Chris Van Hollen: “Before I turn to one of my colleagues, let me say in response to my friend Mr. Hensarling that the American people are…”

“Before I turn to one of my colleagues, let me say in response to my friend Mr. Hensarling that the American people are well aware of what was happening to the economy the very day the President was sworn in as President of the United States: losing 800,000 jobs every month, the economy in free fall, almost 9 percent in negative economic growth. People's retirement savings had dropped by one-third compared to where they were in 2007. That's the economy the President inherited. As a result of the extraordinary measures taken by the President, by the previous Congress and, most importantly, with the fortitude of the American people, what we see is this. After the day the President was sworn in and when the economy was in free fall--those were jobs lost-- we began to lift ourselves slowly out. We have now had 25 consecutive months of positive private sector job growth. Is it enough? No. Of course, we had no help from our Republican colleagues in working on the turnaround. The President's jobs bill that he submitted to this House last September is still sitting here. Fortunately, we finally did a piece of it with the payroll tax cut. My Republican colleagues say they have an answer. Their answer is back to the old trickle-down economics: another round of tax breaks for the folks at the very top, and somehow that's going to trickle down and lift everybody up. Do you know what? We tried it. It didn't work. It was called 8 years of the Bush administration.…”