Reality begs to differ, Steny.

(CNS News) — House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that Tea Party protests at town hall meetings in 2010 were “much more confrontational” than the left-wing Occupy protests now underway in cities around the country.

“I don’t know whether [House Majority Leader] Mr. Cantor (R-Va.) watched any of the town meetings that we had in August of 2009, [but] they were much more confrontational in many respects than these demonstrations are,” Hoyer told reporters at his weekly pen-and-pad news conference Tuesday.

The second-ranking House Democrat was referring to the Tea Party-led protests at town hall meetings in 2009 where many Americans protested and spoke out against the very unpopular Obamacare health-reform law — which was being debated in Congress at the time.

Democrats — primarily in the House — used the summer break period to go home to their districts and attempt to convince the public to support Obamacare. Instead, most were met by large groups of angry protesters

Hoyer, who had been asked his opinion of the left-wing Occupy protests in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities, said that they were merely democracy in action, and that the protesters were highlighting one of the “good aspects of democracy.”