Toomey angered by Dems’ bill as Senate holds long session
WASHINGTON — Ahead of a marathon session in the Senate on Friday, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., railed against the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill being advanced by Democrats, pledging to join his Republican colleagues to lobbing amendments that slow down consideration of the package as much as possible.
Mr. Toomey, in a call with Pennsylvania media outlets, made the case that the U.S. economy had largely rebounded and that governors should lift economic restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the virus. People who were still struggling, he said, could be covered by existing government safety net programs.
Mr. Toomey pointed out that he supported the five previous COVID-19 relief bills, approved by Congress in overwhelming bipartisan votes last year, that doled out trillions in federal aid. That aid, much of which is still being spent, was sufficient to get the country through the worst of the pandemic, he argued.
He cited the U.S. unemployment rate that has fallen from a high of 14.8% to 6.2%, a high savings rate among Americans and “encouraging” January job growth data.
“If governors aren’t shutting
come back. That’s what we need,” Mr. Toomey said. “We need to reopen our schools. We need to end the lockdown.”
Mr. Toomey’s comments reflected the virtually uniform opposition among Republican lawmakers to the bill, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, exhibited during the Senate’s lengthy session. They also encapsulated the widely divergent views between the two parties on the role of further government aid in guiding the country through the pandemic.
Mr. Toomey’s colleague, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., has touted the bill as absolutely necessary to save lives and bring the economy back to life. Mr. Casey spoke on the Senate floor this week to praise funding for home and community- based health care and aims to include provisions to fund nutrition assistance and vaccination outreach for seniors.
Mr. Casey also supports the expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit as a way to boost aid to families and reduce child poverty.
On the floor this week and during Friday’s call, Mr. Toomey aired a list of provisions he considered unrelated to COVID-19. Further aid to state and local governments is a particular sticking point.
While Democrats like Mr. Casey have sought greater funding for governments that have faced rising costs to keep services running and a loss in tax revenue, Republicans like Mr. Toomey have strongly opposed it, calling it a bailout for poorly managed government budgets.
Mr. Toomey cited record-high tax revenues collected by state and local governments nationwide as evidence governments could manage.
“By any plausible measure, we more than offset the added costs” of pandemic-related deficits for state and local government budgets in the first round of federal funding last year, he said.
“Look, I get it: There are a lot of mayors who would love to get another huge slug of cash, to get a lot of other people’s money to spend as they see fit,” he added. “That’s not good for our budget, though.”
Pittsburgh officials have scoffed at that characterization and say the budget pain is real. The House-passed version of the bill allocated $355 million for the city in addition to $383 million for Allegheny County.
In an interview last month, Mayor Bill Peduto said the additional funding would allow the city to restore its reserve fund, maintain its bond rating and avoid service cuts in coming years. In November, the city proposed a budget that contained a $55 million deficit after cuts to some services, including a 10% cut to police spending.
“This hit us pretty hard,” Mr. Peduto said. “This money that will come in will be able to put us back to where we were.”
City Controller Michael Lamb, responding Friday to Mr. Toomey’s comments, said Pittsburgh depends mightily on revenue surrounding large events — from the surcharge on ticket sales to parking taxes — that were canceled over the last year. Last year, the city took a $25 million hit in parking revenue alone.
“It’s created an enormous hole in our budget, and for him to suggest that cities like ours don’t need this kind of help is just really uninformed,” Mr. Lamb said. “If we don’t have Steeler games and Penguin games and Cultural District activities — those kinds of things to rely on to drive economic activity in this city — it hurts us in a very real way.”
Mr. Toomey said he believed more government spending would risk overheating the economy and lead to rising inflation. He referenced the view of Larry Summers, a top economic policy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, who wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post that he believed $1.9 trillion was too big of a number.
He vented that Democrats had proceeded with the budget reconciliation process — a legislative maneuver that allows them to pass the bill by a simple majority vote in the Senate, with no GOP support — after Mr. Biden pledged to unify the country.
He said that Republicans’ use of the same tactic to cut taxes with no Democratic support — and increase the federal budget deficit by $1.5 trillion — was “completely not comparable.”
Democrats opposed the 2017 tax cuts from the start, he said, whereas GOP lawmakers put forth a $600 billion plan to Mr. Biden and offered to negotiate. Republicans had “no choice to do it the way we did it,” he said.
In this case, “President Biden had every opportunity to do a bipartisan bill here,” Mr. Toomey said. “It would’ve passed — but it would’ve reflected both parties’ interests, not just liberal Democrats. We were not in that position in 2017.”