Toomey set to announce his own budget

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) plans to throw another budget plan into the ring next week, when he unveils his own fiscal 2012 proposal.

The freshman senator will unveil a separate budget proposal Tuesday, which would balance the budget within nine years. 

"Right now, our country stands on the verge of a fiscal crisis,” Toomey said in a statement. “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."

The timeline adopted by Toomey's budget is more aggressive than the GOP budget put forth in the House by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which aims to balance the budget before 2040. 

Rather, Toomey's budget appears to have more in common with an alternative House budget offered by the Republican Study Committee. When the conservative bloc of Republicans released that budget in April, lawmakers announced it would balance the budget in less than 10 years.

The exact number of co-sponsors on Toomey's package is unknown, but his office said it has garnered "a number" of Senate Republican colleagues.

---