Chris Van Hollen: “I just have to say to my colleagues that, in looking at this bill, it represents exactly what the American people hate…”

“I just have to say to my colleagues that, in looking at this bill, it represents exactly what the American people hate most about this body and this Congress. It's a political gimmick that does absolutely nothing to help create jobs. It does nothing to help boost economic growth. If you read the bill, it is another finger-pointing exercise: blaming the President for the late submission of the 2014 budget and demanding not that the President submit a budget--the President is going to submit a budget--but that he submit it in a form dictated by House Republicans rather than dictated by current law. Now, our Republican colleagues know very well why the President's 2014 budget is late. It's late because we had a big debate in this country over how to avoid the fiscal cliff, and it wasn't until January 2 that this House and the Senate were able to resolve that issue. If we'd gone over the fiscal cliff, it would have created huge economic problems. It would have created a huge contraction. It would have created a huge loss of jobs. Now, even though a majority of Republican Senators voted for the agreement to prevent us from going over that fiscal cliff, our House Republican colleagues argued against it and against it, and at the end of the day, they were prepared to let the economy go over that cliff in order to protect tax breaks for very wealthy people.…”