Dealing with a skeptical audience isn’t easy, but House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., had a bit of the deer-in-the-headlights look during an appearance in Utica, N.Y., in response to an upset taxpayer:

“For the last three months, housing starts are up in America. Last three months… Jobs… 95… (long pause, offscreen grumbling from audience) haven’t changed since the Bush administration. 95 percent… haven’t changed since the Bush administration.”

“95 percent… haven’t changed since the Bush administration”? What does that even mean?

UPDATE: A reader says he thinks the offscreen grumbling is about corporate taxes, which indeed, have not yet changed under the new administration.

I wonder what Hoyer was going to say on the jobs front, as the unemployment rate has increased from 7.6 percent to 9.6 percent in the first six months of this year…