PENNSYLVANIA — Senator Pat Toomey spent his Senate tenure trying to establish his fiscal bona fides, but showed on national television yesterday a rank ignorance of the basic mechanics of how the debt ceiling works and risk defaulting on the nation’s debt by opposing raising the debt ceiling.
In a Sunday morning interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee said he would oppose a suspension of the nation’s debt ceiling because he did not want to authorize any borrowing that might result in the future from the reconciliation bill currently being negotiated by House and Senate Democrats.
Senator Toomey was immediately called out for being dishonest with viewers, as not only are Democrats identifying trillions of dollars of pay-fors for the reconciliation bill, but more to the point, the debt ceiling needs to be raised not for future spending, but to pay for past government spending. Indeed, much of the spending that necessitates the debt ceiling suspension occurred under former President Trump, who added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt during his four years in office.
An excerpt of the exchange is below:
TAPPER: You know as well as I do, probably better than I do, that the debt limit, raising the debt ceiling does not apply to the future expenses you’re talking about. It’s about paying for spending —
TOOMEY: Jake, can I cut you — no, I’m going to cut you off. That is totally factually false.
>> It’s false?
>> It’s factually false. Absolutely. There’s all kinds of spending that is yet to be approved…
…
TAPPER: Even if the $3.5 trillion spending package that’s being discussed, the budget reconciliation and the infrastructure, bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if those were tabled in perpetuity, would Congress have to raise the
debt ceiling or not?
TOOMEY: At some point we would.
TAPPER: That’s my point.
If Pennsylvanians are surprised by Senator Toomey’s failure to understand the mechanics of the debt ceiling, they’re right to be — after over a decade in the Senate, Senator Toomey has voted repeatedly to to raise the debt ceiling. Just two years ago, he was adamantly against the United States defaulting on its debt during the Trump administration, even after voting for the Trump tax bill, which as Tapper would later note in the interview will add over $2 trillion to the nation’s debt over 10 years.
“After serving in the Senate for over ten years, Senator Toomey should be embarrassed that he apparently still doesn’t understand how the debt ceiling works, and Pennsylvanians are definitely embarrassed that one of their senators doesn’t,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Party Spokesperson Rosemary Lapowsky. “There’s no shame in asking for help, so take it from us, or any non-partisan economist: stop making a fool of yourself on TV and help steer the country away from catastrophe by voting with your Democratic colleagues to suspend the debt ceiling.”
###