70 Facts About Pat Toomey

1.

Pat Toomey won the Republican primary for the 2010 US Senate election in Pennsylvania, and was elected to the seat after defeating the Democratic nominee, former US Navy three-star admiral and congressman Joe Sestak, in the general election.

2.

Pat Toomey was reelected to the Senate in 2016, defeating Democratic nominee Katie McGinty.

3.

On October 5,2020, Pat Toomey announced that he would not run for reelection to a third Senate term in 2022.

4.

On February 13,2021, Pat Toomey was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.

5.

Pat Toomey's father was a union worker who laid cable for the Narragansett Electric Company, and his mother worked as a part-time secretary at St Martha's Catholic Church.

6.

Pat Toomey was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and attained the organization's highest rank, Eagle Scout.

7.

Pat Toomey's father was of Irish descent and his mother of Portuguese ancestry.

8.

Pat Toomey's mother's grandparents were all born in the Azores.

9.

Pat Toomey graduated as valedictorian of his high school class.

10.

In 1991, Pat Toomey resigned from Morgan, Grenfell after it was acquired by Deutsche Bank.

11.

Pat Toomey later said he resigned out of concern that Deutsche Bank would impose a less flexible and entrepreneurial work environment.

12.

In 1994, Pat Toomey was elected to Allentown's newly established Government Study Commission.

13.

In 1998, Pat Toomey ran for the Pennsylvania's 15th congressional district, based in the Lehigh Valley region after Democratic incumbent US Representative Paul McHale decided to retire.

14.

Pat Toomey said the plan did not "address the real fundamental problems plaguing American taxpayers" and said the IRS should be abolished.

15.

Pat Toomey promised to serve no more than three terms if elected.

16.

Pat Toomey decided to challenge incumbent Republican US Senator Arlen Specter in the primary instead.

17.

Pat Toomey served as the US Representative for from 1999 to 2005.

18.

Pat Toomey pushed to decrease government spending and to set aside money for debt reduction.

19.

In 2001, Pat Toomey proposed a budget that would cut taxes worth $2.2 trillion over ten years, exceeding Bush's $1.6 trillion plan.

20.

In 2002, Pat Toomey voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution which authorized military action against Iraq.

21.

Pat Toomey was named to the House Budget Committee in January 1999.

22.

In 2004, Pat Toomey challenged longtime incumbent Senator Arlen Specter in the Republican primary election.

23.

Pat Toomey's campaign was aided by $2 million of advertising from the Club for Growth.

24.

Pat Toomey was the first Lehigh Valley resident to serve as Senator from Pennsylvania since Richard Brodhead in the mid-19th century.

25.

Pat Toomey was elected to the United States Senate on November 2,2010, and his term began on January 3,2011.

26.

Pat Toomey joined the Congressional Hispanic Conference, a caucus of which he was an original member in his days in the House.

27.

Pat Toomey succeeded Senator Jim DeMint, who had previously expressed his intention to transfer the committee's chairmanship to a member of the Republican 2010 Senate class.

28.

On October 6,2018, Pat Toomey was one of 50 senators to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

29.

In February 2019, Pat Toomey was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion for barriers along the US-Mexico border which included 55 miles of fencing.

30.

In March 2019, Pat Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to cosponsor a resolution that would impose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court to nine justices.

31.

On October 4,2020, Pat Toomey was reported to be retiring at the conclusion of his term, forgoing a reelection campaign or a run for governor in 2022.

32.

Pat Toomey has strongly supported increased public spending on charter schools.

33.

At the time of the vote, Pat Toomey's campaigns had received $60,500 from the DeVos family during his career.

34.

Pat Toomey rejects that there is a scientific consensus on climate change.

35.

Pat Toomey has a consistent record of voting against environmental interests or supporting them only with limiting provisions.

36.

In July 2021, Pat Toomey said that the data on global warming is not clear enough to justify imposing new regulatory burdens on consumers.

37.

In 2013, Pat Toomey was one of 18 senators to vote against the bill to reopen the government during the United States government shutdown of 2013.

38.

Pat Toomey was a supporter of the deregulation of the derivatives market, an area in which he had professional experience, stating that he believed the market to be adequately regulated by banking supervisors and state-level regulators.

39.

Pat Toomey pressed the House to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 because it would "eliminate most of the cloud of legal and regulatory uncertainty that has shadowed" derivatives since their invention.

40.

Pat Toomey stated that he hoped that the Senate would modify the bill to "allow greater flexibility in the electronic trading" of over-the-counter derivatives.

41.

Pat Toomey was a leading sponsor of the JOBS Act which passed the Senate in March 2012.

42.

Pat Toomey orchestrated legislation to repeal consumer protection measures enacted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which had been intended to prevent auto lenders from discriminating on the basis of race.

43.

In June 2016, Pat Toomey voted against a bill that would prohibit gun purchases by people on the no-fly list because of concerns that there was no process for those on the no-fly list to seek removal if they were on the list in error.

44.

Pat Toomey opposed President Obama's executive orders on gun control as contrary to the constitutional system of checks and balances, but believes Congress should pass background checks.

45.

Pat Toomey received nearly $93,000 from gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, but received a poor rating from the NRA after he started championing background check legislation.

46.

In 2015, Pat Toomey disagreed with the Supreme Court decision which found that same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional.

47.

In 2010, Pat Toomey supported the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell, a policy that banned openly gay or bisexual persons from serving in the military, in a statement made while he was Senator-elect.

48.

In November 2013, Pat Toomey proposed an amendment exempting private religious entities from following the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

49.

Pat Toomey opposed the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act which he argued was fiscally irresponsible.

50.

Pat Toomey opposes the Affordable Care Act and has supported multiple efforts to dismantle, repeal or defund it.

51.

Pat Toomey intervened to have Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old girl dying of cystic fibrosis at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, moved ahead of other recipients in obtaining a lung transplant, on the grounds that the existing policy reduced access for children.

52.

In 2017, as Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare, Pat Toomey said the independent insurance market was in a "death spiral" because of the ACA.

53.

Pat Toomey favors abolishing the IRS, and has voted to reduce the capital gains tax, eliminate the estate tax, cut small business taxes, eliminate the "marriage penalty", cut federal income taxes and corporate taxes, and expand tax credits.

54.

Pat Toomey opposes government-run or subsidized healthcare and farm subsidies.

55.

Pat Toomey supported extending unemployment benefits and offsetting the cost with reduced government spending in other areas.

56.

In September 2018, Pat Toomey was among six Republican senators who voted against a $854 billion spending bill meant to avoid another government shutdown.

57.

In January 2020, Toomey signed an amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to overturn several of its past rulings protecting abortion rights, including Roe v Wade.

58.

When he first ran for Congress in 1998, Pat Toomey said he believed abortion should be legal only in the first trimester.

59.

Pat Toomey voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act in 2013.

60.

In March 2015, Pat Toomey voted for an amendment to establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to allow employees to earn paid sick time.

61.

Pat Toomey supported Trump's 2017 executive order to impose a ban on entry to the US to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.

62.

In February 2019, Pat Toomey was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion for barriers along the US-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.

63.

In March 2019, Pat Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to vote to block Trump's national emergency declaration that would have granted him access to $3.6 billion in military construction funding to build border barriers.

64.

In February 2018, Pat Toomey said that it was worth discussing whether to impeach justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court who had ruled that a gerrymandered congressional map violated the Pennsylvania constitution.

65.

Pat Toomey had harsher words for House Democrats, accusing them of "disgracefully breaking with" bipartisan precedent on impeachment inquiries.

66.

On January 9,2021, Pat Toomey said he thought Trump had performed an impeachable offense for his role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, but he did not say if he would vote to convict in the Senate.

67.

In March 2018, Pat Toomey voted to table a resolution spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Mike Lee which would have required Trump to withdraw American troops either in or influencing Yemen within the next 30 days unless they were combating Al-Qaeda.

68.

In January 2018, Pat Toomey was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.

69.

In November 2018, Pat Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be submitted to Congress by the end of the month to allow a vote before the end of the year; they were concerned that "passage of the USMCA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult" in the incoming 116th United States Congress.

70.

On May 28,2021, Pat Toomey abstained from voting on the creation of an independent commission to investigate the January 6 United States Capitol attack.