Pat Toomey has made the debt and deficit the central theme of his campaign for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat in recent weeks.
Toomey’s gotten help from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has launched ad campaigns informing voters that Sestak has voted with Nancy Pelosi 97 percent of the time, implying that Sestak is inexorably linked to a Congress which is engaging in record deficit spending.
But now, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is hitting back, attacking Toomey as a “hypocrite” for his record in Congress under President Bush, where Toomey voted against “pay-as-you-go.” (He did so because those rules allowed for tax increases.)
During his years in Washington, Toomey voted for George W. Bush’s bloated budgets that turned record surpluses into record deficits, drove the economy into the ditch and put Wall Street over Main Street. Toomey’s attempt to talk about controlling spending in Pittsburgh is nothing short of hypocrisy. His dismal record shows he repeatedly failed to control spending when it counted.
Now, ignoring the root causes of the sub-prime mortgage collapse that precipitated the recession – which pre-date Pat Toomey and the Bush presidency — the DSCC is engaging in an impressive act of cognitive dissonance.
“Repeatedly failed to control spending when it counted,” charges the DSCC of Pat Toomey. Have they met Joe Sestak?
Joe Sestak, the man who has been applauding the latest federal bailout ($26 billion) to cover state deficits? The man who voted for the auto bailout? The man who voted for a stimulus project on par with the combined cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? The man who’s said the stimulus was too small?
The problem with trying to pin Bush’ deficits on the back of Pat Toomey should be obvious. It’s much easier — and more presently felt by voters — to pin the existing massive, record-breaking federal deficits on Joe Sestak, the man currently voting for them.
Toomey may have nixed “pay-go” budgeting, but so too is Sestak, and if voters approach the polls in November with the existing “so what have you spent my money on lately” mentality, it is Sestak who will be most likely to pay a price.