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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release September 8, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
TO SUPPORTERS

Athens Community Center
Athens, Ohio


3:45 P.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hello, Athens! Hello, Ohio! (Applause.) It's so good to be back -- back in Ohio with my buddy, Ted Strickland. (Applause.) Ted has been just a great Governor. What a difference a governor makes. (Applause.)

But I see people all the way out there in the hallway. I apologize for not being able to get in. Thank you all for being here, folks. And it's also good to be back in Athens. The first time I was in Athens was on October -- I think it was the 18th or 19th, 1963. (Laughter and applause.) My football team, the University of Delaware, came to avenge a loss in 1961. (Laughter.) You all beat us 17-16. Any Bobcats in the house, by the way? (Applause.) Well, I tell you, I got here --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) Blue Hen. (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, wait a minute, ease up on the Blue Hens, now. (Laughter.) There's a Blue Hen.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) 1952.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. (Applause.)

Well, I want to tell you, I came. I was a football -- I came here in 1963, and I had to go back -- I just double-checked my memory. You get to my age, you're not so sure if you remember; your glory days look more glorious than they really were, and all that. (Laughter.) So we went back, on the Internet, and I just want you to know I came here on October 19th, 1963, and we beat you Bobcats -- (laughter) -- 29-12. Now, wait a minute now, wait a minute. (Laughter.) And that's why I was so happy. I was so happy that when the Bobcats went to Happy Valley, they learned what a Bobcat was. (Applause.) Because now I've got bragging rights. You all beat Penn State, and I can say, well, they beat Penn State, and 500 years ago we beat them once. (Laughter.)

I tell you what, man, what a day, man. I still am a football nut, and I tell you, what a game.

Look, folks, Mr. Mayor -- I got to meet Mayor Wiehl outside. Thank you for the passport back into the city. As a matter of fact, the last time I was here, I want to make clear to the press, I didn't get arrested but I almost did -- (laughter) -- because, back in those days -- you students won't appreciate this -- men weren't allowed anywhere near a woman's dorm. And I got invited into the dorm. I thought I was walking into the waiting room -- I got brought into the hallway. (Laughter.) And I got escorted out very quickly by an Athens policeman. (Laughter.) True story, unfortunately. (Laughter.)

Anyway, I want to thank Justice Brown for being here. We got to campaign a lot. I don't know where she is. (Applause.) But I love being with her, and thank you for being here, Justice.

And as I said, Governor Strickland, he's an old -- an incredible champion for the middle class; a guy whose life story is testament to what folks are able to do when given a half a shot.

As the Governor pointed out in his convention speech, this country faces the starkest choice for President at least in my memory. And, folks, if you listened to Governor Romney, and if you listened to -- well, they talked about it at their convention. And they listed all the terrible things that have happened as a consequence of the Great Recession. And then their theme is they want to restore American dreams and greatness, after listing all the things and how they want to restore it.

It kind of crossed my mind -- don't know whether it crossed yours -- I've been wondering, how in God's name do they think this thing happened in the first place? (Laughter.) No, I mean it. Think about it. (Applause.) I mean, it's like all of a sudden, one day, descended from heaven the Great Recession. (Laughter.) How do they think it happened?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) As my youngest granddaughter would say, Pop, did Casper the friendly ghost do it? I mean, where did it come from? (Laughter.)

Well, folks, what they didn't tell you is that the very same policies they're running on today are what got us in this mess in the first place -- (applause) -- and that you all, this nation has worked so hard to drag ourselves out of. And what were these policies? Well, they laid out they have all these policies, but what are they? But they didn't have the courage to tell you what the policies are they're proposing now. A lot of oratory language, but they didn't have the courage to tell you.

Well, folks, it will shock you -- I have the courage to tell you what their policies are. (Applause.) Let me tell you. They talked about how much they cared about Medicare, you would have thought they came up with the idea. (Laughter.) You would have thought they were really fighting for it for the last 50 years. I mean, they talked so fervently about it. And they said they want to preserve it, they want to make it stronger, they want to protect the benefits, especially for all those on Medicare today.

What they didn't bother to mention to you is -- which is so often the case -- as I said, you would have thought these guys came up with the idea of Medicare -- is that -- what they didn't tell you is what I'm going to tell you. The one thing they didn't tell you is that their plan would immediately cut the benefits of 30 million people on Medicare as I speak. What they didn't tell you is what they're proposing would actually cause the Medicare trust fund that pays all the Medicare benefits to run out of money by 2016. And most of all, the most important thing they did not tell you -- they did not actually -- they're not actually for preserving Medicare. They're for a new plan -- a voucher plan. Vouchercare.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: By the way, here's how it's going to work: They're going to give your mom or dad a voucher, basically a coupon, worth a certain amount of money. And they're going to say, Mom, you can go out there on the insurance market and bargain for the best deal you can get. And you can buy Medicare back if you want, but here's the deal: If what you're getting now costs more than the voucher, you've got to make up the difference. You've got to take it out of your pocket. It comes from somewhere.

They talked so much about the national debt. They talked about the great urgency to bring it under control. But not once -- not once did they tell you that they rejected every effort -- Romney, Ryan, the Republican Congress rejected every effort that every outside group and we offered them to cut the national debt if it contained one single dollar, one single penny in a new tax for millionaires. That's why we got no bargain -- they rejected all of the arguments made. (Applause.) And they're worried about the national debt.

The two men seeking to lead this country -- Barack Obama and Governor Romney -- they have fundamentally different visions of America, and they have a completely different value set. They're both good men. They're both family men. They both love their families -- devoted husbands. But that's where the similarity stops. Governor Romney believes, for example, that in a global economy, it really doesn't matter much where a company invests or where a company creates jobs.

I've been in Ohio for now about not quite 24 hours; I landed last night, late, in Columbus. I've already saw, before I left Columbus with John -- I had breakfast with John and Annie Glenn. Talk about great people. (Applause.) But before I left my hotel in Columbus, I had seen three times the same ad: President Obama is sending your jobs to China. He's not creating jobs in Ohio. I found it absolutely fascinating. (Laughter.) Absolutely fascinating. It calls for the willing suspension of disbelief.

Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Romney, the man whose company was referred to as the pioneer of outsourcing; the man who thought it was okay to let Detroit go bankrupt; the man who criticized the President and me for -- as being protectionist when we stood up against China for American tire industries and won the case. (Applause.) That same man is saying that we're sending jobs to China?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the guy -- Governor Romney, he not only -- everything he's already done. He's got a new tax proposal for you. No, no, seriously. He proposes what's called a territorial tax. Some countries have it. It's called a territorial tax. Translate it -- and all you students will understand this from your economics class. Translate it and it means American corporations won't have to pay a single cent in American taxes for any profit they make overseas, whether they bring them home or not.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: By the way, experts point out that will create 800,000 jobs -- in China and Indonesia and Vietnam.

Folks, you know what I found most fascinating about their convention, is when Governor Romney in his acceptance speech made an absolute firm commitment. He said, and if I'm elected President I will go on a jobs tour. (Laughter.) Well, with all the outsourcing he's supported, the new tax policy, it's going to have to be a foreign trip, his jobs tour. (Laughter and applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, look, as I said, the President and Governor Romney have fundamentally different views on the importance of where we create jobs. President Obama knows that creating jobs in America, keeping jobs in America, and bringing jobs back to America -- that's the job of a President. That's the President's job.

Ladies and gentlemen, and wasn't it fascinating how, at their convention, they discovered the middle class? (Laughter.) I mean, they found out there's a middle class. They talked about it incessantly, the middle class. And they talked about all that they valued. My dad, God rest his soul, used to have an expression. When someone would tell me -- he'd say, Joe -- because Dad's name was Joe. He'd say, Joe, this is what I value. My dad would say the same thing, seriously. He'd say, don't tell me what you value; show me your budget and I will tell you what you value. (Applause.) Don't tell me; show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value.

So, folks, let's look at the Romney budget. Let's look at what it does: massive cuts in Medicaid, throwing 19 million people off of health care, millions of children and a million more seniors. Seventy percent of the seniors in nursing homes today are because they have Medicaid. A lot of those folks are middle-class moms and dads. They're our moms, our dads. And some of them have no one and no place to go. What's going to happen to those people? What's going to happen?

Massive cuts in Social Security for future generations. If you're in your 20s, you're going to get 4,600 bucks less than you'd get now if you were retiring. You're going to get 2,500 or 2,600 bucks less if you're in your 40s if you retire. Massive cuts in education, early education, elementary and secondary education, eliminating the $2,500 tax credit we're so proud of that helps your parents keep a lot of you at Ohio University. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, it's up from 6 to 9 million the number of students that are in college today because of Pell grants. Some of you know people that have Pell grants, right? (Applause.) You've got a Pell grant. Well, guess what, their budget proposes cutting $1,000 a year from those 9 million students of working-class families. God only knows how many are going to have to drop out as a consequence of that.

And why are they doing all this? They're not bad guys. Why are they doing this? Because they need to, they need to -- to be able to pay for the massive tax cuts they want to keep and want to add on to the very wealthiest among us.

I come from the wealthy, little state of Delaware. Wealthy people are just as patriotic. They're just as good as poor folks or middle-class folks. But the one thing they know -- and we know -- is they don't need the help right now. It's not going to change their standard of living one single bit if the Bush tax cut is not extended for them, if new tax cuts are not added.

But let me give you one example why they have to do what they're doing and make all these draconian cuts. Of extending the Bush tax cut, $500 billion of that tax cut over the next 10 years goes to -- listen to me now -- 120,000 families. A half a trillion dollars of the extension of the Bush tax cut that they want goes to 125,000 [sic] families.

And then -- this is what Bill Clinton was talking about, about Romney and the Republicans being the last administration on steroids. (Laughter.) Here's what -- they call for a new additional tax cut that costs over a trillion dollars that will provide another $250,000 a year to those same 120,000 families. How can that be?

Look, it won't surprise you all the price tag for this beyond the -- I would call it sort of the conscience price tag of all of this, the price tag for all this is immense. When you give these kinds of tax cuts, draining hundreds of billions of dollars out of the revenue source, you've got to get that money from somewhere. And you know where it comes from. It comes from you. It comes from working and middle-class people.

Now, I'm not making this up. The nonpartisan organization, The Tax Policy Center, they took -- and they take ours and theirs -- and they took the tax plans put forward and they examined them. They run them through their econometric models. And here's their conclusion. They concluded that if they go forward with these tax cuts, the only way they can pay for them without even further ballooning the deficit is that they have to raise taxes on all families -- middle-class families with children -- by $2,000 a year.

Well, look folks, the neighborhoods that a lot of us and a lot of you have come from, $2,000 a year makes a difference -- in your car payment, in being able to provide your automobile insurance -- I mean it makes a difference, $2,000 and all in the name of making sure we have these massive tax cuts from the very wealthy.

Just to give you an additional idea that when we were trying to keep cops on the street, we had this jobs bill we put forward last year that the experts say would create at least a million jobs. One aspect of it, we made the House members and the Senate made them vote on each element. But one related to putting to work over 300,000 teachers, law enforcement officers have been laid off and firefighters. And you know how we paid for it? And they voted against it, to a person almost.

And you know how we paid for it? A .5 of 1 percent tax on the first dollar after your first million you made. And the polling data showed that the millionaires supported that, to put that many people back to work. They voted against it, period.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's not right. It's not fair and it's not new. But it is worse than what they did before. Folks, look, we've seen this movie before. We know how it ends. It ends in a catastrophe with the middle class in the Great Recession of 2008.

But the President and I have a different way forward. We know to create jobs, to create a decent standard of living for the American people, you do it from the middle out, not from the top down. (Applause.) Because when the middle does well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy do very wealthy as the President -- as we create a lot more millionaires. (Applause.)

So here's what we do. Here's what we do. Our plan first focuses on education -- 100,000 new science and math teachers in the next 10 years -- (applause) -- 2 million workers learning new skills for the new economy through our community colleges, 1 million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years -- real and fair enforceable trade laws, so you can level the playing field and let the rest of the world buy what they want, a product that says: Made In America. Made in America. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we cut oil imports -- propose cutting oil imports by half, by the year 2020, investing clean, renewable energy -- wind and solar -- which already created thousands of jobs and will create tens of thousands more -- (applause) -- 600,000 new jobs in new technology and better use of our natural resources -- (applause) -- cut $4 trillion from our long-term debt.

We've laid it out and an end -- end the war in Afghanistan as we did in Iraq. (Applause.) They'll come home -- come home and invest in American roads, American bridges, American schools, invest in America. (Applause.) And that alone will create tens of thousands of more jobs, creating our infrastructure.

And, look, it's simple -- unlike this new Republican Party -- and I say new, because this is not your father's Republican Party. As a matter of fact, this isn't even Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party. (Applause.)

Look, we see a future where everyone, rich and poor, does their part and has a part. We see a future where we're again number one in the world in the percent of people we graduate from college, where Social Security is protected and Medicare is guaranteed -- you paid for it -- and where we promote the private sector, not the privileged sector. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, and as some of you know from my work on women's issues and the author of the Violence Against Women Act -- and where I feel, as Barack does, this passion -- (applause) -- where my granddaughters have every single, solitary right and opportunity my grandsons have, every single one -- (applause) -- where they're equal pay for equal work, where we make sure women are elevated, control their own bodies -- (applause) -- have control over their own destiny. (Applause.)

Folks, we see an America, again, which the President already started where we not only lead by the example of our incredible power, but we lead by the power of our example. (Applause.) And we want to guarantee a future where the only truly sacred obligation our government has -- any government has, only truly sacred obligation -- is to prepare those who we send to war and care for those who come home from war. That is the only truly sacred obligation. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 times. I've seen these young women -- and I'd say women and men -- I've seen them; and, my God, do we owe them and their families an incredible debt of gratitude. (Applause.)

And we owe an enormous -- Keats [sic] once said, they also serve who only stand and wait. They also serve who only stand and wait. I watched my wife for the year my son -- our son -- was in Iraq. Every morning I'd come in as she prepared to go to school. She's a full-time educator. She's a professor at a community college. And I watched her. I'd see her pouring her coffee, as she always did, standing over the sink and mouthing a prayer. Those of you who have brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons or daughters abroad, you know there's not a moment goes by in your day you don't think, are they okay?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we owe these families, particularly the families of the 6,473 fallen heroes; 49,746 -- you say, Joe, why are you being specific? Because every -- I check every day, every single life matters. Every one of them. (Applause.) Forty-nine thousand, seven hundred forty-six wounded -- thousands critically wounded who will need extensive medical care the rest of their lives, and we must guarantee we do that. (Applause.)

We have a moral obligation to never forget their sacrifice, always keep them in our care, as well as our prayers.

Folks, look, this country -- all of you have been through a heck of a lot the last four years and beyond. You know, as well as I do, there's no quit in America. There's no quit in America at all. And when I hear Governor Romney and Paul Ryan talk about this thing they've come up, this culture of dependency and how America is in decline, I mean this sincerely, I don't recognize the country they're talking about. I really -- I really don't, not in my neighborhood where I grew up, not all the states I visit. I don't recognize the country they're talking about. Folks, it's not where I live.

And they're wrong. They're dead wrong. America is not in decline. America is not in decline. America is coming back. We're not going back. We're going forward, and we're going forward because of you. (Applause.)

And I got one more thing. I got news -- I got news for Governor Romney and Paul Ryan and I mean this: Gentlemen, it's never, ever, ever been a good bet to bet against the American people. It has never been a good bet. You have never failed the country when given a chance. (Applause.)

And that's -- responsible and give you a chance. Ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.)

END 4:11 P.M. EDT