Van Hollen Highlights Democrats' Efforts to Fight Special Interests

Press Release

Van Hollen Highlights Democrats' Efforts to Fight Special Interests

Today Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Assistant to the Speaker, joined Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and Majority Whip Clyburn to discuss the Democratic accomplishments of the 111th Congress and the Democratic agenda moving forward. You can watch the video here, and below is a transcript of his remarks:

"Thank you very much to our very distinguished Whip, Mr. Clyburn. As the Speaker and all of my colleagues have said in discussing these major legislative initiatives, they all reflect choices. Choices that are made about the priorities for the American people and the way forward. And the choice we made was to begin to rein in the power of some of the big corporate special interests who had their sway during the previous eight years.

"The previous eight years had an economic agenda that served the interests of some very few special interests at the expense of American consumers, American workers, and American taxpayers. The choices we made were in support of American workers, American taxpayers, and American consumers.

"And let's start with the Wall Street reform bill. With the Wall Street reform bill, we will ensure that never again -- never again -- will taxpayers be left having to pick up the tab for bad decisions made on Wall Street. And never again will workers across the country be held hostage by reckless gambling in parts of Wall Street. Now that piece of legislation also ended the TARP initiative -- the bank rescue initiative launched by President Bush and former Secretary of Treasury Paulson -- it ended that.

"We passed that important reform legislation. Amazingly, not only did our Republican colleagues oppose it, but they have now made, as one of their central planks of their platform, repealing it. Accomplishing what a lot of very well paid lobbyists in this town were not able to do, to turn back the clock and give that power back to big banks on Wall Street at the expense of American consumers and others.

"There are a number of other examples. We talked about the higher education legislation, making sure that kids could afford their college education. What choice did we make there? The choice we made was to say we don't think some of the biggest banks need to be taking this big cut of taxpayer dollars without taking any significant risk. Let's make sure that money goes to students who are struggling to pay their way through college. They need it; the big banks don't need it.

"That choice was reflected when it came to making sure that teachers who are about to be laid off around the country -- that would have led to [larger] class sizes this fall for our kids -- we made sure that local school districts had the funds to make sure those teachers were in the classrooms when all of our kids went back to school. How did we pay for it? We paid for it by shutting down these perverse loopholes in the tax code that reward multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said no to that, putting the interests and the profits of multinational corporations above the interests of American workers right here at home.

"And interestingly, even though the issue of outsourcing was one of the most popular recommendations made by the American people when the Republicans did their listening tour, it was right up there, you will not find one mention of outsourcing, not one, in the 47-page document that the Republicans put forward. Why? Because it didn't fit with the economic agenda, the same one they pursued for the previous eight years.

"Similar choices were made with respect to health insurance. Health insurance. During the previous eight years, health insurance premiums quadrupled, and profits went through the ceiling. Under the new bill we passed, we are going to rein in the cost of premiums and we will ensure that no longer are kids in America discriminated against because they've got asthma, or diabetes, or some other preexisting condition.

"Finally, on the health care issue, we saw the choice they made. They put a budget on the floor of the House last year that would cut Medicare by 75 percent over a period of time, turn it into a voucher program -- no more guaranteed benefit, and say, hey, you're off on the private insurance market with this voucher of declining value. That was their health care proposal. Again, one that would greatly benefit a lot of the same insurance companies that opposed the health care reform bill.

"And let me just end with this. We've seen the response of a lot of the special interests whose power has been reined in as a result of the Wall Street reform bill, the health care reform bill, the end to special tax breaks for corporations that outsource. They are now spending millions of dollars around the country trying to defeat people who tried to rein in their power and to support people who would return to the economic agenda that served the interest of those -- those particular entities. That's what's going on. And that's why -- that's why when it came to the DISCLOSE bill, where we said, you can say whatever you want about the records of Members of Congress or their opponents. Go ahead. Just tell us who is bankrolling your ads, just tell us who is paying for those ads. The voters have a right to know. And the fact of the matter is, they don't want to tell the American voter who is paying for those. We are finding out. As we find out, it's becoming clearer and clearer that it's the special interests that were served by the economic policies of the previous eight years and whose power was reined in by the measures that we took in this Congress.

"So that's the kind of choices that our Members made, and those are the kind of choices that were made by the other side. And we hope that as the American people look at those records, they will see the choices that were made on both sides and the choices ahead of us."

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