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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
Internal Transcript March 19, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN
AT A FUNDRAISER FOR SENATOR ROBERT MENENDEZ

Private Residence
Morristown, New Jersey


5:30 P.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, Phil and Barbara, thank you for the opportunity of being here. But as Ted Kaufman, my colleague from Delaware will tell you, back in Delaware if you keep people standing more than 10 minutes in the sun, you lose all their votes. (Laughter.) And you've already been well beyond the 10 minutes.

But you heard stated better than I can state it why there's so much at stake today. You've heard from both our host and from Bob what's transpired and where we're heading. Let me begin by saying, I met Bob when he came to the United States Senate. We served about two and a half years together or thereabouts before I was out on the campaign trail running for office.

And you women and men out there, you know sometimes when you meet somebody you don't have to learn a whole lot about the detail about them. You just can -- as my mother would say, some people have that sixth sense, you can just get it. I knew that although we had different backgrounds, his Cuban immigrants parents and mine with an Irish ancestry, I knew that we shared a couple of things in common. One was that we came, figuratively speaking, sort of from the same neighborhood, a neighborhood where when you leave the neighborhood you never leave the neighborhood, a neighborhood where you remember where you came from.

It sounds corny to say it, but it really is pretty basic stuff, a neighborhood where you grew up and even though there were tough times it was a period of time when your mother or father could look at you and tell you everything was going to be all right, and you believed them. And they believed themselves. They believed it when they said it.

I got to Delaware, because my dad walked up into my bedroom when I was going into fourth grade and sat -- and we were living with my grandpop at the time in Scranton and, he said, Joey, Dad's going to have to leave. And I thought, oh, my God, what is that all about. I remember it vividly as some of you probably do. And my dad made what I call the longest walk a parent can make up a short flight of stairs to a kid's bedroom to say, you can't go back to the same school, you can't play in the Little League team, you can't -- because dad or mom lost their job or we need another job or whatever.

And I remember him telling me about he is going to move to Wilmington with Uncle Frank and there were jobs down there, there were good paying jobs. And, he said, I'll be back. I'll come home almost every weekend. It's only 156 miles. And I remember him saying it's going to be okay and he believed it was going to be okay. He absolutely certainly -- he absolutely believed it was going to be okay, so I thought it was okay.

But the thing that Bob understands and many of you, I hope, but the other team just doesn't get -- my father was a proud, proud, elegant man. He never went to college. But my dad -- it wasn't until I got to be in my late 20s that I realized maybe a longer walk my dad had to make was into his Father-in-law Ambrose Finnegan's pantry and say, Ambrose, can you take care of Jean and the kids for about a year? I promise, I'll pay you back. I promise, I'll make good on it -- with my mother's three brothers -- grown brothers standing there.

An awful lot of people in New Jersey had to make that walk, an awful lot of people around this country today. Except the big difference is they made that walk and they are not able to turn to their kids today. They don't believe like we used to in your neighborhood and mine that it's going to be okay. They're not quite sure. At least, they weren't quite sure.

Bob and I, when we talk, we always talk about the middle class. To us, the middle class is not a number. I have a lot of brilliant economists working for me, Rhode Scholars. They'll tell me it's either $49,250 -- that's not what it's about. That's not what it's about. It's about being able to live in a decent neighborhood, to be able to own your home, have the dream of owning your home -- not rent your home, own your home -- be able to make sure you can -- the neighborhood is safe enough, the school is decent and that you're going to have a shot to send your kid to college. Because I've never met a middle-class person -- I've never met a poor person, I've never met anybody -- who doesn't want to send their kid to college if that kid is able to go.

And it's also about maybe being able to take care of your parents in the meantime and hope that when time comes, your kids won't have to take care of you, because you may be able to put a little bit aside. That's what it's all about. And I don't get a sense, listening to the rhetoric that the other team is using, that they literally understand it.

My dad used to have a saying, Bob. He'd say, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about somebody's dignity, about their dignity. It's about respect. It's about a sense of who they are.

I love these guys when they talk about the numbers. And, like I said, a lot of really brilliant economists work for me, telling me that, well, it may very well be that Romney is right, if you just let the mortgage market just collapse completely, let foreclosures happen we'll get out of this quicker -- except one little thing, there's real people. They're not statistics.

The thing I love about this guy is -- like I suspect many of you, this guy knows why he got sent down there and he is willing to risk losing to take care of those people. He is willing to risk and take an unpopular stance. One thing you never have to wonder about Bob -- and this is another thing we have in common -- you never have to wonder where either one of us stand, man. You never have to wonder about that. (Applause.) That's one of the things I like about him.

In my case, you never have to wonder about whether I mean what I say. The problem is I usually say all that I mean, that's what gets me in trouble. (Laughter.)

But look, folks, and there's actually one more thing. This used to be the norm when I first got to the Senate and it hasn't been the last 10 years. Bob understands you got to give at the office, man, you got to be in the deal, that whatever deal you make, you keep even though the circumstance may have changed to make the deal less advantageous for you.

We would probably have lost the United States Senate -- I will go so far -- I went into 148 races in 2010 -- governors, senators, House members. I believe we would have lost had it not been for Bob Menendez running the DSCC. And he probably -- a lot of you out here that he probably grabbed to help, I think we would have lost the Senate. Imagine where we would be today if we had lost the Senate and the House. So this is a guy who actually does what he says and says what he does.

And the other thing here is that no one that I know of -- no one in the Senate from the time he got there, which is rare -- no one in the Democratic caucus and I can tell you no one -- no one -- in the White House does anything other than take seriously what Bob Menendez says. No one ever wonders whether or not he cares about it and whether or not he is willing to take you on in order to deal with it. Nobody -- nobody -- doubts what Bob Menendez says in a place where there's an awful lot of doubters and where there's an awful lot of people saying a lot of things they don't mean.

When we got elected, as Bob said and the host said, that the economy was in free fall. My deceased wife used to say -- right after I got elected to the Senate in '72, before I got sworn in, I lost my wife. But she used to say -- Joey, she said, one thing -- the greatest gift God gave mankind was the ability to forget. And then, my mother would quickly add -- she'd say, that's true, Joey, because if that wasn't the case, women would only have one child. (Laughter.) But think about it, it is a hell of a gift.

And think how much, fortunately, we've forgotten about how bad things were. Not only was the economy in free fall, in foreign policy we were neither respected by our friends nor feared by our enemies and the middle class was shrinking. And so, we knew we had to do a lot of unpopular things. And I'm not going to drag this out, because I was going to mention a lot of things that were already mentioned here.

And what do we do, not a joke, there were five guys and women in the Senate we knew we had to have to get anything done. And this guy was one of them.

So what did we do? When it came up to the Recovery Act, we turned to Bob Menendez. That only passed by three votes, by the way -- I mean, by one vote. We got three Republicans -- only one vote. And guess what it meant. It meant over 100,000 new jobs here in the state of New Jersey and over $5 billion into those neighborhoods in New Jersey.

When we decided that we needed to do something to deal with the automobile industry, which was in free fall -- and, by the way, we weren't talking about them reorganizing. We were talking about the term liquidating -- we were talking about them liquidating. It was incredibly unpopular, even among Democrats. But he stood up. He stood up, took a lot of crap for it. And where are we?

Today, General Motors had their highest quarter of profits they've had in their entire history. Chrysler is paying everything back, and they're the fastest growing automobile company in the world. And, guess what, as my father -- God love him, he used to sell automobiles. He managed a dealership. In his grave, he is just smiling now because Americans think that American-made automobiles for the first time in 21 years are better built or as well built or better built than foreign automobiles.

I could go on. There's so many other things from "don't ask, don't tell" to dealing with the Lilly Ledbetter law. I mean, all the stuff that he -- and he just stepped up. I mean, it wasn't like -- you had to wonder -- it wasn't like he had to make the case. It was you had to try to catch up. You had to try to catch up. And so, I can tell you on behalf of the President of the United States, both he and I owe Bob. Not only the country owes him, we owe him -- because there are some guys and women who will say they're with you and when things get really tough it is really hard to find them -- really hard to find them. You all know that in your own personal lives. You never have to wonder about him. You never have to wonder about him.

And, look, I could go on and on -- and I had planned on going on and on -- but you've been standing there for a long time now. So let me just say the results. We're not home yet, but 24 straight months of private sector employment, 3.9 million new jobs during that period that no one can argue about or contest -- these are actual private sector jobs you can count. Finding ourselves in the position where we're once again the most respected nation in the world.

We find ourselves in a position where -- we are in a position where you have 3 million more kids from poor families going to college now because of the work this guy did on Pell grants. In the state of New Jersey, there's 341,000 people this tax season who will take a $2,500 tax credit off the bottom line of their taxes to help pay for their kid's having gone to college.

The things that matter to middle-class people are the things you can affect their quality of life. It's helping them with school, helping them with their health care, helping them with their housing, helping them with their -- basic, basic things. My dad used to say, I don't expect the government to solve my problem, Joey, but I do expect them to understand it. And this guy understands.

So, folks, Bob is going to win. It's not going to be easy. I know Bob is "way ahead now." But in this state of New Jersey, in this big, big state of New Jersey -- and I'm familiar with both your media markets -- one I know very well, the Philadelphia media market, and the other one I don't know as well. It's incredibly expensive. My guess is you're going to have a governor and a lot of people working really hard to make sure you're not re-elected. So I don't take this race for granted.

But I tell you, he is going to win and we're going to win. And I'll conclude by saying one of the reasons that we're going to win is that we have a fundamentally different philosophy than these guys who are running right now, just a basic -- they're not bad guys, just a fundamentally different philosophy.

See, we kind of think -- and it sounds corny, but think about it -- I'm being literal now, I'm not being figurative. Think about it. We happen to think that workers -- workers -- are part of the success when business succeeds. And we value the middle class, because we actually believe the middle class determines the success of the economy on balance. When the middle class is doing well, everyone is doing well -- the very wealthy do well and the poor do a hell of a lot better.

Simply stated, we're about promoting the private sector. These guys are about protecting the privilege sector. And it's almost that basic, in my view. We're about a fair shot, just a fair shot -- a fair shot, a fair shake. These guys are about no rules, no accountability, and no risks. Think of the things they're opposing. Think of the things they want to turn back.

Ladies and gentlemen, the other reason why we're going to win -- and God bless them for this, as my mother would say -- this is the first time -- I've served with eight Presidents. This is the first time the Republicans are not hiding the ball. They're not hiding the ball. They're not pretending to talk about, well, America needs a good health care policy; everyone is entitled to health care. They're not talking about compassionate conservatism. These guys are just saying flat what they believe, God bless them. (Laughter.) God bless them.

I mean, we should sponsor another 20 debates. (Laughter.) Really, think about the things they say. Think about what they've said about women. I mean, I mean Connecticut v. Griswold said states cannot outlaw the use of contraception and make it a crime. These guys are saying you should be able to do that. I mean, it is almost mind boggling the stuff they're saying.

One of them said we should invade Mexico to deal with the cartel. I mean, it's just absolutely staggering the things they say. Between Gingrich and Romney and Santorum, I think if I told you -- if I just listed the things, the outrageous things -- well, from my perspective, outrageous things -- they've said, I think you would have thought I'm making it up. This is absolute political hyperbole, Biden. But you've heard it.

Guess what, so have the American people. They've heard it. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a choice between a system that's kind of rigged, even if it is unintentionally and one that is -- one that's fair. And let me conclude by saying to that there's another reason why we're going to win nationally, and you're going to win here, and it always matters. My old friend June (ph) can tell you this, everyone who has been involved in politics. You give me the best candidate, and not the strongest issues or the strongest issues and the lousy candidate, I'll take the best candidate.

This is the first time -- the first time that I can remember, as clearly as I can, exists today we not only have the issues, we have the best candidates. President Obama has a backbone like a ramrod. This guy who's supposedly leading from behind, I spend four to six hours a day with this guy. That is no exaggeration. I'm in every -- you've never come to an important meeting at the White House that I'm not sitting in it. I go to -- at his request every meeting.

The deal we had when I first said I didn't want to do this job. He said, what do you want -- I said just one thing if I do it, I get to be the last guy in the room. And I literally do get to be the last guy in the room. That is not hyperbole. That's literally true.

And I watch this guy make decisions. I watch him make decisions. And I'm telling you, man, this guy is not only smart as hell, he is absolutely, positively willing to make the decision and stand back and live with it. No whining. He reminds me of my dad's expression: Never explain and never complain.

And by the way when people want to know -- how many times have you all said the Republicans are so much better at the bumper stickers. You know, they're able to go out there and say, low taxes, more military, whatever. Why can't Democrats do that? Well, I got a bumper sticker for you this time. (Laughter.) Okay? To me the best way to sum up the leadership of both Bob Menendez and the President: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. (Laughter and applause.) Think about it. Think about it.

As I step off this platform, for those of you who don't think it was a hard decision, we knew -- we thought we knew where bin Laden was three weeks before we even began to let our security staff know. There were only five of us. And we'd sit down -- and we'd sit there. We were so worried it would leak, and we tried everything. And we got to the very end after about almost four weeks, and we had to move literally because of the phases of the moon.

We had to make a decision. The President went around 17 people from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, CIA, DNI and asked every one. He said, we have to make a decision tonight. What's your recommendation.

And with one exception, everyone in there said, well, it's 49-51 -- and it got to me. I'm the last guy to get to speak. He says, Joe, what do you think? I turned around and I said, geez, I didn't real you were all economists in here. (Laughter.) I said, you owe the guy a straight answer. Go or don't go. Only one guy said go -- one. This guy left the room, said, I'll give you a decision in the morning, came down through the Diplomatic Entrance to get on Marine One to head out, I believe it was to Michigan to do a jobs event, turned to the National Security Advisor and said, go -- knowing how audacious -- how audacious this effort was; not only not in modern history, you can go back 500 years, you cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there. He was never personally identified. And they wonder if this guy has any nerve.

Do any one of you have a doubt that if that raid failed that this guy would be a one-term President? Does anyone have a doubt in their mind, especially since not one -- but one of the national security team said go? This guy is willing to do the right thing and risk losing. That's what this guy has.

Whenever a young candidate comes up to me -- and some of you have known me a long time -- because I got elected at 29, they think there's some secret. Should I run? I always ask them one question: Have you figured out what is worth losing over? Let me say it again: Have you figured out what is worth losing over? Because if you haven't, it's just pure ambition. It's pure ambition.

Bob Menendez is right. I got to the Senate as a 29-year-old kid listed as an idealistic young guy. I give you my word as a Biden I'm more optimistic about the United States' chances in the world today than I was when I got elected 40 years ago as a 29-year-old kid.

We are better positioned in the world than any other country in the world to dominate the economy. You guys who are very successful on Wall Street. You guys who are very successful in finance. I know a little bit about China. I just -- I'm the guy they set up to have this personal relationship with the new guy Xi who is going to be the President. I spent eight -- nine days alone with him, traveling his country and mine. I spent at least 25 hours alone with him. When the President asked me to describe him, I said, he has the look of a man who is about to take on a job he knows is not going to end well.

Think about his problems. Think about where they are relative to where we stand. Think about the eurozone and that Goliath of 360 million people that were going to be the dominant -- we want them all to succeed, but the idea -- the idea that they're going to own or eat our lunch is absolutely preposterous.

The American people are tired of being tired. They're tired of being told we can't lead the world again and they can't live the way they want to again. That's the bottom-line reason why I love this guy. He believes like I do. And because of you all, he's going to get a chance to make the case, and I believe you're going to see an interesting thing. I predict to you not only is he going to win, not only are the President and I going to win, I believe we're going to win back the House of Representatives. (Applause.)

So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you -- thank you for giving me the chance to make the case. And I'm going to be hanging on to his coattails. Thank you all very much.

END 5:52 P.M. EDT