Report on Senator Pat Toomey's Remarks

   
     Pennsylvania's Junior United States Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, spoke last night at the Berks County Republican Committee Fall Dinner, near Reading, which I attended.  He commented on the severe fiscal challenges facing the U.S. and the complicity of the Senate's liberal Democratic majority and updated us on his role on the Congressional “Super Committee.”

     Sen. Toomey called the Senate “dysfunctional” under liberal Democratic leadership and noted as an example that for three years it has not approved a budget, although required to by federal law, despite the massive and ever-growing federal debt.  The freshman Senator explained that instead of voting for an increase in the debt limit and allowing the spending to continue at its current rate, which is what Congress had always done heretofore, he and the other fiscally conservative members of Congress voted against the measure to slow down the rate of spending.  The resultant bipartisan deal to increase the debt limit with offsetting spending reductions also called for the creation of the Select Committee, known as the “Super Committee.”

     Even though Sen. Toomey voted against the bill, his fiscal conservatism and expertise won him the nomination to the bipartisan, bicameral Committee, which he observed represents a great opportunity for significant spending cuts.  The law that created the Committee requires that both houses of Congress vote, without filibuster or amendment, on whatever proposal the Committee approves by a simple majority vote.  Sen. Toomey predicted that if the Committee were to come to an agreement, Congress would approve it and the President sign it.  The Committee has been engaged in long negotiations, he reported.  Sen. Toomey pointed out that the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, although a huge figure, would represent only 3% of federal spending over that period and cited the Senate's failure to approve such a reduction as further evidence of its dysfunctionality. 

     Sen. Toomey also explained how raising taxes would not solve the debt problem, as it is too large even to be eliminated even by raising income taxes on all earners to 50%, even assuming that such an increase would not harm the economy and thereby reduce revenue.

     The Junior Senator from Pennsylvania warned that the U.S. was on the path toward becoming like Europe, but there was still the chance it could avoid the same fate as Greece, for example.

     Sen. Toomey expressed the importance of electing fiscal conservatives to the majority in the U.S. Senate in 2012 and also defeating President Barak Obama in the presidential election.  In the meantime, he noted the significance of the statewide judicial and local elections coming up in Pennsylvania on November 8 that affect the citizens directly in many ways and urged the people to elect conservatives to every office.