Toomey comes out against more stimulus payments during pandemic
CONCORD » U.S. Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., took questions from business representatives at Harvest Seasonal Grill Tuesday as he talked about how he’d prefer to use policy changes to address economic challenges presented by COVID-19 rather than another round of stimulus checks.
“The big question before us is, ‘Will there be a follow up bill to the series of bills we passed amongst the COVID crisis and the economic fallout with the lockdowns? If so, what does it look like?” he said.
The senator noted the unprecedented actions taken to date.
“If you look at the money, we have authorized to be spent and you add to that the money that we have authorized the Federal Reserve to lend as a complement to that, the total ... is on the order of $6 or $7 trillion,” he said. “That’s more than 30 percent of the entire economic output of the United States of America for a whole year.”
Added to that, he said the United States ran a deficit just last month of $1 trillion.
“I didn’t say last year, that’s last month,” Toomey said. “We were really concerned six months, 12 months ago that we might be heading towards a trillon-dollar annual budget.”
He said the impact of the spending had multi purposes including to replace lost income knowing that people would be out of work as whole sectors were being forced to shut down.
“So, you saw what we did in the CARES Act, a big increase in unemployment benefits,” he said. “In fact, problematic, I think, in many cases because the unemployment benefit now exceeds what people (receive) working. A very bad policy.”
A second element was expanding eligibility for unemployment benefits to include who were self-employed people and others who were not eligible and then, thirdly, there was the $1,200 check distribution.
“All of that I think of as the effort to replace lost income, to make people whole, to make sure they would survive, they could keep food on the table during what would hopefully be a very brief period where they didn’t work,” Toomey said.
He then spoke of money directed towards combating the virus itself to develop therapies and vaccines, as well as money directed to gear up production of Personal Protective Equipment and revenue sent to hospitals because of the revenue loss they experienced when elected procedures where stopped.
The senator also spoke of measures meant to protect businesses during this time.
“We didn’t want to have the economy just collapse because businesses would just fail on a large scale,” Toomey added, noted specifically the Payroll Protection Program with almost $1 trillion being authorized for loans to small businesses that had the option to transform into grants if certain conditions were met. He also spoke of the Main Street Lending Program, a four-year program for businesses of up to 15,000 employees or revenues of up to $5 billion.
“We’ve got a lot of discussion about what is next,” the senator said. “I’m going to tell you I am going to proceed very, very cautiously. I think there are policy changes that we can make here and there but I am not enthusiastic about another trillion-dollar or multi-trillion dollar spending binge.”
At the appearance, Toomey appeared to have large red blotches on his face.
“I should point out, so you probably couldn’t help but notice, it’s not leprosy on my forehead, it’s not contagious,” he said. “But, pale skin, Irishman who’s misspent youth was out in the sunshine ends up needing treatment sometimes and this will be fully healed in a week and hopefully, I won’t have to go through this again.”
Dr. Sharon Carney, Regional Chief Clinical Officer for Trinity Health MidAtlantic, was among business representatives to attend the forum as she asked the senator about telehealth.
“Currently at Trinity, over 60 percent of our outpatient visits are done by telehealth,” she said, adding that it is also used for
consultations with highrisk patients. “What our request is is looking for some support on telehealth ... when you look at the hundreds of thousands of telehealth visits and getting
patients back to taking care of their own health, it’s really critical that we figure out how to do this differently because even with the vaccine, I truly believe that we have a long road ahead of us.”
Toomey said one of the silver linings of COVID has been learning many uses of technology.
“I think a lot of believe, ‘OK, we just learned something about how valuable telehealth can be,’” he said, adding that he and other colleagues are interested in learning more about this capability.
Dave Magrogan, owner of Harvest Seasonal Grill, spoke about hosting the senator at his Delaware
County restaurant.
“You know what was great was I think we had business owners, you had educators and you had medical doctors, so it was nice just to be able to pose questions to a United States senator and get answers,” he said. “It was a small forum but it was one where different questions from different
industries got to be asked and I think that was nice. And, I think that it was small enough that you could ask legitimate questions and get legitimate answers.”
State Sen. Tom Killion,
R-9 of Middletown, spoke to the economic uncertainty linked to coronavirus.
“COVID-19 is not only
an unprecedented public health emergency but economic one,” Killion said as he introduced the senator at the event. “Almost 3.4 million Pennsylvanians have filed for unemployment. We know much about the virus and its transmission with no way to know how many jobs are permanently lost.”