Chris Van Hollen: “You would think, listening to our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, that the great recession began after…”

“You would think, listening to our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, that the great recession began after President Obama was sworn in, not recognizing the fact that the day President Bush lost office this country was losing jobs at the rate of 700,000 jobs a month. And in fact, during the entire 8 years of the Bush administration we ended up losing over 600,000 private-sector jobs. We have been working very hard to dig ourselves out of that hole for a long period of time since then. The last 6 months we have seen private-sector job growth in consecutive months. Not as much as anybody would like to see, but positive growth. And it's interesting to listen to my colleagues, many of whom are showing up to ribbon-cutting ceremonies and groundbreaking ceremonies, taking credit for jobs that have been created by investments made that would never have happened if they had their way, if their votes had been the ones that carried the day. Now, this legislation is an effort to change a perverse tax policy.”