WYOMING COUNTY, Pa. — Sen. Pat Toomey spent about an hour with leaders in the natural gas industry at the Lackawanna College campus in Tunkhannock Township, Wyoming County.
Many spoke with him about the issues facing the industry, like labor shortages and government regulations, which Toomey says is frustrating.
"Vladimir Putin is funding his war of massacring innocent Ukrainians by selling natural gas to people that should be buying ours. But we can't even ship ours to New England," said Sen. Toomey.
On the war in Ukraine, Toomey thinks the U.S. should be doing more.
"We don't have to put American troops on the ground. Ukrainians have never asked us for that, but we should be providing all of the defensive and offensive weapons that they need," said Sen. Toomey. "Aircraft, anti-aircraft facilities, real-time intelligence to help them with targeting all kinds of things that we're not doing as much as we should be."
At home, Sen. Toomey says the biggest complaints he fields are about inflation, which is the highest since 1981.
"The [Federal Reserve] has finally caught on, is reversing policy, but we have the Biden administration, still wants to do another big multibillion-dollar spending bill which would only make it worse still," he said.
Sen. Toomey says Republicans don't have the votes to fix these problems now, but he believes a Republican candidate will win the seat he's vacating at the end of the year.
"We have a field of very strong candidates," Sen. Toomey said about the Republican side of the race. "We have some really good candidates, and I think whoever wins is likely to win in the fall and hold the seat."
Sen. Toomey declined to tell Newswatch 16 which candidate he is endorsing for the race.
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