The soon to be retired Senator from Pennsylvania is hoping the Biden administration hasn't learned a thing from dealing with Republicans back when President Obama was in office.
Sen. Pat Toomey made an appearance on this Sunday's State of the Union on CNN, and was asked by host Jake Tapper why he disagreed with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who told Tapper in the previous interview that $2 trillion in COVID relief is necessary.
Toomey immediately proceeded to attack Yellen as a partisan, and to complain that Congress has already provided too much economic relief during the pandemic. "The problem with this is, Jake, 42 days ago, we passed the fifth huge bill, another trillion dollars, bringing the total to over $4 trillion," Toomey whined before telling Tapper how well our economy is supposedly doing.
"So, here we are. The economy has come roaring back. The unemployment rate is less than half what it was. Disposable income is at record highs. Savings rates are at record highs. And where we have problems is very concentrated, Jake. It's not an economy in collapse, the way it was in March. " Toomey pushed the talking point they've been repeating constantly that we need more "targeted relief," even though it's clear that he and most of his party think we've already done too much, and aren't willing to pass any more stimulus bills, "targeted" or not.
Tapper asked Toomey about the anemic jobs report which only added 49,000 jobs in January. "I mean, that's really bad, with 400,000 Americans taking themselves out of even looking for jobs; 24 million Americans don't have enough to eat. The CBO says it's going to take until 2024 to fully recover without sizable relief. How do you explain your opposition, given those facts about millions of struggling Americans?"
Toomey responded by saying they've already "allocated money for these purposes," and lauded the CBO's projection for 5 percent growth next year with no additional relief measures, before whining about the lack of "unity" and Biden supposedly "going hard left." He then insisted that Biden should have bent over backwards to work with the ten Republican Senators who offered their watered down $600 billion relief bill.
Tapper asked Toomey about the fact that he opposes that bill as well, and Toomey replied that yes, he does oppose the Republican bill, but mean old Joe Biden appears to be "intent on ignoring Republicans."
He's not ignoring them. He's just learned that you can't trust them to bargain in good faith. They'll water down bills and make them worse, and then refuse to vote for them, just as they did during the Obama administration when they were desperate for bipartisan support for economic relief and the ACA.
The only time Republicans care about unity is when they can use it as a cudgel to attack Democrats. I'm glad the Biden administration and Democrats are ignoring the pearl clutching from Toomey and his ilk.
