Toomey to unveil budget Tues

Debt maven Sen. Pat Toomey has been tooling around with his own Senatorial version of the Paul Ryan budget, a blueprint to get the country's spending under control. He wouldn't provide details on it last month but it was talked about as a potentially more politically palatable version of what the House GOP passed that's being demonized as a plan to kill Medicare. Well the Toomey brainchild is scheduled to emerge Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., per a news release from his office, as a plan to be co-sponsored by "a number of" Senate GOP'ers.

“Right now, our country stands on the verge of a fiscal crisis,” Toomey said in the release. “In the past decade, total federal spending has doubled and our deficits have exploded. It is unfortunate that President Obama has refused to show the leadership our country needs. His 2012 budget only piles more spending and debt onto our already precarious finances. The purpose of my budget is to demonstrate that it is possible to balance our budget and put our country on a sustainable fiscal path, and we can do this in a way that encourages the strong economic growth and job creation our citizens deserve.”

How seriously this bill is taken -- and how many colleagues join him -- will provide further evidence of how much Toomey's influence is growing as the Serious But Not Flashy Debt-Talking Freshman. And it's that kind of policy work that can really garner him some atten....OOOOH look at Rubio!