During another typical softball interview by David Gregory on Meet the Press, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked to respond to a clip of Vice President Joe Biden talking about the obstruction we've seen from Republicans where they are refusing to work with Democrats on job creation. Ryan responded by making the absurd claim that they've already passed "over a dozen pieces" of "jobs legislation" in the House.
GREGORY: The vice president saying there are limit on what any party can do when you have the other party willing to do nothing, absolutely nothing. That's the vice president talking. Are you offering anything different other than complete opposition to what the president wants to do?
RYAN: Well, look, I suppose that's good politics, but it's not factually accurate. We've passed over a dozen pieces of legislation, jobs legislation, that are all sitting over in the Senate. We passed a budget to pay off the debt to get the economy growing. We passed energy reform. We passed regulatory reforms, small business tax relief. We have passed so many different jobs bills throughout this year that are sitting over in the Senate. Here's the deal: we have a difference of opinion with the White House on how best to create jobs. We don't think doubling down on failed stimulus policies, which have already proven to fail, is the right way to go, so we want to work with ideas that have proven to work. That means helping small businesses grow. That means getting certainty in our policy, regulations, taxes, debt, so the small businesses can grow. Temporary stimulus, sort of sugar-high economics, are not what businesses are telling us they need to create jobs.
Naturally Gregory didn't bother to ask him why if his idea of "jobs legislation" that he's touting here -- which is just more of the same as we saw under the Bush administration, tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation -- work so well, we weren't at full employment when George W. Bush left office instead of purging around 700,000 jobs a month.
