By Alex Roarty 
PoliticsPA Staff Writer 
roarty@politicspa.com

HARRISBURG – Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey said Tuesday that Congress should rescind unspent parts of the federal economic stimulus package and instead use the money saved to cut payroll taxes.

“There’s no question in my mind that would be helpful to our economy,” Toomey told a group of business owners at a mid-day campaign event outside downtown. “… It would be much more constructive than just more borrowing, more spending and growing government.”

Much of the $787 billion included in the stimulus hasn’t been spent yet, said Toomey, a rigorous fiscal conservative who also decried the bail-outs of several major financial institutions and spoke out against the Democratic health care reform plan.

Momentum in Washington appears headed the opposite direction: House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Republicans might join Democrats in a second economic stimulus if it gives a tax credit to companies.

Toomey, who faces heavy underdog Peg Luksik in the GOP primary, delivered his speech H.B. McClure Company after publicly receiving an endorsement from the 1,700-member Associated Builders and Contractors. ABC is a non-union group.

“He knows the challenges that business faced because he lived them every day,” said John Zimmer, President and CEO of ABC’s Pennsylvania chapter. “He shares our values. He shares our values of free choice, of free enterprise, of the merit-job philosophy.”

Toomey’s campaign has been quiet through the summer and early fall, at least compared with Democratic counterparts Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak. But he did make news several times trying to moderate his conservative image, such as when he supported Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation and called President Barack Obama’s speech to schoolchildren “inspiring.”

Tuesday’s speech was a reminder he remains a strong fiscal conservative.

He arrived in Harrisburg Tuesday afternoon after receiving an endorsement from former presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Philadelphia.

Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor who approved of a universal health care system, and Toomey would seem to have been inter-party enemies only a few years ago. Some conservatives saw Romney as too liberal for the party’s presidential nomination, and Toomey spent time as head of the Club for Growth, a group that targeted moderate GOP congressmen with more conservative primary opponents.

But the former Lehigh Valley congressman said he has always thought highly of Romney.

“When I was at the Club for Growth, I gave Governor Romney a lot of credit for having a pro-growth approach to governing Massachusetts, a tough place to do that with an overwhelming liberal legislature,” Toomey said in a brief interview with PoliticsPA. 

“I just appreciate his leadership, his pro-growth pro-free enterprise approach, and I am happy to have his support,” he added.

The endorsement from Romney, who many observers speculate will run for president again in 2012, is another sign Toomey, unlike in 2004, is the clear GOP establishment candidate.

“Things change,” Toomey said.

“I’m happy to have all of the support that I can get, and I’ve got lots of it, and I’m very grateful for it,” he said.

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