The following is a fact-check from the July 18, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD)

1) Last week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll indicated that respondents had less confidence in Congressional Republicans than Democrats – TRUE

2) Over the course of the Bush [43] administration 600,000 private sector jobs were lost – TRUE

REP. VAN HOLLEN: Well, David, if you look at that Washington Post/ABC poll, the most, I think, interesting fact that came out of it, and the one that was right on the front page, was the fact that the American people have a lot less confidence in Republicans in Congress than they do in Democrats in Congress, and that’s not surprising. It’s pretty fresh in their memory exactly what those Republican policies did to the economy. After all, during the whole eight years of the Bush administration, we actually lost over 600,000 private sector jobs.

1) We tracked down the Washington Post/ABC News poll and according to their statistics, 75% don’t trust the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for the country’s future. 24 percent do, which is up 5 points from October. 68% don’t trust decision-making by the Democrats in Congress, up 12 points since January. Distrust is high in both parties, but since the distrust is higher for the Republicans (75%) than the Democrats (68%), we rate Rep. Van Hollen’s statement TRUE.

2) According to the BLS seasonally adjusted figures, there were 111,624,000 people employed in the private sector at the end of February 2001, and 110,961,000 people at the end of January 2009. That’s a total decrease of 663,000 jobs. Although, there is a disparity of 63,000 jobs between the actual number and Rep. Van Hollen’s statement, he understated the number, which works against his interests.  Thus, we rate Rep. Van Hollen’s statement TRUE.

Special thanks to crowd-sourcer Shelley for assisting with this fact-check.

This fact-check took a combined 1.5 hours.