Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Toomey agrees to town hall meetings after avoiding unemployed all year

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

SENATOR TOOMEY AGREES TO TOWN HALL MEETINGS, UNEMPLOYED WANT THEIR VOICES HEARD

“You’ve met with the CEO’s and lobbyists, now meet with real unemployed workers.”

PENNSYLVANIA – After receiving repeated requests to hold a town hall meeting with unemployed workers before the end of the August recess, Senator Pat Toomey’s office announced that he will be holding “open forums” at the end of the month.

The announcement, which was reported in the Morning Call, comes just days after Toomey verbally agreed to meeting with unemployed workers at the request of Dan Haney and Shawn Wygant. Both men have lost their jobs recently and are struggling to provide for their families.

“I’m happy that Senator Toomey has finally honored his promise to hold open forums,” said Haney of Philadelphia, who worked as a pharmacy technician until February of this year when his job, along with approximately 600 of his co-worker’s jobs, was sent overseas. “So far, he has spent the August recess meting with CEO’s and lobbyists. I sincerely hope that he fulfills his promise to include unemployed workers in his open forums. He needs to hear how the policies he supports are only making our situation worse.”

Haney and Wygant, an unemployed worker from Pittsburgh, have been traveling the state asking Toomey to hold a town hall meeting with unemployed workers. They will continue to visit his offices until he agrees that the unemployed will be a large part of his audience at the “open forums.”

“I can’t afford to pay $1,000 to have access to my Senator, like the lobbyists and corporate CEO’s,” said Wygant. “Senator Toomey has spent his time in Washington protecting tax breaks for CEOs and corporations that ship jobs overseas and doing nothing to create jobs for regular people here in Pennsylvania. I want to be able to tell him face-to-face, like he said I would be able to, how his policies are hurting middle class families like mine.”

A link to the Morning Call story can be found by clicking here. A copy of a letter sent to Toomey from Haney and Wygant just yesterday is also attached to this release. The correspondence was in response to the Senator's failure to publicly announce that he had decided to hold a town hall meeting. This was also reported on in the Morning Call as well, and can be read here.

CONTACT: Jessica Walls-Lavelle, 717-724-7570, toomeywatch@gmail.com


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is interesting, because I recently watched coverage of three lunch or dinner speaking engagements by Sen. Toomey that were aired on PCN. Every one them the audience was quite obviously limited to senior executives and/or owners of businesses that share the same views as Toomey, this being "more" for the well-heeled and LESS for everyone else. These folks, from the questions they asked, want less environmental oversight and more tax breaks (for them), which of course is what Toomey supports. So....I am glad he is willing to at least listen to other points of view--that's if he actually follows through on scheduling the meetings. I don't think it's going change his opinions one iota, but as a member of the super-committee he's in an even more significant role. It is important he at least has input from people other than the above mentioned constituencies plus his investment banking friends.