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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release July 30, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
AT AN OBAMA VICTORY FUND TRIAL LAWYERS LUNCHEON


Hilton Chicago
Chicago, Illinois


1:41 P.M. CDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you very, very much. It's great to be with so many friends. (Applause.) Thank you all so very, very much. Thank you. You're making me feel like Fritz Hollings. (Laughter.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I am Beau Biden's father. (Laughter.) Headline in a Delaware paper, as the press can tell you, not long ago: "Biden Most Popular Politician in Delaware - Beau." (Laughter.) You always know -- my dad used to have an expression, and it truly is his expression. He'd say, you know you're a success when you turn and look at your kids and realize they turned out better than you. I want to introduce you to my son Hunter Biden -- Hunter, where are you? There's my son Hunter Biden. (Applause.) Hunter is -- I got a chance -- when he heard I was coming out to speak to you all, I got a chance to go -- his wife, my daughter-in-law, is from the southwest side of Chicago, and her family, for I guess the last 35 years or so, have been going up to the lake just on the Indiana border, and Hunt bought a place on the lake right near his in-laws, and he's been there since I guess October, or so -- at least he's had it since then. And I got to come out and see it. And those of you who are Chicagoans, no wonder you spend all your time at Lake Michigan -- God, it's beautiful. It really is a beautiful -- Long Beach is a beautiful area. And as much as I love you, I didn't want to leave the beach to come and see you. I wanted to stay with my granddaughters. (Laughter.)

But it's nice to see you all. And before we really begin, some of you who have been around and belonged to AAJ for a long time probably feel a sense of just something missing today, and it's Phil -- Phil Corboy is missing today. Phil became my friend a long, long time ago. And Phil helped me in all of my races. And Phil, I say to his wife and his son who are here, he was the consummate gentleman. He was sort of -- my dad taught us all that the greatest sin anyone could commit was the abuse of power, and he meant it sincerely -- whether it was a man lifting his hand to a woman or a child, or a corporation taking overwhelming advantage of an individual, or someone with the financial means to demean someone else who would go about doing it. That was the ultimate abuse of power.

And that's what I think -- I don't mean to be presumptuous, Mrs. Corboy, but I -- that was sense as to why Phil was so passionate about this organization and what he did. I was thinking about it on the way in from the lake today, where I got to spend, as I said, yesterday. And the thing that -- we've been friends throughout my whole career. We were friends -- in your other iteration, before we were called AAJ -- ever since I got out of law school. Matter of fact, you're one of the reasons why I went to law school. In the neighborhood I come from, there was only one real equalizer that was available to people in Scranton and Claymont, Delaware, and in suburban Wilmington, where I lived, and that was having somebody who could speak for them and make sure that they would, as Beau said, have their day in court.

That's why I'm so proud of both Beau and Hunter, as lawyers, the work they do. It's all about what motivates you all. It's what motivated me to be hired by a very good white-shoe firm in Delaware -- honorable, wonderful people. But after being there for just a little bit and taking the bar, I realized I wasn't comfortable defending the insurance companies. I wasn't comfortable. They're good, not bad -- there's nothing -- I'm not making any moral judgment. It's just what, sort of, you figure out in this profession of law where you're most comfortable -- where you're most comfortable. Because you can make as much money doing other areas of the law as you all make, and you take a lot fewer risks if you do it.

But I left, and I joined -- I remember the incredulous look on the head of the public defenders' office when I walked across, after my senior partner won a very big case on the grounds of what used to be then contributory negligence against the Getty Oil company, and he wanted to celebrate. And I celebrated by walking across what they call Rodney Square, and asked the public defender -- and he wasn't even full-time then -- whether I could have a job. And you guys and women, in my view -- and I've gotten to know many of you well over the years -- I think that's what got most of you in. It's not just that we're in a position where we get to do what we care about. The truth is we all share the belief that all people deserve competent representation -- the rich, the poor, the middle class. But not all who need it -- sometimes the most aggrieved among us -- can afford quality representation; or find counsel willing to take on the most entrenched or most powerful interest in their city, in their town, their community, their state, the nation; or, quite frankly, take the financial risks to challenge those usually incredibly well-funded interests that, in fact, you're taking on.

I know from a little bit of experience that the cost you absorb financially, and sometimes the cost you absorb in terms of the community, if you don't succeed -- those costs are real.

I find it very fascinating -- over the years when I was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I found it fascinating how those very powerful interests represented by equally competent and well educated lawyers representing them -- I found it fascinating how they failed to see the irony in their arguments, when they argued that you should not be compensated as highly as you are for the work you do, but then argue in the same breath that they deserve preferential treatment, access, tax breaks, reserved only for the very powerful. And their rationale is that in our capitalist system, the greater the risk you take, the greater reward you're entitled to.

But somehow the risks you take -- and they are severe in many cases -- the risks you take doesn't entitle you to the rewards that flow, but when they take a risk -- and by the way, unlike your risk, if they're big enough -- if they're too big to fail, their risks are compensated for by the average, middle-class American.

Those of you who started in this practice in my generation can remember an economic, a political and a social circumstance where the middle class and the working poor had certain sort of baked-in protections from the excesses of society, the excess of the system. They were usually in the form of laws, but they were kind of the equalizers filling in our political and our economic system.

There was a sense -- and a real sense -- that if you worked hard, you played by the rules, you get a fair shake and you get a fair shot. I mean, go back to your old neighborhoods -- most of you come from neighborhoods like I come from; not poor. I wasn't poor, and I'm not poor now. You pay me an exorbitant salary of over $200,000 as Vice President. (Laughter.) And I am not offended by having been listed as the poorest man in Congress. That does not offend me. But all kidding aside, I do better than the vast majority of the American people. But like many of you, I was raised in a three-bedroom, split-level home with four kids, a mom and dad, and always -- with notable exception -- in the 19 years I lived in that home, always one relative permanently living with us -- my grandmom died, my grandpop; my uncle; my great aunt, and my other uncle.

And by the way, it was no burden for the kids. It was a great -- it was wonderful. It was wonderful. But it was a burden on my parents. But again, it wasn't -- this wasn't up by your bootstraps. No one in my family -- God love them -- were wearing a blue collar; they wore white collars, and they struggled like an awful lot of middle-class people did. But they really believed, and I suspect your parents really believed, that if you really worked at it and you did well, you were entitled to certain rewards; that there was a level playing field.

Well, that's changed. It started changing when the compensation system in the workplace went from basically having a sense of equality to it, and balance -- basically evaporated, and more into an allocation of profits that no longer bore any direct relationship to those who generated that profit, who produced that productivity that generated the profits. That's not my opinion, it's a fact. Between the years 1978 and 2011, CEO salaries rose by 725 percent. And a lot of you know, they rose even if their companies lost heavily; even if their companies had horrible years, many of them still rose. The stock market rose, which is good, not bad -- it rose by 350 percent. Worker productivity during that period went up 90 percent. We have the most productive workers in all the world still; three times as productive as the workers in China, for example. That's not a hit on China, it's a recognition of the productivity of the American workforce.

But the wages of all those people, they stagnated. They barely budged during that period. Even when our economy was on solid footing, the middle class was slipping. The places where most of us came from were slipping. And then that basic bargain that we thought was in place continued to change. It changed when we were told -- beginning as early as the '80s, but it really changed in 2000 -- when we were told Wall Street was overregulated, we had to deregulate Wall Street. It changed when the -- even the idea of stronger consumer protections were viewed as an impediment to competition and began to be eroded. It changed when the environmental laws that a lot of you and I fought for -- one of the three reasons that got me into public life -- began to be viewed, again, as an impediment to the bottom line, rather than an impediment to your health or your physical wellbeing, and they began to be eroded. They're under full assault now -- full assault.

It changed when their mantra became: Any regulation hurts job creation. And the irony is, parenthetically, fewer regulations under us -- we've eliminated more than under any previous administration. But if you're -- you listen to the mantra, we're an over-regulated society holding down our capitalist system. And the recent economic storms that breached an already weakened levy that we saw hit in full force beginning in 2007 -- a Fed study recently found that median household wealth fell by almost 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, almost the entire drop occurring in 2008. If I'm not mistaken, median household wealth was about a hundred and -- between 125,000 and 130,000 bucks, and median household wealth is now in the mid-70s. a gigantic hit -- a gigantic hit. Yet, from 2000 to 2007, even though productivity increased significantly, household incomes of the top 1 percent went up 20 percent, and fell for everybody else.

I want to make it clear to you, I come from a very wealthy state and I'm proud of my state. I come from a state where I think we have the highest per-capita income still -- if not, it's close. I've won, with your help, seven races for the Senate in that state, and I've never once played the populist game and I'm not playing it now. As that old program back in the early '60s -- Walter Brennan said, it ain't brag, ma'am, just fact. Just fact. The fact is all the statistics I've given you are true. But I also know Disraeli was right when he said there's three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. So let me put them back in context a little bit here.

Where I come from, and I think throughout America, the very wealthy are just as patriotic as the poor, just as patriotic as the middle class. I'm not making a case against the accumulation of wealth. I think it's a good thing, not a bad thing. What I am making the case against is taking sort of the structure out from under hardworking people and just shoring up the structure under the very wealthy. In this God-awful recession we've faced, the wealthy are prepared to do more. They're the only ones that haven't been asked to do anything. If you look at our jobs bill, which I won't go into. I won't bore you with that. But one portion of it would have put 400,000 cops, firefighters and teachers back to work. And the way we funded it was a .5 of 1 percent tax on the first dollar you all made after your first million. Seventy percent of the people -- self-proclaimed millionaires -- supported it. It's not that the wealthy aren't prepared to do their fair share. They haven't been asked. But the middle class in the meantime has been decimated.

Nine million jobs lost. $16 trillion in wealth flat lost -- not moved, readjusted. Lost. Mostly in the only thing middle-class people look to, the equity in their homes. It was the way they were going to send their kids to college, the way I was able to help Beau, and Hunt and Ashley do 20 years of education, graduate and undergraduate school because my house kept going up in value, and I could borrow against it. And when they graduated, they took on the bulk of their own bills, which we had co-signed for. I sold my house, which is no sacrifice, and paid down those bills. That's how most people did it, and I was making a good salary. When he started, I was making 60 grand as a U.S. senator, significantly higher than the median income in America. But $16 trillion in wealth evaporated.

And by the way, it wasn't because these folks were profligate. You got 14 million out there who never missed a mortgage payment but find their houses underwater. Why? Because of those subprime mortgages and other gimmicks that Wall Street came up with. And they find that two neighbors around the block, their house foreclosed on, and all of a sudden, the bottom falls out of their house. They never missed a payment. They're struggling. They're good, hardworking, decent people wearing blue and white collars. And their 401(k)'s, although they're back a lot, if they could survive the initial hit, was the one place they also got decimated.

So we got elected, Barack, the President, and I knew we had to act -- and we did. Act to change, to stem this erosion. Because we started out with the proposition -- I mean this sincerely, this is not political hyperbole. America has always grown when it's growing from the middle-out. When the middle class is doing very well, everyone does well. The poor have a ladder up, and the wealthy do very, very well, thank you, because there's folks out there to buy their widgets, because people can have money to spend.

So one of the things we did, the first thing we did, was we capitalized the banks, in essence. Credit began to flow -- so-called TARP. We did it more efficiently than the last guy was doing it, and most of the banks have paid back. But the bottom line -- doing that was about as popular as legalizing rattlesnakes along North Shore Drive. (Laughter.) People couldn't understand -- why do we have to do this, take these risks for these -- the guys who caused me my problem? But we knew we had to do it. And it basically saved the world -- not figuratively, literally -- from sliding into a depression.

We then passed rational reform. Hearing these guys talk about Wall Street reform you'd think we went out there with a socialist agenda and decided to do away with Wall Street. Wall Street has been the single-greatest allocator of capital thought of by mankind in the history of all of mankind, but it became a bit of a casino. All we did was put in rational regulation, some transparency.

We looked at the auto industry. The auto industry -- the iconic industry that literally helped build the middle class more than any other single industry in my view. It's generated the steel industry, rubber, et cetera -- the list goes on. By acting, we saved a million jobs. You say, oh, come on, Joe, where the hell did you come up with that number? A million jobs would have been lost because all -- all -- of the loss that would have occurred as a consequence of the supply chain drying up. The CEO of Ford Motor Company, a good guy, who, by the way, is committed to invest $16, $17 billion right here in the United States -- not abroad -- in his vehicles being built. He flat-out said publicly that had Chrysler and General Motors not been restructured, Ford would have ultimately gone under because the supply chain would have evaporated.

In the meantime, by the way, General Motors back -- the largest automobile company in the world again; Chrysler is the fastest-growing corporation -- or, excuse me, automobile company in the United States; 200,000 plus auto workers are back to work with jobs you can raise a middle-class family on. (Applause.)

And, you know, we hear from these other guys. For us, our vision of the future of America, education plays a critical role in that. And Romney and the Republican vision, it takes a backseat if has a seat at all. Every single study shows that the way to deal with the achievement gap is to deal with it before kids even get to school. Come out of a poor, working-class neighborhood, you have about half the vocabulary a kid coming out of another neighborhood has. And you're expected to achieve the same.

So we invested a lot of money and time and effort in early education. We went out there and decided that it was important -- important -- to give middle class -- do you know a middle-class family or a poor family who doesn't dream of their kid being able to go to college? Do you know of one? I have not met anybody -- whether it's in the East side of Wilmington, Delaware in an African American community, or in the most affluent neighborhoods in my state. I've never met somebody who doesn't aspire for their child to be able to do something beyond high school. And, by the way, six out 10 jobs are going to require at a minimum a certificate to a PhD in order to have those jobs in the next decade.

We changed the payroll tax, giving 98 percent of the working people in America somewhere between 180 and 300 bucks more in their paycheck. Again, the neighborhood I grew up in, that's the difference between whether you can pay your automobile insurance. That's the difference between what you eat for -- that makes a difference. It makes a difference. We're trying like hell to let those 14 million people go out, and they're paying 6.5, 7 percent of their mortgage to get that 3.5 percent mortgage rate -- no cost to the taxpayer. By saying all the big banks have to have $50 billion or more that we helped bail out, they should put aside pennies on the hundred dollar to set up a fund for $9 billion that, in fact, will reinsure and affect the local banks, and allow you to go down if you haven't missed a payment to, in fact, have your home refinanced, saving you $3,000 to $3,500 a year. (Applause.) That's real money.

And as I said, we gave middle-class folks a $10,000-per-kid for four years tax credit for paying for getting their kids to college. I might add, it's in the national interest. I'm supposedly a foreign policy expert. Well, an expert is anyone from out of town with a briefcase. I don't have a briefcase with me, but I know a fair amount about it.

I was speaking to a group of international security people, and they asked, what's the single most important thing the United States could do -- one of the parting questions -- in order to maintain our edge in the world in terms of defense and security? I said become the best educated country in the world again. We rank 19th in the world -- 16th in the world with a percent of students we graduate from college -- percent of population we graduate.

Ladies and gentlemen, we went out and we got in, and we said, look, we're paying banks; they're not bad guys, they're good guys. You're paying banks $60 billion over 10 years to finance loans to kids to go to college. So we said, let's cut out the middleman. It was a horrible fight. We hardly get any Republican votes for it. But what it allowed us to do, it allowed us to reinvest over 10 years -- that $600 billion [sic] in Pell grants, increasing the number. Pell grants -- that means families -- I know you know it, but a lot of people don't. Pell grants -- if you're basically a family $50,000 or less, you got a kid qualified to go to school, you get a grant. It's increased from 6 million to 9 million people in college today, only because of a Pell grant. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we set up consumer protection agencies that are no longer going to allow the lenders to take advantage of borrowers, giving tax -- giving companies tax incentives to insource rather than outsource.

Look, this is all about a simple proposition we have. The simple proposition is putting middle-class folks back in the game, give them an even shot, man. Give them a shot.

When -- when in American history, given a shot, have average Americans ever, ever, ever let their country down? When? The answer is never. This is about a level playing field. This is about accountability, responsibility. But of late, that's been a one-way street. There's accountability for you if your local drugstore goes under. There's no accountability if you're big enough. There's accountability for middle-class folks. Responsibility. Who is taking responsibility for some of the egregious things that have occurred. That's where he comes in, and that's where you come in because on an individual basis you're doing it.

Look, the results are clear. Even with the serious headwinds we're facing -- the eurozone struggling, China slowing down -- in spite of those incredible headwinds, we're still making progress: 4.4 million private sector jobs created; half a million manufacturing jobs; as I said, GM, number one in the world again; the largest -- the fastest growing automaker in America, Chrysler. We're in a position now that we're debating not whether or not we have to create more jobs, but how. How do we accelerate this. And we believe the economy won't be truly healthy until profound -- the profound erosion of middle-class jobs and middle-class incomes are reversed. We want a strong, growing, vibrant middle class of the 21st century like we used to have in the 20th century. It's not just bringing it back, it's creating a whole new class.

Romney and his Republican allies have a very different view. And, by the way, those of you who have been around me a long time -- I never question another man's motive, or another woman's motive in politics, even when it appears to be clear. I learned that from Senator Mansfield, the former Majority Leader. I've never done that; I'm not doing it now. But I do have an overwhelming disagreement not with their motive, with their judgment.

I believe Romney is a good family man. These are decent men and women. But I think their judgment is fundamentally flawed. They really believe the way to rebuild this economy is from the top-down. Sounds like just jargon, but think of what they're arguing.

What's Romney saying he's going to do with the first hundred days? He's going to go back and he's going to deregulate Wall Street. He is going to deregulate the banking industry. He's going to handcuff EPA because they get in the way. He's going to put in place $5 trillion dollars in new tax cuts -- $1.6 trillion of which go to people who have to make a minimum of a million dollars, and that's on top of maintaining the tax cuts for you all and others -- I hope some of you in here are millionaires -- maintaining the tax cuts or the so-called Bush tax cut.

Let me dissect that just for a second. The tax cuts, to continue them all, is another trillion dollars over 10 years for the top 2 percent, but $800 billion of that trillion dollars goes to people with minimum incomes of a million dollars. But let me drill down a little further -- roughly 55 percent of the entire tax cut goes to 120,000 families. Hear me? A half a trillion dollars, roughly, over the next 10 years in tax cuts goes to 120 families -- 120,000 families, households. They're not bad guys, they're good guys. But they sure in hell don't need it.

These tax cuts, letting them expire as they're supposed to will not change in any way their standard of living. Not one iota. Not a little bit. And it's not going to in any way encourage them to take the disposable income they already have and reinvest it in new jobs now. There's no evidence of that now. There's plenty of money on the sidelines that they possess. So what's the reason?

Look, folks, we've seen this movie before. Name me one, single solitary thing that Romney is arguing as a fundamental economic policy that we haven't done before except he doubles down on it? Or to quote Bill Clinton, President Clinton, he said, Romney is Bush on steroids. (Laughter.) Only Bill Clinton could think of that, but it's a good -- it's a way to describe it.

Look, folks, as I said, we know how that movie ends. Further devastation of the middle class and the working poor. Look, my dad -- his grandpop used to have an expression, when someone would say, this is what I value, he'd look at them and say, whoa, whoa, don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what -- don't tell me you value women in the workplace and you have no women working with you. Don't tell me you value -- and the list could go on -- show me your budget, I'll tell you what you value.

Well, Romney is showing us his budget, the so-called Ryan budget. By the way, smart, attractive guy, good candidate, Paul Ryan, a decent man from Wisconsin, he's laid out a clear budget. People say, well, why in God's name would he lay out a budget that is so -- in many people's views Draconian? Well, it's the only way he can pay for all those tax cuts. It cuts $4.9 billion out of elementary and secondary education. It cuts Head Start, which we have modernized and raised the standards in what it provides. It cuts 200,000 kids who are early access to critical learning skills. It cuts Pell grants to more than 9 million students by an average of a thousand dollars a year, and that's the difference between whether they can go or not go. They cut college work-study programs by more than 100,000 students who need those work-study programs to make it.

They make all these cuts and so many others -- firefighters, Medicaid. They make them all in the name of economic growth. The truth is the reason they have to make them is there's no other way to go forward with those extravagant tax cuts, including maintaining over a $4.5 billion -- million dollar -- tax cut per year for oil companies who say we don't need them any more in order to drill.

Irony of all ironies as the Tax Policy Center says in a study, the Romney plan would actually require taxes to be raised on the middle class at the very moment we're further lowering them on the very wealthy.

So we need your help. We need not only your financial help, which you've given and we appreciate -- and, by the way, let me say, parenthetically, I not only appreciate the help you've given me over the years and given -- and are giving the President and me. What I appreciate equally as much -- we don't say this enough to you -- it's harder for -- it's not as hard to write the check for you all -- and that's hard -- as it is to put your name on the line for us. You vouch for us, and it matters. It matters. Because all of you are leaders in your communities, in your churches, in the social structure of your communities, and it's hard to put your name on the line and vouch for another man or another woman. That's what I most appreciate. And, quite frankly, that's even more powerful for us than the checks you've written.

As I said in the beginning, most of you are in this line of work for the same reason my son said -- because it offends you when things aren't on the level. Like me, you're offended by the abuse of power -- economic power, political power. You're offended, whatever your politics, when you see efforts to suppress voting.

I spent my whole career working with Republicans to expand the franchise, literally expand the franchise from motor-voter to week-long vote, et cetera. If you had told me in the days when I was working with guys like Bob Dole and Howard Baker in the '80s and '90s, and I'd be running for Vice President of the United States when Republican governors in more than a handful of states have actually gone out there intentionally to suppress the vote -- where is the fraud, by the way? Where are the thousands of people who voted last year in Pennsylvania? I forget the exact number -- you may remember, Beau. It was something like 89,000 -- don't hold me to the number, but it was close to -- between 50,000 and 100,000 people who wouldn't be able to vote if the election were held today. Where's the fraud? Where's the rationale for why they need these restrictions on access?

If you're as offended as I am about hearing the big banks robo-signing to speed up foreclosures. If you're as offended as I am when you read some of what you read today, and what the most powerful interest in this country are able to do at the expense of others -- look, it comes down to the basic bargain. Most of you come from the background to the middle class, and most of you understand -- I think all of you understand; Ted Kennedy was a wealthy man, he understood -- that the middle class is not a number. When you ask the economists what's the middle class, they'll argue whether it's $49,250 or $51,670. That's not what the middle class is.

The middle class is a way of life. It's a value set. It's about being able to own your home, not just rent it. It's about being able to live in a safe neighborhood where your kid can walk to a park that's environmentally safe and physically secure. It's about being able to live in a neighborhood where your kids can attend a modern school that's well-equipped and well-staffed; where if they do well, they'll qualify to go to college, and that you will be able to help them get to college, and still, in the process be able to help your elderly parents who are in trouble, and save just enough that you can hope you don't have to rely on your children when you get to that age. (Applause.) That's what it's about.

I got in trouble. You know I -- you've all known me a long time. No one's ever doubted that I mean what I say, the problem is I sometime say all that I mean. (Laughter.) But a while ago, at a Romney campaign rally, there was this thing about the reason why Barack and I were talking about this -- it's class envy. As if we didn't dream for our children and grandchildren that they can grow up and run businesses, be CEOs, be able to hold any office they aspire to if they work hard enough at it; make a lot of money if that's what they choose to do.

When I was growing up in that house I told you about, in my grandpop's house, my mother never doubted for a second that I could be President of the United States or Vice President or anything I wanted to be.

My father never doubted my brother Jimmy could do incredibly well financially. My parents never wondered whether or not my sister could be whatever she wanted, especially in vital facts, she was smarter than all of us literally. Middle-class people dream. They dream the same dreams rich guys dream. They have the same aspirations for their kid. They're not menial. They're real. But you need a basic platform. You need a basic set of opportunities to be able to have that dream.

And if I hadn't been doing this for so long for you, you might doubt my sincerity, but you know me so well. You're the ones -- you're the ones that say for all the malarkey you get, for all the -- you're well -- you are well remunerated for what you do, but, man, I don't know what we'd do without you. Who is going to step up and take the case of that little guy who's just being screwed? Who but you? Who but you?

I could go through a litany of the changes you have wrought on American society for the better. That's the reason I love you. I really mean it. That's the reason I care so much for you, personally, speaking for myself because without you, who is left. The only thing left is the government. And, folks, that's what this is all about. As part of our English jurisprudential system we've basically been deputized. We don't have enough attorneys general out there -- seriously -- to take on protecting the public.

So, folks, I think this is the most critical election in our lifetime. And not every candidate says that when they're running. The vice presidency is a great honor, but it ain't -- doesn't make it the most critical election in the history of mankind here. But I want you to think about -- because I need your help -- I want you to think about what it will mean for all that I've spoken to and much more, imagine the Supreme Court after four years of a Romney presidency. This is not scare tactics. It's just what he said. (Laughter.) If you're frightened, it's because you should be. (Laughter.)

But all kidding aside, you don't have to make any of this up. You know who his advisor on constitutional issues is, appointed officially? Robert Bork. He's a fine, brilliant man, but he doesn't have the same view of the function of the court that I do, or I wouldn't have spent so much time with him.

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine what American foreign policy would look like after four years. The man who said at first, we should, we did the right thing getting out of Iraq, now says we should have 20,000 to 30,000 combat troops there. The guy who says we should not have set a date to turn over responsibility to the Afghans and bring our troops home, your soon-to-be president can tell you about what it's like to have a son or a daughter stationed overseas.

So folks, there's a lot at stake. So again, you've given us your financial help, but we need you even more engaged in making the case as to what's at stake here. And these guys aren't bad guys. They just have a fundamentally different view of the future of this country and how to build it than we do. And whoever wins in the next four years is going to win that race well over the 20th century.

Folks, I got elected when I was 29 years old. I was characterized as an idealistic young man at the time. I've been around a long time since then. I can say without fear of contradiction to anybody who knows me, I am more optimistic about the chances for America today than I was at any time in my entire life. (Applause.)

We are better positioned than any nation in the world to lead the world economically in the 21st century. Lest you doubt me, think about the problems the Chinese will have over the next five to twenty years. Look at what's going on in Europe. Name me -- name me a nation better positioned than us. But we have to grasp it, and it will not occur if you set up a paradigm that says if the wealthy do very well, all will follow. It's never worked that way, it won't work that way, and we're determined to make sure it doesn't happen that way.

God bless you all and God protect our troops. (Applause.) Thank you very much.


END 2:25 P.M. CDT