How Republicans Can Make Tax Cuts Permanent

By Greg Giroux, Allyson Versprille, Mark Niquette and Sahil Kapur (Bloomberg Government) -- Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey played a significant role in the 2017 Republican tax overhaul law and fulfilled a decades-long quest to help steer a sweeping tax bill into law. “Let’s face it, he was central,” Tennessee Republican Bob Corker told the Washington Post in December 2018. “This would be, I’m sure, the ultimate thing for him to accomplish here in the United States Senate, and so he stayed focused.” Corker struck a budget deal with Toomey over the size of the tax cut package and provided a path for Republicans to pay for the bill. “Without that there would’ve been no tax bill,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Bloomberg right before the Senate voted. To keep his caucus informed of a complex and fast-moving tax plan, McConnell said he delegated the responsibility of providing regular updates to a cadre of Senate Finance Committee members. Toomey, along with Tim Scott of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, and John Thune of South Dakota, were responsible for explaining the bill’s provisions to Republican senators in groups of five at a time. Toomey came to his moment after leading the Club for Growth, a conservative organization focused on cutting taxes and limiting the role of government, before being elected to the Senate in 2010. The group’s “supply side” principles were key foundations of the final tax measure. For Toomey there’s still more work to be done. He’s been avid about the need to fix the “retail glitch”— an unintended part of the law that prevents retailers and restaurants from immediately writing off the full cost of interior renovations. Toomey and Alabama Democrat Doug Jones introduced legislation to address the issue. Toomey’s committee portfolio—Banking, Budget and Finance—also offers him plenty of future opportunities to voice his views on future tax policy and other fiscal matters. His seniority and other GOP chairmanship shuffling put him on the short list to lead the Banking panel in the 116th Congress, until Chuck Grassley of Iowa ultimately opted to lead the committee. Toomey instead shifted from being chairman of the committee’s Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Subcommittee to lead its panel on Securities, Insurance, and Investment. Toomey favors more bank deregulation. He supported bipartisan legislation enacted in 2018 that rolled back parts of the Wall Street regulatory law known as Dodd-Frank, but asked that it “not be the last word on financial regulatory reform.” He’s also said that Dodd-Frank’s Volcker rule, which limits banks’ use of certain riskier investment actions, “clearly diminishes liquidity in the financial markets,” and contributes to market volatility because it takes “big trading players out of the market.” However, as of December 2018 Toomey didn’t anticipate any Senate action to rewrite the rule due to lack of Democratic support. Toomey has become increasingly comfortable breaking with President Donald Trump on major issues like trade. He isn’t a fan of Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the replacement deal for the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, but said he could support it with some changes.Toomey also has been a critic of the president’s tariffs. “This is not a good path to go down,” he said in response to the president’s call for Congress to give him new powers to impose tariffs. Toomey is leading the charge on a measure that would require congressional approval before a president imposes tariffs on national security grounds. Trump used the authority in 2018 to slap duties on steel and aluminum imports, and he’s been threatening for months to do the same with foreign-made vehicles and parts. The measure is needed, Toomey has said, because trade policy responsibilities have shifted from Congress to the executive branch, and the Trump administration has used the authority in a way it was never intended. “This is not a messaging exercise,” he said. “I want a legislative outcome.” On immigration policy, Toomey’s differences with Trump are more about process than policy. In an embarrassing show of GOP disunity, Toomey was among 12 Republican senators who voted in March 2019 to block Trump’s national emergency declaration in order to access money to build a border wall. Toomey explained in an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer that he agreed with Trump’s immigration efforts, but could not support this particular extension of presidential power. “While past presidents have, on rare occasions, used national emergency declarations to reallocate federal funds, never has one been used to circumvent duly enacted legislation after Congress refused a president’s funding request,” Toomey wrote. “Our Constitution specifically gives Congress, not the president, the power to authorize federal spending.” On most other policy issues, Toomey is in the Republican mainstream. He’s against abortion and in the 116th Congress worked with Republican Ben Sasse of Nebraska on a measure that would permit doctors to be criminally charged and subject to civil liability if they don’t provide medical care to a child that survives an abortion procedure. He’s opposed to same-sex marriage, has supported Trump’s judicial nominees, backs effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and favors traditional fossil fuel energy sources. In a statement on his website, Toomey called the Democratic Green New Deal “a ridiculous proposal that would devastate the American economy. Eliminating the use of natural gas and other fossil fuels, phasing out air travel as we know it, and forcing the renovation of every building in the country is impossible and not based in reality. It also calls for a complete government takeover of America’s health care system—what’s ‘green’ about that? Of course I voted against it.” However, there are fewer than 10 states represented by a senator from each party and Pennsylvania is one. Toomey’s press releases tout his collaboration with prominent Democratic colleagues including presidential hopefuls like Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota as well as Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Toomey also wields a second gavel as chairman of Finance’s Subcommittee on Health Care. He’s cited tackling the opioid epidemic as part of his panel’s agenda for the 116th Congress and it’s a top issue for his Pennsylvania constituents. The presence of fentanyl was noted in more than 67 percent of drug-related overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2017, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data. Toomey and Schumer introduced a measure in 2019 that would place sanctions on drug manufacturers in China who knowingly ship synthetic opioids ultimately sold in the United States to drug traffickers around the world. Also of great importance in Pennsylvania politics is gun policy. Toomey is big believer in the Second Amendment, but he has a history of supporting tougher background checks for gun purchases. In 2013, he drew some complaints that he was a “sellout” when he worked with West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin on the issue. “You lose your Second Amendment rights if you are a violent criminal or if you’re dangerously mentally ill,” he told CNN in a February 2019 interview. Adding, “a mechanism to determine if somebody is in one of those categories it’s just common sense and it’s not an infringement on the rights of law-abiding citizens.” In the 116th Congress, Toomey worked with Delaware Democrat Chris Coons on a bill that would require state law enforcement to be notified when individuals with no legal rights to own guns attempt firearms purchases.  Early Years Toomey was born in Providence, Rhode Island, one of six children of a staunchly Democratic father who worked as a lineman for the electric company and belonged to a union and a mother who was a part-time secretary for her church. He graduated as the valedictorian from Catholic prep school LaSalle Academy and received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Harvard University, where he was a defender of Ronald Reagan. A financial services internship in college introduced him to Wall Street, and Toomey spent the latter half of the 1980s working in New York for Chemical Bank. He was then lured with several colleagues to the London-based investment bank Morgan, Grenfell & Co. to begin, as he described it, a “serious derivatives operation.” He took a leave of absence, and began a year-long stint as a financial consultant in Hong Kong in 1990. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank acquired Morgan, Grenfell and he decided to go in a different direction. Toomey settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and started “Rookie’s,” a sports-restaurant business, with two brothers. He launched his political career in 1994, winning a seat on the Government Study Commission in Allentown. Four years later in 1998, Toomey won election to the House in an open-seat race to replace Democrat Paul McHale, who retired. He prevailed in a six-candidate primary. During his six years in the House he developed a reputation as a dependable conservative, with votes for tax cuts pushed by the George W. Bush administration and against the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003. An advocate of term limits, Toomey didn’t run for re-election to the House in 2004, instead seeking the Senate seat held by fellow Republican Arlen Specter. He lost the GOP primary by less than 2 percentage points. Toomey then became president of the Club for Growth. During his tenure the group opposed the $787 billion stimulus bill, the Cash for Clunkers program to entice consumers to buy new cars, cap-and-trade energy legislation, the Wall Street bailout, and the Affordable Care Act. The Club launched its Repeal It! Campaign in 2010 to build public opposition to Obamacare. Toomey also launched the Club’s Congressional Scorecard. Buoyed by the Tea Party’s campaign of fiscal discipline, Toomey planned a challenge to Specter again in 2010. Behind in the early polls, however, Specter switched parties in 2009, and Toomey won the Republican nomination. He ultimately edged out Representative Joe Sestak, who had defeated Specter in the Democratic primary, by just 2 percentage points. Toomey was narrowly re-elected in 2016 after a contentious campaign that saw $125 million spent mostly on attack ads by outside groups on top of the $40 million the candidates spent on their election efforts. Aside from Independence USA, Toomey was backed by the Club for Growth, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and groups bankrolled by the brothers Charles and David Koch. Toomey defeated Democratic challenger Katie McGinty by 1.7 percentage points, a slightly larger margin than the Pennsylvania victory Donald Trump scored in the presidential race. Toomey had spent much of his campaign trying to distance himself from the mercurial real-estate mogul. He repeatedly declined to say if he would vote for Trump in the general election. Personal Note Toomey continues to be the keeper of the “candy desk” on the Senate floor. It’s tradition he took over in 2015. He’s responsible for making sure it’s well stocked with various treats—now all from Pennsylvania—that senators can grab as they enter the chamber. Updated April 19, 2019