Sen. Toomey Says He Opposes A Government Shutdown, Calls It A 'Blunt Weapon'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- We might be looking at another government shutdown similar to the more than two week long one we experienced October of last year if action is not taken.
The one issue that might impede the deal from getting done is President Obama's executive action on immigration.
Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) told WPHT morning host Chris Stigall that he opposes using the "blunt weapon" of shutting the government down just to get your way.
"I think it's probably a fact [that] using government funding as a tool to limit the executive doesn't work very well when it's all or nothing. In other words, if it's a binary choice -- shut the government down entirely or run the government entirely -- that's a very blunt weapon, and the American public probably doesn't want to see us to employ that weapon except in very extraordinary circumstances. Where I think we can use the power of the purse strings very effectively is when we zero in on the specific offending policy and we withhold funding for that policy, then I think we're on much stronger ground."
While Toomey feels that the executive action was done "outside of the law," he proposes what he feels is a better route for Congress to go instead of a shutdown.
"What I would like the House to do is pass a funding bill that would fund the government from December 11th when the current mechanism expires through the end of the fiscal year for the entire government and add an explicit provision that says 'no funding whatsoever can be used to implement the President's executive order on immigration.' I think that's straight-forward. It would fund the government. It would completely forbid the President from implementing his rule -- because the President's doing it in a way that's not consistent with the law -- and then send it over to the Senate."
Even though Toomey is unsure that such a bill would even pass in the Senate and certainly would be vetoed by Obama, he says that if that were to happen, they would figure out where to go from there.
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