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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release September 18, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
AT A CAMPAIGN EVENT

Bridge View Center
Ottumwa, Iowa


10:44 A.M. CDT


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hello, Ottumwa! How are you? (Applause.) It's great to be with you all. Good morning, everyone.

AUDIENCE: Morning.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: God, I see an awful lot of familiar faces. It's great to see you. Rick, I want to thank you for that introduction and thank you for your service to the country, not only in the military, but you continue to serve as an assistant fire chief. Folks, Rick and I go back -- we go back a long way. And Rick has been through a lot. In the meantime, you're looking good and doing well, and I can't tell you how pleased I am to be standing at his side.

And, Mr. Mayor, thank you for the passport to get back into Ottumwa. I enjoy it very much.

Folks, look, I'm going to get right to the point with you all, and thank you all for being here this morning. I don't think it would be considered hyperbole or an exaggeration to suggest that this is the most important election, creating the starkest choice -- I mean the starkest choice -- between the candidates that we've seen in our lifetime. It's as clear as it could be. (Applause.)

And I think we can sort of cut through all of the political talk and let's try to get right to the core differences that exist between President Obama and Mitt Romney and me and Paul Ryan, and for that matter, right now the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.

Folks, some of you -- none of you women, but some of you guys have been around as long as I have. (Laughter.) And this is not your father's Republican Party. This is a different Republican Party. They're not bad nor good, just it's a different Republican Party. This isn't even Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party.

They have very stark -- different -- starkly different views, and I want to tell you a little bit this morning about our vision, President Obama's and my vision and what we understand our opponent's vision to be for the future.

Because what they're saying today since they've -- during their convention and since they left their convention is totally inconsistent with what they've done their whole careers and what they're proposing to do. Now, they're both decent men. They really are. They're decent men. And like President Obama, Mr. Romney with all appearance of a great father and a loyal husband, but that's where the differences stop. That's where the differences stop in terms of their views.

Let's just start off and talk about Medicare, which is a major issue, in this campaign. If you listen to Romney and Ryan these days, you'd think they thought of Medicare. (Laughter.) I mean you'd think it was a Republican idea. I heard it repeated so many times at their convention there's this absolute commitment to preserve Medicare, to take it out of danger, et cetera and how much -- how desperately they wanted to make sure it was available for young people.

And they also went on to say that, that Obama guy, he put Medicare in danger. He made massive cuts in Medicare. He used it for other things. Well, folks, nothing could be further from the truth. Medicare benefits have increased under our administration -- benefits have increased. There's 48 million people on Medicare today. And talk to some of them; they've already saved roughly $700 some of them on their prescription drug benefits. They can go for wellness visits, life-saving visits. They can go get mammograms and colonoscopies and things that are preventative in order to get -- and not have to pay for them, and not have to -- (Applause.)

What the President did and what we did was we made the system which was becoming insolvent, we made it solvent. It balances until the year 2024. More has to be done, but we've extended the life of it until 2024.

It's interesting, the plan that they say that they're so much for and we've done so many terrible things to, it's kind of surprising isn't it, that AARP has endorsed our proposal, that the AMA, the American Medical Association, the American -- (applause) -- the American Hospital Association. And, Father, I'm being very careful -- as a good Catholic boy, I'm being very careful to tell the truth here. (Laughter.) I want you to know that.

But all kidding aside, they're the facts. But it's not just the misleading things they tell you about, it's what they don't tell you about what they plan to do.

Now, look, folks, Congressman Ryan, who is a leader of what they call the Young Guns -- they call themselves. They wrote a book called "The Young Guns" of the new leadership of the Republican House, they put together a budget. And last year, they passed a Medicare proposal, a change in Medicare. And they voucherize it. And the CBO -- you know the Congressional Budget Office -- you hear these phrases like, CBO and all this policy wonk stuff, well, the CBO -- the Congressional Budget Office, everybody says, they're the arbiter. The arbiter said that the Ryan plan, which all the Republicans voted for in the House, would increase the cost per year for a senior on Medicare $6,400 a year out of pocket -- $6,400. So that plan didn't go over too well. It didn't get past the Senate, so they came up with a new plan. Seriously, the Romney-Ryan plan.

And what they don't tell you about the Romney-Ryan plan is that immediately the 48 million Americans already on Medicare would lose benefits. They'd lose that $700 prescription drug benefit. They'd lose the wellness visits. They'd have to pay -- have co-pays to get those colonoscopies or mammograms or other tests that are life-saving tests.

What they don't tell you is that the 530,000 Iowans already on Medicare would lose benefits immediately -- not all, the benefits I just named, they'd lose. What they don't tell you is that this Medicare trust fund, which they feel so urgently concerned about, is their proposal would have it become insolvent in 2016 -- in 2016 it would be insolvent.

So, ladies and gentlemen, these guys aren't on the level with you right now. And what they really don't tell you, the dirty little secret is they're not for preserving Medicare as you know it, period. They are proposing what I call Vouchercare. They call it a voucher or a coupon.

And the way it's going to work, I say to you young kids, they're going to give your mom or your dad or your grandmom or grandpop literally a coupon, a voucher that's worth X amount of dollars. And they're saying now you can go out in the private market, and you can get -- all these insurance companies are going to compete for your business, so you at 65 or 70 or 75 can go out and find the best insurance policy you can get.

Now, that may work well if you're in really great health at 68. But if you have any preexisting condition, if you have anything, and most of us over 65 got something -- (laughter) -- something, you're not going to have enough money to get -- now they say you can go and you can buy back Medicare. They're not going to eliminate Medicare. They say you get -- seriously, this is the plan. You got a voucher. You walk out in the market, and you say, this is how much I got. I got -- I'm making it up -- 400 bucks a month. This is what I got to spend. Who is going to give me the best deal?

But if you have anything wrong with you at all, you're going to have to go back -- you say, well, I want to stay in Medicare. Well, the -- I'm making the number up -- the $400 is not enough to get Medicare back. And you think I'm joking about this, there's a new study done out of Harvard by a professor at Harvard showing that if you are 48 years old now, by the time you get to Medicare under their new plan, it's going to cost you $125,000 to be in Medicare for your life.

If you are 48 years -- excuse me, if you are 55 years old. You know they say this isn't going to affect anybody for 10 years -- if you're 55 years old, it's going to cost you $60,000. That's the study. And if you are 65 when this kicks in, it's going to cost you $11,000 more.

So, folks, that's a lot of money where I come from. That's a lot of money in Ottumwa. That's a lot of money in Claymont, Delaware. That's a lot of money where I come from.

Folks, these guys are not on the level with you, and they talk about the national debt. Now, you know you saw that Republican Convention. You saw that debt clock back there, and it's clicking and clicking away how the debt's going. It's true. We have to get it under control. They talked about, though, the urgency to act now -- now. It's urgent. And we agree. But not one single time did they tell you that the last time a Democrat held this office and left office, the budget was balanced and the debt was coming down. (Applause.)

Not one time -- not one time did they tell you -- and I was literally with the President when he got the news. He's sitting behind the desk, Resolute, in the Oval Office. We were there for several weeks, and the economic team comes in for the briefing. He said, Mr. President, the deficit for your first year, which you couldn't control because the fiscal year starts in October, so this is in February, late January is handed a bill for a trillion dollars for that year, the debt that was inherited, and then the economic recession kicked in. They didn't tell you any of that.

But what they really didn't tell you is again they're not on the level about this debt thing. Let me explain what I mean by that. There were a number -- you may remember reading the paper, the President put me in charge of negotiating a debt agreement with the Republicans. And it was going relatively well, and we met for 40 hours -- very -- I mean I get on well with my Republican friends in the House and the Senate. For real. That's been my reputation. That's -- because I respect them.

Well, just before we were ready to make a deal, at the same time what was going on, was there was a debt commission set up. You heard a lot about it. You hear Ryan talking about -- Congressman Ryan talking about it, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, bipartisan group. And there were other bipartisan groups out there -- Domenici-Rivlin. I won't bore you with all the detail. But all these high-level, serious, serious groups. And every single one of them, the Republicans walked away from. Why?

Governor -- Congressman Ryan was on that commission he talked about, but he voted no. Romney said he was against all their suggestions, even ours, why? Anything to reduce the debt if it required even $1, one dime in additional taxes on people making over a million dollars they voted against. That's why there's no progress on the debt. They have refused every single, solitary recommendation made by any respectable group because not one says you can get the debt under control only by cutting spending. You have to deal with revenue as well.

But if you listen to them and the urgency with which they talk about this, you'd think, my God, they're really serious. And when it comes to jobs, here's what they're not telling you about jobs. They're not telling you what they'll do. And what they are telling you isn't true.

Let me give you an example, the Romney-Ryan team has a new ad. And in the ad, there's this -- played here in Iowa if I'm not mistaken -- it says, trade -- meaning foreign trade -- trade has to work for America. That means crack down on cheaters like China. That means opening up new markets. Well, I turned that off thinking, God, Romney is going to be pretty good at this. I mean he -- pretty impressive. That's what the ad says.

But, Father, as we Catholics say, we call that an epiphany. (Laughter.) This guy sort of had an epiphany, you know like on the road to Damascus. You know what I mean? He's had an epiphany. An epiphany means you've gotten faith. You've been converted. And I said, okay, well, that's what he's saying now. Let's look at -- let's take a look at what he did throughout his career and what his plans are to do if he's elected that he's not telling you about.

Romney's economic philosophy is very simple and straightforward and others share the view. In a global economy, they argue, it doesn't matter much where American companies put their factory, and it doesn't matter much in a global economy where you create jobs. It's a global economy. That's been his consistent philosophy as a businessman, as a governor, as a candidate. When he ran Bain Capital where he made hundreds of millions of dollars totally, legitimately and to his great credit, The Washington Post said when he ran Bain, Bain Capital was "a pioneer in outsourcing," a pioneer in knowing how to send jobs abroad and make money doing it; outsourcing to China and other places.

In his book he wrote a couple years ago entitled "No Apology," he called the President of the United States, Obama, a protectionist for standing up to the unfair surge in Chinese tires swamping the American market, hurting American tire manufacturers. The President brought suit in international court. He won the case, and a thousand people are making a good wage making tires for America today. (Applause.)

He called that -- before his epiphany, Father, he called that protectionism. And now he's telling you -- what he isn't telling you is he has a new proposal, a new proposal to change the corporate tax code. It's a thing -- I want to bore you with the detail but I have to -- it's called a territorial tax he wants to put in place. Some countries have it. Here's what it means, it means if you move a company or start company -- an American goes over to China and starts a company and builds and hires a thousand people and makes a profit and makes a good profit, the only tax you have to pay is the Chinese tax. You can bring all that profit home here and not have to pay any tax.

Now, what the studies show is that that would create jobs, about 800,000 jobs -- all of them overseas. All of them overseas. (Applause.)

Folks, Romney getting tough on outsourcing? It's laughable. The fact is there's nothing I can see that Romney has said or done or is proposing where he would stand up to unfair trade practices or eliminate incentives for American corporations to leave Iowa and go somewhere else.

They even oppose the proposal that we had led by your United States senator saying, hey, instead of giving somebody a tax credit for unbolting machinery in Ottumwa and sending that factory over to China, don't do that. They get a tax credit for that now. Whatever that costs, they get a tax credit for doing it. Give a tax credit to somebody who unbolts machinery overseas and brings it back Ottumwa. (Applause.)

They voted not. They said no, no deal.

I found it stunning that in what was otherwise a really good speech that Governor Romney made accepting his nomination, that he said, emphatically, as President, he would take a jobs tour. Well, folks, based on his record, it's going to have to be a foreign trip when he starts off. That's the jobs tour he's going to have to take. (Applause.)

Look, President Obama understands that creating jobs here in America, keeping jobs here in America, bringing jobs back to America -- that is a President's job. Bring them here. (Applause.) That's why he rescued the automobile industry. That's why the President stepped up and rescued the automobile industry, when Romney said, if we acted it would make General Motors the living dead. That's why he not only brought the tire case against China, but he's brought more trade cases against China than the last administration all eight years combined. That's why he set up a special trade unit to do this. (Applause.)

And that's why earlier this year, he set up a task force to go after unfair trade practices. That's why last month, the President held China accountable for unfair trade practices that harm American automakers. And yesterday, the President announced in Ohio that he's launching a new enforcement action against China for providing illegal subsidies that encourage companies to ship auto parts manufacturing jobs overseas. We've not had a President who has fought harder to stop outsourcing and stop unfair trade practices. And it matters. (Applause.) It matters here in Iowa. It matters in Iowa.

Folks, and now they've discovered -- the thing that amazed me most -- now they've discovered the middle class. (Laughter.) Whoa, they discovered the middle class. I mean, at their convention, they were the party of the middle class again. They say they value the middle class. But if you take a look at their tax policy, you'll see how much they really value the middle class.

My dad used to have an expression. He'd say, don't tell me what you value; show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value. Don't tell me what you value; show me your budget. (Applause.)

Well, let's take a look at what they're proposing. Let me just take taxes, just one little piece. I could go on a long time about their taxes, but just one example. They want to extend the top 2 percent tax break, and they want to add new ones. To put this in perspective, by extending the top 2 percent tax break, what that means is $500 billion -- $500 billion over the next 10 years will go to 120,000 American families. You hear me now -- $500 billion, a half-a-trillion, to 120,000 families.

And then they put forward a new proposal, Governor Romney. For real. It's in writing. He wants another $250,000-a-year tax break to those same 120,000 families. How can that be justified? How can that possibly be justified, when they're cutting Medicaid -- not Medicare; they're doing that already -- Medicaid. When they're cutting education. When they're cutting -- when they can't even pass a farm bill. How is that justified?

Look, folks, all this has a big price tag. When you give those kinds of tax cuts to the very wealthy -- and by the way, the wealthy are just as patriotic as the poor. They're just as decent and honorable. They're not even asking for this tax cut, and Lord knows they don't need it. When you give that kind of tax cut, somebody pays for it. And guess who? Guess who?

The Tax Policy Center, a bipartisan center that everybody sends their stuff to and they examine and they're kind of an arbiter, they point out, this Tax Policy Center, after examining Romney's plan, they -- here's what they concluded. They said taxes on middle-class families with children, if their tax policy succeeds, will go up $2,000 a year. Two thousand dollars a year more for families with children, and another $250,000 tax cut to 125 families [sic] that are already getting a half-a-trillion dollars in tax cuts.

And the President -- and Romney calls the President out of touch? (Laughter.) Out of touch? The guy with a Swiss bank account? A guy with tens of millions of dollars in the [Grand] Cayman Islands? All legal -- but out of touch?

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll tell you what's out of touch. What's out of touch is what the Governor and Congressman Ryan are proposing for the economy. Folks, we've seen this movie before. We've seen it before. Massive tax cuts for the wealthy, shed reasonable regulations, shred reasonable regulations on Wall Street and the big banks, let the insurance companies go back to making decisions about preexisting conditions, lifetime limits and the rest about your health insurance. We know how that movie ends. It ends in catastrophe for the families I grew up with. It ends in catastrophe for the middle class. And it ends in the Great Recession of 2008 we're still fighting our way out of.

The President and I have a different way forward. We know the way to create good jobs is the old-fashioned way -- from the middle out, not from the top down. Because when the middle class does well, everybody does well. The poor have a leg up, and the wealthy get wealthier. It creates a lot of millionaires.

Ladies and gentlemen, our plan focuses first and foremost on education -- 100,000 new science and math teachers. Science and math. (Applause.) Two million workers learning new skills in a new economy through community colleges. One million new manufacturing jobs over the next four years. Cut oil imports by half by 2020. Invest in clean, renewable energy. Creating tens of thousands -- 600,000 jobs at the end of this decade by safely developing the natural gas that's below our soil, so we can go out there and have our trucks and our buses and everything run on gas. (Applause.) Real and fair enforcement of our trade laws, like what the President is doing now. And leveling the playing field -- leveling the playing field with exports so the people around the world can buy what they want to buy, products stamped: Made in America. Made in America. (Applause.) Cut the deficit by $4 trillion, and end the war in Afghanistan as we have in Iraq. Come home. Come home and rebuild our bridges, our roads, our schools, our infrastructure, creating tens of thousands of jobs, supporting hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs. (Applause.)

So when I hear Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, this new Republican Party, talk as they did at the convention and continue to talk about American being in decline, I don't recognize the country they live in. It's not the country I live in. We're not in decline. America is not. There is no give up in America. There is no give up in America. (Applause.)

And I've got news for both those gentlemen: Gentlemen, it has never, ever, ever been a good bet to bet against the American people. (Applause.)

So, folks, it's time to stand up. Stand up for the middle class. And you can start in nine days. In nine days here in Iowa, that's when voting starts. So go -- go out there, folks, and start voting as early as the 27th.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can't tell you how much we appreciate what you're doing, and I'd remiss if I didn't say -- and how we owe to the tens of thousands of people from Ottumwa and all across American who, since 9/11, have strapped on a uniform and gone into Iraq and Afghanistan. Folks, there's still over 74,000 in Afghanistan, so I ask you, keep them in your prayers and remember, we only have one sacred obligation as a nation -- we have a lot; only one sacred obligation: Equip those we send to war, and care for them when they come home from war. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you.

END 11:10 A.M. CDT