Pa. Senator Pat Toomey Calls It 'Wildly Inappropriate' For Republicans To Obstruct Joe Biden's Win
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey says it's time for Republicans to stop trying to obstruct the election of Joe Biden as president.
Toomey says it's time to move ahead and that includes a compromise on a coronavirus relief package. When the Electoral College votes are opened at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, a House member can object to a particular vote as long as a senator agrees.
Toomey hopes his Republican colleagues will not engage in that delaying tactic.
"I hope that we will refuse to participate because – you know, I voted for Donald Trump, I endorsed Donald Trump, I wanted him to win this election – but there is something to me more important than my guy winning the election," Toomey told KDKA political editor Jon Delano in a one-on-one interview. "And that is whoever actually does win becomes the next president."
Toomey said President Trump pursued every legal avenue to prove election fraud, but, he said, "They all came back with the same conclusion, including from some very conservative Republican judges in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. So in my mind, this is over."
The senator has this advice for his Republican colleagues in Congress: "It would be wildly inappropriate for Congress to attempt to reject the slate of electors from one or more states when there is not even a close to sufficient basis for doing so."
Toomey says Congress must pass another coronavirus relief bill that extends unemployment benefits and more Payroll Protection Plan grants to help companies keep workers employed. Another urgent need, said Toomey, is more money for vaccine distribution.
"Let's pass a bill that will fund that next round of vaccine distribution because it has to happen. There can't be any interruption at all in the distribution of the vaccines," Toomey said.
Finally, Toomey was asked about his decision not to run for reelection.
Delano: Do you feel liberated?
Toomey: The biggest sense of liberation, Jon, comes from time. The fact is that if I were running for reelection, that is a full-time job in Pennsylvania. We are a very big, very competitive, very complicated, very expensive state.
Without having to campaign and raise money, Toomey is now free from all that for the remaining two years of his term.
