With lawmakers meeting for yet another round of debt-ceiling negotiations at the White House on Thursday, tea-party-backed Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said the process should take place with the doors open.
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Toomey, speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, questioned what President Obama has actually put on the table in terms of entitlement reform, or any other part of the negotiations. “We hear about reforms, but what are the reforms?" Toomey said. "Here are the problems. We have five guys in a room behind closed doors. Who knows what they are talking about. This should be done out in the open. We ought to have a budget. We ought to have votes on the Senate floor. We ought to have a debate.”
While Toomey said he’s not sure if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s backup debt-ceiling plan will go through, he's worried that "Washington will do what Washington usually does, which is avoid the tough decisions and go ahead and raise the debt limits.
"Maybe there's a fig leaf of cover for people but there’ll be no change in our fiscal direction, and I won't be a part of that," he continued. "I'm worried we are heading in that direction.”
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