Toomey for Senate

AUGUST 23, 2010 | by DARWYYN DEYO
PA Independent

Arguing against bailouts and unsustainable budgets, U.S. Senate Republican nominee Pat Toomey spoke Monday at the Pennsylvania Press Club and advocated a return to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Painting a gloomy economic picture, Mr. Toomey focused on the indications the American economy is still not recovering and may even be headed toward a double-dip recession, with 2.4 percent growth in national gross domestic product (GDP) and the employment force still eight million jobs short of the December 2007 peak before the recession. Normally, he said, four quarters into a recovery show six percent GDP growth and 700,000 jobs above the pre-recession peak.

“It’s abnormal to have this kind of underperformance after a severe recession,” Mr. Toomey said. “So why is that we’re here? I would argue that the major contributing factor is the badly flawed policies being pursued in Washington.”

Mr. Toomey also attacked the official 9.5 percent unemployment rate, pointing to 1.1 million Americans not included in the official count because they have given up hope finding work in the last three months.

“But they’re real Pennsylvanians and real Americans and it’s unconscionable they’ve had to give up hope,” said Mr. Toomey.

Addressing concerns about the bailouts, the federal health care legislation passed this spring and cap and trade legislation still before Congress, Mr. Toomey suggested an alternative strategy – cut taxes, even corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, compensated for by economic growth under those taxes.

He also argued ending the environment of uncertainty created by the federal health care bill he said has a “chilling effect” on small business employment and growth, and advocated removing interstate restriction on health care insurance, saying he could buy car insurance from a little green lizard but could not buy health insurance from a company in Ohio.

“We know there’s all kinds of new rules and regulations that are going to be promulgated when they put together these bureaucracies [but] we don’t know exactly what they’re going to do,” said Mr. Toomey. “This is terrifying to employers. The danger of what you don’t know, what impact that’s going to have on your business, on your workers, on your employees, on your ability to hire another worker…That’s very, very discouraging.”

Referencing a new bill proposed by Congressman Joe Sestak (D – Penn) to bail out mortgages which now exceed the value of the home, Mr. Toomey argued it was unfair to make taxpayers pay for someone else’s home, in addition to their own, and defended against claims he worked for Wall Street with his support for the Gramm-Leach-Billey bill under the Clinton administration. That legislation repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which prevented banks from handling both deposits and investments. Mr. Toomey instead pointed out Mr. Sestak voted for the bailout of Wall Street and asked “so ask yourself who’s on the side of Wall Street?”

Jonathan Dworkin, spokesperson for Mr. Sestak, did not respond to Mr. Toomey’s comment specifically but accused him of wanting to give Social Security savings to Wall Street and raise taxes on the middle class.

“Congressman Toomey doesn’t care. He just calls it “creative destruction” when American jobs are lost and end up overseas. For him, not taking action in a time of crisis would have resulted in only a “slightly harder down” – isn’t 10 million Americans losing their jobs “down enough” for Congressman Toomey?  Now he wants Social Security in Wall Street!” said Mr. Dworkin.

But Mr. Toomey limited his comments to issues facing the economy and did not respond to questions after the event regarding his positions on social issues, and his campaign did not return requests for comment.

Ending his comments, Mr. Toomey returned to his theme of the growth of small business and argued it was the path to economic recovery.

“If you think about the fundamental assets that have allowed us to outperform the rest of the world, to achieve a standard of living that no other society has been able to achieve, those fund assets are still here,” said Mr. Toomey. “If we unleash that we can have the kind of economic recovery that we deserve and the people of Pennsylvania, people of America, are ready to create.”