Toomey offers advice to deficit-cutting ‘super committee’

The federal lawmakers who will serve on the “super committee” charged with finding more than a trillion dollars in cuts to the deficit have not been named yet.

But Pennsylvania’s junior senator says he has some ideas about what they should consider.

Republican Pat Toomey said his own prospects for getting on the 12-member bipartisan panel are “not excellent”–but he knows what he would want on the group’s agenda.

He says reforming the tax code is a must, so companies such as General Electric no longer go without paying income taxes.

The senator says the current rules inhibit economic growth.

“We have incentives through the tax code to engage in economically irrational behavior. Like growing ethanol and burning it into gasoline tack. Or growing corn and basically burning food,” Toomey said. “It’s the tax code that drives that because it doesn’t make any economic sense on its own. So I think we should get rid of that.”

Toomey said Social Security payments shouldn’t be touched by the panel.

And he says Standard & Poor’s will have to answer whether its downgrade of the U.S. credit rating was a critique of the country’s political system–or its ability to make good on its debt.

Toomey voted against the debt ceiling bill, saying its spending cuts didn’t go far enough.