Pat Toomey (R. PA) is the U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, my home state. He is a former Wall Street banker, Congressman and president of the Club For Growth group. On Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, he voted against the disaster relief bill passed by the Senate to help victims affected by Hurricane Sandy:
http://www.mcall.com/...
WASHINGTON — Deficit spending and non-emergency items like repairing the Smithsonian's roof prompted Sen. Pat Toomey to vote against Sandy relief money for his own constituents, the Jersey Shore and other storm victims.
In doing so, the Pennsylvania Republican and most of his GOP colleagues in the Senate broke from the Capitol Hill tradition of supporting emergency aid when disaster strikes regardless of cost.
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and most of the state's delegation in the House, including Lehigh Valley Reps. Charlie Dent, R-15thDistrict, and Matt Cartwright, D-17thDistrict, voted for the relief bill.
The $50.5 billion bill, which cleared the Senate on Monday night and the House two weeks earlier, provides money for immediate assistance as well as long-term needs, such as flood mitigation, for states affected by the October superstorm. - Morning Call, 1/29/13
Take it away Jon from Keystone Politics:
http://www.keystonepolitics.com/...
We’re talking about a bill that tacks an extra $50 billion onto the nearly $4 trillion Congress will spend this year. Yes these are big numbers, but the US has a $15.6 trillion economy. We are the richest country on Earth. When our biggest most productive metro regions get hit by natural disasters, nobody has any problem lending us the money to fix them. The people pretending we are too poor to afford this are monsters. - Keystone Politics, 1/29/13
Then again, what do you expect from a guy who's greatest achievement in congress was getting Glass-Steagall repealed:
http://www.motherjones.com/...
What economists do agree on is that the lack of regulation of derivatives—especially newly invented types of credit and equity swaps—was a major factor leading to the financial meltdown. The Glass-Steagall repeal bill also included a provision dealing with—or rather failing to deal with—derivatives regulation. Most members of Congress who voted for the bill focused on the Glass-Steagall bit. But Toomey—whom the derivatives industry saw as "one of its own"—zeroed in on the derivatives element. "I'm particularly pleased this bill contains an important provision regarding...credit and equity swaps," Toomey said in a November 1999 speech on the House floor. He went on to say that swaps were already "adequately regulated" and would "continue" to be regulated by banking supervisors, state-level officials with little power over national financial markets. - Mother Jone, 10/5/10
Toomey prides himself on being a deficit hawk. But he's really another type of hawk:
In what might be one of, if not the most underreported comments by a candidate in the 2010 races, Pennsylvania Senate candidate and former Congressman Pat Toomey in June let the truth slip out. During a press conference where he was challenged for his vote against a $1,500 combat bonus for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Toomey said he voted that way because paying troops who risk their lives for America is "wasteful" and undermined "fiscal irresponsibility."
Yeah, he actually said that.
"Now there are times when some of these measures are [used] as an excuse to undermine the fiscal stability of our country," Toomey said, according to PA2010.com, the only outlet to report the quote. "That's very bad policy. And we shouldn't hold military and veteran needs hostage to wasteful spending." - Vote Vets, 10/1/10
Reminder, Toomey was a loyal Bush butt boy in the House on the War on Terror:
http://archives.citypaper.net/...
Toomey claims that he stood up to the Bush administration's spending while in Congress. While Toomey did vote for less spendthrift alternative budgets, he also ultimately supported all of President Bush's budgets, which took the government's $236 billion surplus in 2000 and turned it into a deficit of $318 billion by 2005, the year Toomey left Congress. (Associated Press, Sept. 28, 2010; Office of Management of Budget; toomeyforsenate.com.) - City Paper, 10/27/10
And campaigned on wanting to drill for oil and gas in Lake Erie:
Toomey believes drilling for oil and natural gas can be performed safely in Lake Erie. He wants people to have an open mind about the idea because we need the energy resources. The current BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has not changed his mind.
Toomey has received nearly $100,000 from the oil and gas lobby. He says the amount is "minuscule" compared to the amount of money he has raised for his campaigns. He also denies the money has influenced his position.
Residents we spoke with who live on the shoreline are against ANY type of drilling, most favoring windmills for power generation.
PA law prohibits drilling in Lake Erie though natural gas wells have been drilled in Canada. - Your Erie, 2010
Lake Erie has become a big tourist spot in Pennsylvania. It's also a great spot for the local fishing industry. The EPA had to clean up Lake Erie back in the 1970s because it was so polluted Dr. Seuss referenced it in The Lorax:
The line "I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie" was removed more than fourteen years after the story was published after two research associates from the Ohio Sea Grant Program wrote to Seuss about the clean-up of Lake Erie.[8] The line remains in the home video releases of the television special. - Wikipedia
You really have to ask what Pennsylvanians were thinking back in 2010 when they narrowly elected Toomey over this decorated Admiral:
Philadelphia City Weekly gave you 66 serious reasons not to vote for him yet you still did:
http://archives.citypaper.net/...
If you took the chicken hawk personality of Saxby Chambliss and the economic ideology of John E. Sununu, you get Pat Toomey. As soon as the 2014 midterms are over, expect more diaries from me about Toomey.