law is unworkable.
ObamaCare Unworkable Says Toomey
Pat Toomey Describes Fiscal Strategy
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa) has made this statement regarding the recent partial government shutdown and the fiscal state of the nation.
If you followed the recent goings-on in Washington this past month, you are aggravated. I understand. This has been a frustrating time for me, and for anybody who wants to see our country on a sustainable fiscal path.
After almost three weeks in shutdown mode, Congress extended government funding and raised the debt ceiling by several hundred billion dollars with nothing to show for it – no reforms that rein in our country’s deficits and debt, no spending constraints, no changes whatsoever.
While this result is disappointing, I hope we will see a more fruitful outcome in December as members of the House and Senate meet over the next two months to iron out a budget. I will serve as a member of this conference committee. While the chances of us reaching an agreement are uncertain, I will be adamant about the need for fiscal discipline.
We need to keep the 2011 bipartisan spending caps in place. However, I’d like to give the administration and agency managers greater flexibility to prioritize, fund, or cut programs under these caps. Finally, to ensure that we do not face another shutdown in the future, I will be working to pass legislation that will keep the government funded if Congress does not pass appropriations bills.
We must stop lurching from crisis to crisis. Our country needs less spending, not more. Washington needs more commonsense governing, not less. Most of all, the American people need leadership. I believe we can take real steps to avert future fiscal cliffs and shutdowns while holding fast on modest spending restraints. Finding common ground on reining in spending, without sacrificing principles, is possible. I will work with members of both parties to achieve it.
Pat Toomey Describes Fiscal Strategy
Good Senator Supports Bad Bill
Pat Toomey (R-Pa) was among the senators who voted for the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, yesterday, Nov. 7, and the bill that would make it a federal crime to discriminate against employing gays is now before the House.
Hopefully, it dies a quick death. It’s a bad bill. In the current form, the bill does not exempt religious institutions that hold homosexuality to be sinful but even with such an exemption it would still be a bad bill.
Senator, you are a good guy but the only thing anti-discrimination laws do with regard to hiring and firing is to screw things up for the “protected category”.
The source of all anti-discrimination laws regarding employment is the civil rights movement that freed blacks from Jim Crow. Even those, while understandable, were still bad ideas.
The black experience differed from the Irish/Italian/Japanese/Jewish/everybody-whose-ancestors-did-not-come-on-the-Mayflower experience not in the existence of job discrimination but in the existence of government oppression which included acts of terror. And those other ethnic groups would go on to thrive despite the discrimination, and that would have likely happened with blacks as well once the government oppression was ended.
As it is now the protected category makes it less likely for a black to be hired. Ask yourself this: if you are an employer would, everything being equal, be more or less inclined to hire the guy you can’t easily dismiss?
And gays certainly don’t need protection with regard to hiring.
In fact, if gays do become protected by civil rights laws, I envision a whole lot of bad employees suing their employers for disciplining them who care not a whit about their sex lives. Ironically, this will make employers much more, well, thoughtful, about hiring gays.
To Toomey’s credit he attempted to add an amendment that would have exempted religious institutions. To his discredit, he voted aye anyway even though the amendment was rejected.
“I voted for final passage to help move the legislative process forward. I hope that – should the House consider this bill – it will move to improve and strengthen this measure so we can both advance equality in the workplace and protect religious liberty,” he said.
As we noted, it’s still a bad bill even with the amendment.
Good Senator Supports Bad Bill
Toomey Fights Holder, Defends Children
The Louisiana Scholarship Program, launched three years after Hurricane Katrina, grants poor children the opportunity to escape failing public schools and attend a different school chosen by their parents, according to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Last year, the program helped over 5,700 needy children (91 percent of whom are minorities) and raised test scores – all while saving taxpayers $18 million.
Attorney General Holder’s Justice Department is suing to return 570 of these children to failing schools, on the grounds that it is more important to preserve a school’s racial make-up than help children, Toomey says. For example, the Justice Department argues that six African-American children should be returned to a failing elementary school, to change the school from 29.2 percent to 30.1 percent African-American. If these six children were white, the Justice Department would not be trying to deny them a better education.
Toomey wants to know why and is demanding an explanation.
“Our children are not statistics,” he said. “They are young minds that deserve every opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty and violence through a good education. The fact that Attorney General Holder would block any child from obtaining a good education is bad enough. The fact that he is doing so based solely on the children’s race is inexcusable. These 570 kids deserve to know why they are not entitled to the best education possible. The American taxpayers deserve to know why their money is being spent to undermine their learning.”
Toomey Fights Holder, Defends Children
Toomey Demands EPA Follow Law
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) is calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lessen the renewable fuel standard (RFS) that refiners must meet when manufacturing gasoline – and to do so in a timely manner.
According to federal law, every November, the EPA must announce a sensible RFS mandate for the upcoming calendar year.
“Unfortunately, the EPA failed to meet this responsibility last year when it ignored the deadline and increased the RFS mandate on gasoline manufacturers,” Toomey said. “This led to increased compliance costs for many Pennsylvania employers, including refineries located in Southeast Pennsylvania.”
Toomey said that the EPA’s failure to follow the law last year put many good-paying jobs in Southeast Pennsylvania in jeopardy.
“I urge the EPA to follow federal law and announce the RFS for 2014 in a timely manner,” he said. “Additionally, I encourage the EPA to establish standards that ease unnecessary burdens on employers and consumers across our commonwealth. The RFS requires fuel suppliers to blend millions of gallons of biofuels – most often corn ethanol – into the nation’s gasoline supplies. It drives up gas prices, increases food costs, damages car engines, and harms the environment. This Washington mandate is anything but sensible.”
Toomey supports repealing the RFS and has co-authored a bipartisan bill and offered an amendment in efforts to eliminate the costly mandate.
Toomey’s letter to the EPA can be found here
Toomey Demands EPA Follow Law
Toomey Supports Keeping Health Plans
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa) is among the co-sponsors of Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis) “If You Like Your Health Plan, You Can Keep It Act“.
“The President’s promise that those satisfied with their health care would not see a change in coverage was critical to selling it to the American people and to convincing Congressional Democrats to vote for it,” Toomey said. “The President made that promise repeatedly. That promise unfortunately has been broken. I have heard from many Pennsylvanians that their plans will be voided. Millions of other Americans are in the same boat.
“I have long opposed the President’s health care law and believe it cannot be fixed. However, I understand we cannot repeal or defund it as long as Democrats control the Senate and President Obama – who signed it into law – resides in the While House. But we can eliminate some of the most egregious parts. And we should hold the President accountable to the promises he made when attempting to sell this monstrosity to the American people.”
Toomey Supports Keeping Health Plans
Dems, Media Ignore $17 Trillion Debt
Congress, last night, Oct. 16, passed a Democrat plan to increase our debt to $17 trillion to the cheers of the bankers, Chinese, government bureaucrats and the establishment media, who unlike the old media never ask probing questions. We were told we were going to default if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised? Was it spelled out how? Failing to incur more debt should not cause a default, and if it does then our economy and way of life is in far more danger than is being reported.
Was it noted that our debt has tripled since Clinton left office with a third of that coming in Obama’s first term? How many stories did you see showing the debt passed 100 percent of our Gross Domestic Product for the first time in history last December?
And how about all the stories they failed to run pointing out that for 150 days the debt stood at $16.699 trillion?
The American public has got to wake up to the reality that the news they are getting from the local networks and press and daytime television shows is basically propaganda produced for people who are basically thieves and whose interest is clearly not your own.
And thank you Pat Toomey for being one of the 18 senators who voted against this bill and for looking out for the little guy.
Toomey Named Taxpayers’ Friend
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) has received the National Taxpayers Union’s 2012 Taxpayers’ Friend Award. The 362,000-member nonpartisan citizen group gives this award to members of Congress based on votes related to sensible fiscal policy, lower taxes, and more reasonable regulation of job creators.
“I made a promise to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania that I would fight for them by tackling Washington’s overspending while championing lower taxes and reducing government red tape,” Toomey said. “To help boost our economy and job growth, I will continue my efforts to lessen the tax burden shouldered by our families and employers. I thank the NTU for recognizing and supporting my efforts on behalf of Pennsylvania taxpayers.”
Toomey Explains Obamacare Fight
Toomey Explains Obamacare Fight — Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, who was one of 19 Republicans in the Senate who voted to defund Obamacare, has issued the below statement explaining his strategy. Thank you, Senator. You are an independent thinker and not one of those who are part of the problem.
All my Republican colleagues and I want to end Obamacare completely. All the Democrats support Obamacare and want it to continue. The Republicans control the House and have passed defunding legislation. Democrats control the Senate and will not pass defunding legislation. Thus, we are at an impasse. Yesterday, seeking to break this all-or-nothing standoff, I proposed a way to fund the government and to repeal some of the most egregious parts of this terrible law. Acknowledging that Senator Reid has the votes to strip the bill of its Obamacare defunding language, I sought to offer three modest amendments to the Senate bill. The first would repeal the medical device tax that is costing Pennsylvania jobs; the second would provide relief from the infringement on religious liberty in Obamacare; the third would delay the individual mandate for one year.
Those three items all have bipartisan support, could have passed the Senate, and might well be acceptable to the House. But we will never know because the Democratic leadership would not permit me to offer those amendments. For this reason, and others, I voted against the measure.
I remain hopeful that Congress will avoid a government shutdown. I will continue working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress to find a responsible solution.