Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) rebuked House Republicans yesterday for suggesting the government require drug tests of individuals seeking unemployment insurance, calling such proposals “insulting” and a “red herring” in the unemployment crisis:

VAN HOLLEN: I think the drug testing thing is a red herring. The reality is that people are not out of work because they have substance abuse problems, people are out of work because there are four people looking for every job that’s available in America.

We’re willing to look at reforms, but the Republican rhetoric has been insulting to a whole lot of working Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own… I have to say, this Republican effort to kind of blame people who lost jobs through no fault of their own shows a total insensitivity to the stories that we’re hearing from districts around the country. Frankly I think the American people are hearing that tone and they’re not very appreciative, because they know that everybody, but for the grace of God, could also be in that position.

Watch it:

Republican presidential candidates such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have also endorsed drug testing for recipients of federal aid, but this is an invented problem that does not need a solution. Van Hollen was correct that there are four unemployed job seekers for every available job, suggesting the real reason unemployment benefits are needed is unemployment, not some fabricated reality where government benefits are supporting drug dependencies. Mandatory drug testing could create complications for employers and additional delays for job seekers but would do little to put more Americans back to work.

In the last few weeks of 2011, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) rounded out his concerted campaign against Michigan workers with a few final laws. In a prejudicial move against the LGBT community, Snyder signed a measure prohibiting all public employees from providing benefits for their unmarried partners. In considering his state’s 10.6 percent unemployment rate, Snyder also signed a law forcing some of Michigan’s over 400,000 unemployed workers to take low-wage jobs after 10 weeks of benefits, even if those jobs pay less than they were making before:

The measures require some unemployed workers to take new jobs after 10 weeks of benefits even if the available work is outside their previous experience or pays lower wages than they were making before. They also make it harder for someone to collect jobless benefits if they’re fired for cause or leave a job voluntarily.[...]

Snyder disagreed with critics who say requiring jobless workers to take a job paying 120 percent of their weekly benefit could trap them in a low-wage position by leaving them little time to look for work in their area of expertise.

“It’s to encourage people to work. It’s not to have them go backward,” Snyder said of the legislation. “It’s easiest to find a job when you’ve gotten a job.”

This new requirement comes in addition to Snyder’s decision to cut the availability of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 20 weeks starting in 2012. The measure also encapsulates Snyder’s priorities over his first year in office — placing the burden on the most vulnerable for the sake of the state’s bottom line. In 2011, he “shaved billions of dollars off future health care and retirement commitments,” proposed ending the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, cut funding for school districts by eight to ten percent, cut aid for 11,000 low-income families and nearly 30,000 children, and enacted a regressive increase in personal taxes — all in the name of the deficit.

Naturally, not all Michiganders were asked to share in such sacrifices — namely, corporations. While more than 1.5 million of his constituents faced poverty, Snyder enacted a $1.7 billion tax cut for corporations, or about “$30 in corporate tax cuts for every dollar saved in welfare benefit cuts.” Indeed, Snyder pushed to cut the state’s business taxes by nearly $2 billion, or 86 percent.

In enacting such preferential treatment for those who need it least, Snyder did earn an impressive recognition in 2011. For his first year in office, Snyder ranked as one of the most unpopular governors in the country.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has faced scrutiny from his fellow Republican candidates over his career at Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that, despite his retirement, still pays him millions of dollars a year. Bain, and Romney, often raked in profits while companies were shedding jobs, as was the case in New Hampshire and South Carolina, among others.

Anticipating that Democrats and President Obama would pick up on those attacks, Romney told Politico last week how he plans to respond. Apparently, his plan is to toss around blatant falsehoods, as he told reporters that Obama “has not created any new jobs” as president:

“I know that the Democrats will try and make this a campaign about Bain Capital; … 25 million people are out of work because of Barack Obama. And so I’ll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs.”

“I’ll compare that record with his record, where he has not created any new jobs.”

Of course, like Romney’s repeated assertions that Obama made the economy “worse,” the claim that he hasn’t created any new jobs is false. As Steve Benen noted, the private sector has added 2.3 million new jobs since March 2010, and it took the Obama economy one year to create more jobs than the economy under President Bush did in eight. There are, indeed, fewer net jobs now than when Obama took office early in the recession, but his policies, including the stimulus, effectively turned months of job losses into months of consistent job gains.

Many of the jobs lost under Obama — more than 600,000, to be exact — are public sector jobs, the type Romney considers outside “the real economy.” And while he touts his own business success, Romney has promised to slash even more public sector jobs, doing to government employees what his former company has done to thousands of workers.

Along with distorting Obama’s record, Romney is distorting his own. While he claims his record includes plenty of job creation, he ignores his time as governor of Massachusetts. From 2003 to 2007, in fact, the state ranked 47th in job creation. Romney also refuses to provide evidence to back up the claim that Bain created 100,000 jobs on his watch. Romney may want to talk about jobs, but without adding distortions and baseless claims, his record sure doesn’t appear like something worth touting.