Chris Van Hollen: “Again, I want to thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Teague) for this initiative and just respond to a couple of…”

“Again, I want to thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Teague) for this initiative and just respond to a couple of the points raised by Mr. Camp, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee. First, this piece of the energy bill was brought to the floor for two reasons. Number one, it has strong bipartisan support, as you heard. In addition to Mr. Bilbray, Mrs. Bono Mack and Mr. Dreier are cosponsors of the legislation. And, secondly, this piece has no cost associated with it. And so those two aspects of the bill made it a good candidate for coming forward. Secondly, given the other comments made by the gentleman with respect to the importance of moving forward on tax relief for small businesses and others around the country, I would just remind the gentleman that just last Thursday, on the floor of this House, we had a vote on a bill for small business lending to make sure that we increased credit to struggling small businesses around the country to make sure that they could make payroll, to make sure that they could take on the costs that they needed to expand. And part of that bill also contained significant tax relief for small businesses.”