Toomey: "candid" dinner with Obama opens door to common ground
A two-and-a-half hour dinner with President Obama Wednesday night was perhaps a first step toward finding common ground on some of the country's pressing fiscal issues, Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey said after he and several other Republicans met with the president.
Toomey: "candid" dinner with Obama opens door to common ground
WASHINGTON -- A two-and-a-half hour dinner with President Obama Wednesday night was perhaps a first step toward finding common ground on some of the country's pressing fiscal issues, Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey said after he and several other Republicans met with the president.
"It was a candid and constructive conversation on both sides," said Toomey, one of a handful of Republican senators invited to dine with the president at the high-end Jefferson Hotel, a few blocks north of the White House. "Most of the discussion was about fiscal issues, although it did extend beyond fiscal and budgetary issues."
The roughly two-and-a-half hour dinner was off the record, but Toomey said it was a "very cordial and very candid meeting" -- and his first chance to dine with the president.
"I think there are areas where we could reach common ground, I think that is possible, but it’s not going to happen over one dinner," Toomey said in a telephone interview. "If this were easy we would have done it years ago when it comes to solving our fiscal problems, reforming our entitlement programs, fixing our tax code."
Toomey said each of those issues present possible areas for compromise, but he declined to discuss specifics, noting that the details of the dinner were meant to be private.
"This was a beginning of a process," he said. "There's a lot of work left to do."
Toomey, a fiscal conservative, has been a frequent critic of Obama on taxes, spending and the federal budget. He leads the Senate's conservative caucus and is speaking Thursday at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
But tonight, in a brief interview, he sounded like there was perhaps a chance to work on the kind of big budget deal that has so far eluded Obama and Congressional Republicans. It was clear, though, that there was much to do before concrete steps can be taken.
“The President greatly enjoyed the dinner and had a good exchange of ideas with the senators,” a senior White House official said, per the White House pool report.
Toomey was one of 12 GOP Senators at the dinner.
The White House has said Obama picked up the bill, though one of the senators told reporters outside that several people paid. Sadly, I did not ask Toomey about this.
This comment has been deleted.— b,ill a,tkins- Remember how you tools loved Preznit Woodchipper? Gone clear him sum brushhhhh. Bigtime.
Well that's who made your fiscal crisis. Along with you enablers, of course.
Remember? Because most of the country sure does.— ahab - Ahab -
Bill Clinton(D) signed the Financial Modernization Act of 1999 in to law which stripped away all the financial regulations contained in FDR's 1933 Glass Stegell Act.
Barney Frank(D) and Chris Dodd(D) championed the expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act which required lenders to eliminate "red lining" and thus make loans into areas which the people had no ability to repay the loans (aka sub-prime lending).
Care to revise your statement about who "made the financial crises"? The evidence is heavily against your statement, lol.— Professor1982 - @Professor1982- you are absolutely right, Bill Clinton(D) did sign the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 aka the Gramm(R)-Leach(R)-Bliley(R) Act. Are you saying that Bush(R) would have vetoed a bill sponsored by three R's and passed by the 106th Congress which had R majorities in both houses?
You're also correct that Barney Frank(D) and Chris Dodd(D) were supporters of expanding the scope of the CRA. Something they accomplished (temporarily, as new restrictions were added in 2005) as part of, you guessed it, the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. But that seems to be where your understanding of the CRA ends given your statement that the CRA required lenders to "make loans into areas which the people had no ability to repay the loans (aka sub-prime lending)." According to the Federal Reserve: "Neither the CRA nor its implementing regulation gives specific criteria for rating the performance of depository institutions. Rather, the law indicates that the evaluation process should accommodate an institution's individual circumstances. Nor does the law require institutions to make high-risk loans that jeopardize their safety. To the contrary, the law makes it clear that an institution's CRA activities should be undertaken in a safe and sound manner."
Got any more of that lol inducing evidence?— PRphillyphan17 - Do your homework genius. GW Bush took more vacation then any President in history. — ghall1961
- b,ll a,tkins.....too stupid. — CommonSense in Philly
- Looney Toomey can't be saved by a nice comment about Obama. Looney is done after one term.
Looney was part of the super committee that was supposed to prevent sequester.
Looney failed.— Seed1 - No fan of Bush, but here are some fun number to compare the economy under Bush vs Obama:
•Dow Jones Industrial Average: Then 14164.5; Now 14164.5
•Regular Gas Price: Then $2.75; Now $3.73
•GDP Growth: Then 2.5%; Now 1.6%
•Americans Unemployed (in Labor Force): Then 6.7 million; Now 13.2 million
•Americans On Food Stamps: Then 26.9 million; Now 47.69 million
•Size of Fed's Balance Sheet: Then $0.89 trillion; Now $3.01 trillion
•US Debt as a Percentage of GDP: Then ~38%; Now 74.2%
•US Deficit (LTM): Then $97 billion; Now $975.6 billion
•Total US Debt Oustanding: Then $9.008 trillion; Now $16.43 trillion
•US Household Debt: Then $13.5 trillion; Now 12.87 trillion
•Labor Force Particpation Rate: Then 65.8%; Now 63.6%•Consumer Confidence: Then 99.5; Now 69.6
•S&P Rating of the US: Then AAA; Now AA
•VIX: Then 17.5%; Now 14%
•10 Year Treasury Yield: Then 4.64%; Now 1.89%
•USDJPY: Then 117; Now 93•EURUSD: Then 1.4145; Now 1.3050
•Gold: Then $748; Now $1583
•NYSE Average LTM Volume (per day): Then 1.3 billion shares; Now 545 million shares— Professor1982 - ALL of your figures are incorrect. Dummy. Bush screwed us up big time. — gorming
- @ gorming - LoL, then I guess you better take it up with the researchers at ZeroHedge. Just b/c you want to deny them doesn't make them less true.
Bush may have set the table but Obama turned out the lights.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-05/last-time-dow-was-here— Professor1982 - I don't think you're spending enough time on your crazy internet presence, 82. The other day a story came and went on philly.com without your loony two cents appearing beneath it.
Pick up the pace. I mean, it's not like you have a job or anything else productive to do 24/7.— ahab - Why did you chose and earlier point in the Bush presidency to compare your numbers. By this point in Bush's presidency, gas had skyrocketed to the highest price since the oil embargo, the stock market was starting to get crushed. I also noticed you left out foreclosures. I guess that doesn't matter. This is literally the month the free fall into the Great Recession began but yeah...your no fan. — jonline
- BTW, what's up with Holder saying Obama can use drones to kill Americans in America?!?!
WTF is wrong with this Administration?!?— Professor1982 - Holder said there is technically no reason why ANY president could not use drones here. Pay attention. — mike l
- Eric Holder never said that. You're a spammer and an uneducated twit.
— wokmaster
Jonathan Tamari is the Inquirer’s correspondent in Washington, where he follows the Philadelphia area’s interests and representatives. Tamari comes to D.C. after two years as a beat writer reporting on the Philadelphia Eagles and the NFL (where, a political source once told him, there are at least rules against hitting below the knees). He previously wrote about politics and government from Trenton, reporting on the characters and color of New Jersey state government.Jersey born and bred, Tamari now lives in the capital city, where he is looking for stories, places to run, soccer bars and good meals.
Reach him at jtamari@phillynews.com.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @JonathanTamari.
