Former Rep. Pat Toomey had a progress report today on his Senate campaign for his North Hills supporters.

"I have nothing but good news for you," he said to the dozens of partisans who had gathered in a Perry Highway parking lot to wait for his campaign bus.

Mr. Toomey said he had to share the credit for the rosy prospects he described with President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But on a day that brought the release of another batch of bleak statistics on the housing market, the good news for a Republican campaign was also rooted in stubbornly bad news on the economy.

At stops across Western Pennsylvania, Mr. Toomey once again denounced his opponent, Rep. Joe Sestak, as a champion of serial bailouts and expanding federal debt. The Obama administration and Mr. Sestak defend their aggressive steps to counter the nation's economic slide.

On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden issued a statement contending that despite the persistently high jobless rate, a new analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showed that the administration's policies had begun to take effect.

The CBO report estimated that in the second quarter of the year, the administration's stimulus efforts were responsible for an increase in gross domestic product of between 1.7 and 4.5 percent and an increase of between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

In an interview on his campaign bus, Mr. Toomey said he was skeptical of those figures and the assumptions behind them. Rather, he said, the government's actions had created uncertainty over the economy that had imposed a chilling effect on spending and investment decision by business.

At each stop on his circumnavigation of the state, Mr. Toomey has been citing the per capita spending from the government's $787 billion stimulus bill of 2009 and questioning whether the cost had produced adequate results. For Allegheny County, he estimated that spending amounted to $3.2 billion.

"Does anyone think Allegheny County got its share?" he said.

"Joe Sestak voted for all the bailouts," he said at another point.

"Pennsylvania does not need to elect a San Francisco liberal to the U.S. Senate."

While he spoke, roughly a dozen Democratic activists watched from a corner of Perry Highway, holding signs critical of GOP policies, including a large "Wall Street" road sign mocking Mr. Toomey's background as an investment banker before he started a restaurant business in Eastern Pennsylvania.

One Sestak supporter challenged Mr. Toomey on his view on Social Security. The Republican, who favors allowing younger workers to invest part of their retirement savings in private accounts, emphasized that he does not propose any changes in the system for those at or near retirement age. At a Harrisburg appearance Monday, Mr. Toomey said he has never advocated privatizing Social Security. The Sestak campaign has repeatedly criticized Mr. Toomey's Social Security views, arguing that one lesson of the economic crisis is that the financial markets cannot be relied on as a basis for retirement savings.

On the second day of a cross-state tour, Mr. Toomey started his day in Armstrong County before heading to stops in Butler, McCandless, Washington County and Erie.

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