Toomey talked about his role in tax reform, what he would tackle if he had more time, political polarization and former President Donald Trump.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — In his 12 years in the U.S. Senate, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Pat Toomey considers his part in getting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 passed his biggest accomplishment.
Toomey decided not to run for a third Senate term in 2020. He will be replaced Jan. 3 by Democrat John Fetterman, who defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in November. “We didn’t have many votes to lose at the time. Our Democratic colleagues didn’t want to participate,” Toomey said. “So we had to do it exclusively with Republican votes. And that’s what we did. And the results have been fantastic.”
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank founded by Republican and Democratic tax specialists, in a report on the immediate aftermath of the act that was updated in 2020, said it appeared the economy received a modest boost in the short run, though the jury is out on long-term effects. Even with the economic downturn brought by the COVID pandemic, Toomey said, the federal tax revenue has been on the rise.
He said it’s harder for ordinary legislation to work its way through committees and then to the floor for amendments. As for his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Democrat Bob Casey, Toomey said the two had a good working relationship. In his farewell address, Toomey pointed out that in 12 years, the two have teamed up to get 33 federal judges confirmed to the bench in Pennsylvania. Only California and Texas have had more judges confirmed and neither state had split delegations in that period.
“I saw a different side of Pat on December 14 of 2012 when 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook, 20 of them were children, and I saw the heart of Pat Toomey,” Manchin said in a recent floor speech after Toomey gave his farewell address. “I had to do something. I couldn’t live with it. And I come from what we call a very friendly gun environment — a gun-friendly environment in West Virginia. I decided that I wanted to introduce a bill.
There are other solutions to make the process more amicable. One way is to get rid of unanimous consent in which a single senator can thwart debate on a proposed amendment, Toomey said. “I’m not religious about what the right number is, maybe it’s 20. Maybe it’s 40. Maybe it’s 50,” he said. “But allowing any one senator to prevent any and all amendments has contributed to our inability to function normally.”Toomey gives Trump credit for speeding up the wave of blue-collar workers switching to the GOP.Otherwise, Trump used his presidency to pass “conventional, orthodox Republican policies,” including the tax reform bill.
Toomey said Trump’s failure to acknowledge that he lost that election will wear thin with voters who aren’t fans of the former president.As for who should be the GOP nominee in 2024, Toomey said he’s looking at several candidates.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Mary Trump says racism was the norm in Trump family'My parents didn't have any Black friends and everybody at my school practically was white. And it was just this weird cognitive dissonance,' Mary Trump said.
Read more »
From Watergate to Jan. 6: Patrick Leahy leaves the Senate after nearly 50 yearsIn a new interview, the Vermont Democrat recalled Republicans' telling Richard Nixon to step aside and expressed alarm that the GOP hasn't done the same for Donald Trump.
Read more »
Top 9 Times Mitch McConnell Worked Against Conservatives in 2022Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has worked against conservatives throughout his career. Here are nine times he betrayed, opposed, and contradicted conservatives in 2022.
Read more »
Video of Trump insisting he paid 'millions of dollars' in taxes resurfacesNewly-released tax returns indicated that the former president paid far less income tax in 2016 and 2017 than he previously said.
Read more »
Democrats release Trump’s tax returns, and CPAs have questions: ‘In order to generate these kinds of losses, you need to be super rich. It’s not a poor man’s game.’“Trump is engaging in an activity that is very, very incentivized by our current tax code,” said Charles Renwick, a CPA and author of the forthcoming book “All the Presidents’ Taxes.”
Read more »
Jan. 6 'disqualifies' Trump from GOP presidential nomination, Asa Hutchinson saysKarl pressed Hutchinson on if that view meant he definitively wouldn't support Trump should Trump emerge as the Republican nominee for the White House in two years.
Read more »