Patrick Joseph Toomey Jr. (born November 17, 1961) is an American businessman and politician who served as a United States senator from Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2023.

[9] His father was a union worker who laid cable for the Narragansett Electric Company, and his mother worked as a part-time secretary at St. Martha's Catholic Church.

[11] He attended La Salle Academy on a scholarship,[12] where he participated in the Close Up Washington civic education program and graduated as valedictorian.

[29] Toomey strongly opposed Bush's plan for comprehensive immigration reform, saying "I think it's a slap in the face for the millions of people throughout the world who decide to take the effort to legally enter our country.

"[30] He was a longtime supporter of creating Medicare Part D, but said he would not vote for it unless it lowered costs and guaranteed competition between government and private insurers.

[41] He was unopposed in the Republican primary and won the general election[42][43] with 48.9% of the vote, to Democratic nominee Katie McGinty's 47.2% and Libertarian challenger Ed Clifford's 3.85%.

[46] On August 11, 2011, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell named Toomey to the United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

[53][54] In February 2019, Toomey was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border which included 55 miles of fencing.

[55] In March 2019, Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to cosponsor a resolution that would impose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court to nine justices.

[57] On April 17, 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appointed Toomey to the COVID-19 Congressional Oversight Commission to oversee the implementation of the CARES Act.

I cannot support piling hundreds of billions of dollars of debt on current and future generations of Americans without even a sliver of reform to start putting our fiscal house in order.

[86][87] He pressed the House to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 because it would "eliminate most of the cloud of legal and regulatory uncertainty that has shadowed" derivatives since their invention.

The Act would reduce costs for businesses that go public by phasing in SEC regulations for "emerging growth companies" over a five-year period.

[89] In 2013, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Toomey and Senator Joe Manchin introduced legislation that would have required a background check for most gun sales.

[citation needed] After the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Toomey renewed his calls for background checks, but a bill never came to vote.

The two senators were part of a bipartisan group of 20 senators working on a "modest" deal for gun control that included a red flag provision, a support for state crisis intervention orders, funding for school safety resources, stronger background checks for buyers under the age of 21, and penalties for straw purchases.

[100][101][102] In a 2022 interview with Face the Nation, Toomey said that Republicans can stay consistent on Second Amendment rights while still supporting gun-control measures like background checks and state red flag laws (with respect to due process), and addressing school safety and mental health issues.

[103] In 2004, Toomey said he believes society should give special benefits only to couples who meet the "traditional" definition of marriage as "one man, one woman.

[110][111] Following the cloture vote, Toomey said he had long believed that more legal protections are appropriate to prevent employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, but planned to modify the bill to offer religious groups more "leeway".

[129][130] As a senator, Toomey voted for a bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks with no exceptions for the health of pregnant women and girls and new limits in cases of rape and incest.

[131] In January 2020, Toomey also signed an amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to overturn several of its past rulings protecting abortion rights, including Roe v.

[134] In March 2015, Toomey voted for an amendment to establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to allow employees to earn paid sick time.

[138] In February 2019, Toomey was one of 16 senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing $1.375 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.

[139] In March 2019, Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to vote to block Trump's national emergency declaration that would have granted him access to $3.6 billion in military construction funding to build border barriers.

[141][142] In December 2019, Toomey said that it was not worth discussing whether to impeach Trump after he allegedly tried to extort the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, by demanding that Zelenskyy start a criminal investigation of Vice President Joseph Biden or at least falsely announce an investigation was underway of Trump's allegation that Biden engaged in corruption in Ukraine.

[143] Earlier Toomey had described Trump's attempt to force Zelenskyy to make false allegations about the Democratic presidential candidate as "errors of judgment".

"[145] (The New York Times reported Bolton had written in his forthcoming book that Trump had told him in August 2019 that he wanted to continue freezing the Ukraine aid until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.

[151][152] In March 2018, Toomey voted to table a resolution spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Mike Lee which would have required Trump to withdraw American troops either in or influencing Yemen within the next 30 days unless they were combating Al-Qaeda.

[155] In January 2018, Toomey was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century.

[156] In November 2018, Toomey was one of 12 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be submitted to Congress by the end of the month to allow a vote before the end of the year; they were concerned that "passage of the USMCA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult" in the incoming 116th United States Congress.