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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
Internal Transcript January 20, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN
AT A BREAKFAST FOR THE OBAMA VICTORY FUND

Beverly Wilshire Hotel
Beverly Hills, California


8:38 A.M. PST

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You know I've been doing this so long that I still cringe when people start talking about my decades of service. (Laughter.) I mean, God almighty, I've not been around that long, really -- I promise you, man. (Laughter.)

Hey, folks, thank you all very much. As I said to some of you I got to see before I came in here, you need this like you need another hole in your head this hour in the morning. But thank you so much for being here.

And particularly, those of you in the national finance committee, you did a heck of a job last time for the President, and the thing that I marvel at is you've come back and knowing how hard it is, you're prepared to try and do it again. And we appreciate it very much.

I should say at the outset for all of you that the financial contributions you generate for us are extremely important to state the obvious. But I want to tell you what else is equally as important that sometimes I think you underestimate -- and I just want you to know the President and I do not. When you decide to contribute to the campaign, you do more than write a check. What you do is you put your name on the line. You put your name on the line.

And for many of you, that is quite frankly more difficult than writing a check because with it comes -- oh, hey, Jill. Let me introduce you to my wife, Jill. (Applause.) Or let me be more precise, I'm Jill's husband. (Laughter.)

Jillie and I have been on a -- Jill teaches full time at community college. She teaches 15 credits a semester in Northern Virginia, been a teacher for our whole married life. And Jill has been on this trip with us. We started off in Northern California, and then Nevada and here. And not only have we done some fundraising, but the bulk of what we've done is dealing with military families, community colleges, college affordability and a number of issues we've been dealing with.

Jill had an event this morning -- she's about to head down to -- where are you going?

MRS. BIDEN: Camp Pendleton.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Jill and the First Lady spend an awful lot of time with military families, and I must -- prejudiced -- but have done an incredible job. And I guess you're -- I met someone here this morning who introduced himself as Pierce Morgan's lawyer.

MRS. BIDEN: Oh. (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So you tell Morgan if he screws around with you, his lawyer is here. (Laughter.) And you have an interview with Pierce Morgan this morning?

MRS. BIDEN: Yes, I do. But I'll be going to Camp Pendleton and meeting with women Marines, female Marines and they're going to explain to me how they go into the Afghan villages, and then we'll see the people that work with bombs, and we'll see wounded warriors. So this is part of the Joining Forces effort that I have with Michelle Obama to create awareness of our military families and what they do and create appreciation for them.

And so I'm off to Camp Pendleton, and I'll leave you with Joe. So I just wanted to say, hi. So, thank you, thank you. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You know -- not you know -- I've been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq now 20 -- I don't know, 22, 23 times. And Jill and I, as does the First Lady and Barack, we spend an awful lot of time in military hospitals. And -- around the world, and 1 percent of the population is fighting both these wars, only 1 percent.

And there are -- well, we've already lost close to 4,600 fallen angels and over 45,000 wounded -- 19,000-plus who are severely wounded will need our assistance the rest of their lives. Seventy percent of the wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq would have died in the war of my generation, Vietnam. But because of the incredible triage capability, they are being kept alive. But they are really -- many of them -- in tough, tough, tough shape. There's a higher percentage of amputees than any war since the Civil War. Their suicide rate is incredibly high, 18 suicides a day -- a day -- not a month, not a year, 18 a day.

One of the things that you learn firsthand when you have a child deployed -- our son was deployed for a year in Iraq. He is a major in the United States Army. He is also the attorney general of the state of Delaware. But he -- particularly those who are deployed who are reservists and/or National Guard, they have virtually no support system in their community. They live in your neighborhood. They live in the neighborhoods all across the country and everything goes on normally every day, except for the fact that it's not normal in your house.

And everyone is appreciative and is supportive of what they do, but most people don't even know what they do. Jill was at UCLA -- USC last night, where he has helped start a program nationwide and USC has picked it up in teaching their educators. They're teaching them how to deal with students whose parents are deployed and working with them, because the biggest thing -- I didn't mean to get off on this, but the biggest thing that the psychologists and psychiatrists tell us these families need is just for people to know -- not to say thank you, you are wonderful, not to fete them, not to have parades -- just so that they know.

You all know when you have a serious problem that's nagging at you that's long term that really is consequential to your family, that even if you just have one friend who knows, who just knows -- gives you a look and says, I know. I understand. And so, Jill uses a phrase that I recommend to you to recommend to all your friends. Just do one act of kindness, just one.

And when I tell -- when I go to colleges and high schools all across America, they ask what they can do. I said, this winter if you live in a climate where there's snow, just go over and shovel their driveway and don't say anything -- just shovel it and leave.

Or if you know that they've got a wife home with three kids and her husband is deployed, stop by, pick their kids up and take them to a matinee. I know this sounds silly. It sounds silly, but I promise you those of you who are veterans, those of you who have been deployed, you know. Just knowing that somebody back home has your wife -- or your husband, in this case -- or your son or your daughter's back is a big deal, so just one little act of kindness.

I was about to -- I hadn't planned on starting off this way. I'm about to do a radio show with Ryan Seacrest. And I'm told one of the questions he might ask is what's it like being Vice President. And my instinct was to answer honestly and say, nothing I ever aspired to. (Laughter.)

But I'll tell you a real quick story. The most significant thing that made this all worthwhile is when we got elected, there was a meeting with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor and the intelligence community about what to do about Iraq. We had 160,000 troops in Iraq -- everybody almost forgets that now -- when we took office three years ago.

And so it was early in the administration. It was in the Oval Office. And they started to make a presentation and the President -- to everyone's surprise, including mine -- put his hand up and said, look, Joe will handle Iraq. Joe will do Iraq. And he made some complimentary comment that was not warranted. But, he said, Joe has been dealing with longer than anybody. Talk to Joe. Joe will do Iraq.

And so, I've "done Iraq." The thing that the President -- the great thing about the President is -- (applause.) It's a great honor working with this President, and we have the order of this ticket right, man. This guy is -- has a backbone like a ramrod. This guy is a solid. Every day -- I spend three to five hours a day with him, literally every day when we're both in city, which is 90 percent of the time. Attend every meeting with him. Meet with him privately.

The deal when I accepted the job was all he asked what portfolio I wanted, and I said I just want one thing -- I get to be the last guy in the room, not figuratively, literally. Literally the last person in the room when an important decision gets to be made. And just to make my case, you're the President -- whatever decision you make I will support.

And so when he gives responsibility he gives responsibility. That's it. You just do it. You don't have to check. Just let him know what's going on.

And so the great honor -- the greatest honor I've had as Vice President, and I guess the greatest honor in my career has been, I got to in the -- in early December, go over for I don't know how many times now -- 20th, 18th, whatever time -- to Iraq, and stand there in one of those God-awful, ugly monuments to Saddam Hussein -- these great palaces he built for his personal residence -- and stand on the stage and look out at the commander of the Iraqi Forces, his troops assembled, and the commander of U.S. Forces, General Allen, and his forces assembled, and say they were dismissed. Say, you're all -- Americans are going home, and the only thing we're taking with this is our honor and our pride.

And I got off the stage as the last troop, literally, the last American troop was to ordered to leave Iraq. And I went to the phone, the secure phone and called the President. And I called him to say, Barack, thank you. Thank you for giving me the honor and the privilege of helping you end this war in Iraq, 160,000 troops. (Applause.)

Which leads me to suggest that when we think about how hard you work to get us in these jobs, and think about what we inherited the day we walked into that office, the day the President sat down on the first day as President of the United States behind the desk -- the Resolute -- and sat in that chair, not only had the economy virtually imploded even worse than we knew, on January the 21st the estimation was that the economy, the previous quarter had shrunk close to 5 percent. Actually, it shrunk close to 9 percent. Every econometric model predicted significantly less than that. They went back and didn't -- we didn't realize until March how badly it had shrunk. We'd already lost that previous sector -- that previous quarter 400,000 auto jobs, and we had lost over 3.2 million jobs that year.

Before I lowered my right hand on that magnificent day, and some of you were there on the Mall looking at the faces of as many as you could focus on -- over a million people -- with hope and pride, and apprehension -- and apprehension. Before I could lower my hand, we had already lost, that month, 740,000 jobs. Before the month was out, we had lost 846,000 jobs.

It took us a couple months to get our programs in place. The President had to do some very, very unpopular things. He had to stabilize the financial industry. Bailing out "the banks" was about as popular as legalizing rattlesnakes on Hollywood Boulevard. (Laughter.) It would -- seriously, it was the single most unpopular thing I've ever been a part of since busing in my home state.

And he went on not only to do that; he passed an audacious effort that had been attempted by presidents for the previous 105 years -- health care reform. He put Wall Street back in a position to do what it was intended to do: be the single arbiter and allocator of capital. That was the reason why we -- the capitalist system worked. It was a fair arbiter. It made judgments in the allocation of capital. And he turned it from a casino back into what it's supposed to be.

But it was, again, incredibly painful, with not one single vote on any of these things I'm talking about from any Republican. I mean it literally in most of them -- not a single solitary Republican vote. And in every circumstance requiring, in the case of the United States Senate, 60 votes. We had turned the exception into the rule in the Senate with the so-called filibuster.

And since then, we've made a great deal of progress. The President was excoriated by, quite frankly, some of our friends as well as our opponents for bailing out the automobile industry. Well, what he did, he forced the automobile industry to reorganize instead of having to liquidate, and out of -- since they've come out of bankruptcy, they have in fact hired 166,000 new workers. They have, for the first time if you noticed -- it could be temporary, but for the first time, General Motors is now once again the largest corporation in the world -- automobile corporation in the world, first time since 2008.

The fact of the matter is they're paying back the vast majority of the direct loans they have. We still have equity in the companies, but that will -- in our view, will not result in any significant loss to the American taxpayer. Instead of a liquidated operation that would have cost us somewhere on the order of 150,000 jobs right off the bat.

The fact that the President has been able to create 22 months in a row of private sector employment is not enough, but it is genuinely possible. You remember, we were talking when we took office about whether or not the stock market was going to fall below 6,000. Does everybody remember that? My deceased wife, Neilia, used to have an expression: She said, the greatest ability God gave mankind was the ability to forget. My mother would quickly add, that's true; if it weren't true, women would only have one child. (Laughter.)

But all kidding aside, I mean, people have forgotten. But the truth is, he acted boldly and he saved us from a very difficult situation. But in my business, that's never enough.

Politics is a little like love. It's never enough to say, remember what I did for you before, Honey -- husband or wife. (Laughter.) That doesn't get you anything. Or, you know, it's a lot better than it could be. That is not usually a line -- do not use that on Valentine's Day. (Laughter.) Do not use that on Valentine's Day. It doesn't work in politics either, but it happens to be true. It has the virtue of being true.

But there was one other thing that happened -- and I'll wrap this up and take some questions, if you have time. There was one other thing that happened. And that is that we inherited not only a fractured economy, a foreign policy in disarray where literally, not figuratively, we lacked the respect of not only our adversaries, but of our allies. Some of you travel internationally -- remember in the days in '06, and '07, and '08, when you'd go abroad and you're from America? I mean, literally, remind yourself of what this used to be.

A major company in my state has a major subsidiary in Canada would literally send their Canadian reps from Canada to Europe to do business rather than the American reps so they could say they were Canadian -- literally, Canadian -- instead of having to say they were American. The election of Barack Obama absolutely, almost overnight, turned around the attitude toward this country.

And it makes a great deal of difference. You see it in the influence he is able to project.

For the first time, we actually have engaged in burden-sharing. When Qaddafi threatened his population, the normal response for the previous 25 years would be, America will go in and do something. What did America do? For the first time, he did something -- he is both strong and wise. He organized. The critics said, he's -- we're leading from behind. Let's get this straight: Qaddafi is gone. Libya is struggling to establish a Democratic government. It cost the American public $3 billion, the use of our sophisticated capacity to make -- clear the air for the ability of NATO to go in and do its job. We did not lose one single solitary American soldier in Libya. (Applause.)

My old buddy Emerson's old boss, and still my great friend, Bill Clinton would say, you got to be tough and smart.

The generic point is that he inherited a lot. But the one thing he inherited that we didn't talk much about, or people didn't listen to us much about, he inherited a broken bargain: the middle class.

The middle class is being killed. The deal that the middle class has had -- the promise that has existed for the previous 75 to 80 years, which basically was -- and it sounds trite -- but if you worked hard; if you played by the rules; you worked as hard as you could to get an education; you did everything in your power; you were a loyal employee and a loyal citizen; you impacted on helping productivity and creation; you got to share in the benefits. You had the promise -- literally the promise that was part of our DNA that there's a prospect that your kids will be able do better than you; the prospect that you'll be able to live in a decent neighborhood, in a house you can heat and cool, that's safe, with the prospect that you'll have a decent school system, and with the promise you'll be able to send your child to college, take care of your parents in their old age, and if you're really lucky, be able to save enough so that your children will not have to take care of you. And that's been broken. That has been fractured.

From 2000 to 2007, productivity in America increased by 20 percent, yet middle-income people actually lost $2,500 on average in income during that period. That had never happened before since the bargain occurred. Productivity was up, but they were out.

And now what are they seeing? Because of the policies of this past administration, and because of the policies of the present House and the Republicans in the United States Congress and the Republican candidates for President, in fact they've -- it's clear why we got to where we were. The tax structure is just simply disproportionately skewed. It's not about class warfare. It's not about the rich should pay everything. It's just about some sense of equity and balance in the way in which we pay for the service of this government. It's about access.

What is the central -- some of you come from backgrounds like mine, typical middle-class family in a split-level home or some version of that out West here in a neighborhood you thought things were pretty good. Mom and dad didn't go to college. But from the time you could hear, the time you could listen, you heard your father and mother say, you're going to be a college man or a college woman.

I remember my dad would say that to me all the time, and I'd say, why is that so important, Dad? He said, Joey, they can take your job, they can take a lot of things from you; but they can never take away your education. I used to think, what the hell difference does that make if I don't have a job? (Laughter.)

Seriously. As a kid, I remember consciously thinking, I mean -- but my father understood what you all understood and the middle class understands. A college education is about possibilities. It's about a definition of who you are. It's about your sense of yourself. It's about your notion of your capacity. It's more than -- my dad had an expression. He always used to say, Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about your respect. It's about your place in your community. It's about your sense of self-worth. And so many people have been stripped of that dignity. So many people have been essentially put in a position where their view of themselves and their self-worth is -- has diminished. This is the first time since any polling has been done where over 50 percent of the people are now questioning whether the cost of a college education is worth it. Hear me now? First time.

Go back to your old neighborhoods where you grew up, the people you grew up with and ask them, how confident are they, if they look in their kid's eye, to be able to say, Honey, it's going to be okay. Nothing complicated. How confident are they -- just generically? Do they think they can say to their child, don't worry, it's going to be okay? Whatever it is. Try it out. Go back to where you grew up. You'll find out that a significant portion of your old friends are going to look at you and say, I can't say that.

When Barack and I ran, we used the phrase that -- constantly throughout the campaign -- that our measure of success, economic success for the nation would not be whether the GDP grew at a certain rate, or the stock market hit a certain number. That was necessary, but not sufficient. The fundamental measure of whether or not we succeed is whether or not once again average people have a sense of hope and expectation, and they actually believe again that things are going to be better for their kids than they are for them. That's literally what we talk about when we talk about a bargain.

I'm not -- I know Barack gets -- the President sometimes gets nailed why doesn't he emote more. Why doesn't he -- let me tell you, this guy bleeds. He just -- he has a different -- the very thing that I have grown to love about the guy is his character. And his strongest character traits, the things I most admire and the reason I admire him and why we've become close friends are character traits that don't lend themselves sometimes to 2012 national politics.

This is a guy who doesn't -- he knows. When he was down during the oil spill, he was down there and the press was, why isn't he emoting -- or why isn't he connecting more. And there was actually an article -- I think it was the Post or the Times -- why isn't he more like Clinton and Biden. There were pictures of me down there, and these big shrimpers crying -- literally holding me, crying on my shoulder.

Let me tell you about this guy. I was down at a restaurant down when he was -- I think he was -- Viola's -- don't hold me to exact place. And he was demonstrating that he would -- that the seafood was still edible and he was down there to help, et cetera, to a whole group of people. And it was a Cajun restaurant, and I'm making the name up, but I don't remember the name. But the owner's name was Claude and it had been in the family for a long, long time. He's a good old Cajun boy, talk at you like this, you know what I mean down there. (Laughter.)

And he had a daughter, and I believe the name was Antoinette that sticks in my mind. And while the President and the press and everyone was being served, and he was doing this continuing interview and overlooking the Gulf, Antoinette is 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old daughter come up and threw her arms around her dad and said, Papa, Papa, we're going to lose the restaurant. We're going to lose it, Papa. What are we going to do?

The President actually stiffened. You could tell that the guy was just bleeding. And so one of his guys said to me later in Washington, maybe you should talk about that. And I said, don't make him do things that are not what he is. I know what he was thinking then. He was not just thinking about the loss of that restaurant. He was thinking, what would I say to Malia? What would I say to Sasha. What would I say to them? He gets it.

But because that's private, because that's personal, because that somehow would cheapen in his mind the relationship, he's not going to do it. So the very character traits that make this guy the most unique man I've ever worked with, one of the most decent men I've ever known -- and I've been there for eight Presidents and I've admired a number of them. But this guy -- you're backing the right guy. This guy knows what he believes. This guy is determined to get one thing done, by the time we finish our term in office to allow people he grew up with and their kids to be able to turn to their kids and say, honey, it's going to be okay.

The good news we have now is -- I've done a lot of races. I've been around, unfortunately, as you can tell too long sometimes. (Laughter.) And this is the first time I've ever seen -- and some of you guys in here are as old as I am, you may remember these former campaigns. It's the first time ever I remember that the Republicans aren't trying to hide the ball. They're just saying flat out what they believe, which is wonderful. (Laughter.) No, no seriously. (Applause.)

By the way, you all think I'm kidding. I'm serious, this is wonderful. (Laughter.) When have they ever before just said straight up what they mean? They aren't pretending about -- they're not talking about compassionate conservatism. They're not talking about how -- they're straightforward. They have a tax policy that says as bad as things are for middle-class people, do not reduce their taxes.

College tuition, we've put in three major initiatives that are really helping people keep their kids and get their kids to school. What happened? These guys, the first thing they want to cut -- I'm the guy that's been put in charge of negotiating the debt ceiling with them. The first thing they want to cut -- are you paying for that $2,500 tax credit for middle-class people to be able to deduct cost of college education? And my response is, are you paying for the top 1 percent tax cut? Where is that coming from? (Laughter.)

These guys are amazing. These guys are amazing, but they're not hiding the ball. They're even now -- some of the candidates saying and some of their "leading foreign policy figures" in the Senate saying we should send troops back into Iraq -- for real.

So, folks, this is going to be a campaign that is going to provide people with the clearest set of alternatives about the future vision for the country that has occurred since 1932. I genuinely believe that. And I had someone yesterday in San Francisco say, you know what we should have done -- what did they have, 14 or 16 or whatever number of debates -- there should have been a crawler underneath that said, paid for by the National Democratic Committee, because they're just being straight up. (Laughter.)

By the way, that doesn't mean -- I'm not cocky about this. My grandpop used to say, anybody can beat anybody else on any given day, any team can beat any other team on any given day. We can be beaten. This is a tough economy as much changes as we've had.

But, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be clear, absolutely clear what the alternatives are. Let me end by saying -- because I want to hear what's on your mind, end by saying that the 2008 election was important, but this is a lot more important. You say, well, Biden, every election I'm told this is the most important election. But let me tell you seriously why this is more important.

Compare what Franklin Roosevelt inherited and what latitude he was given to bring the country back. By the time Franklin Roosevelt took office, it was absolutely clear to not only Americans but to the whole world why the economy had imploded under the policies of whom. The depression was in full-blown swing by the time he was sworn in.

I kidded the President when we were being sworn in on that platform. I whispered to him, I said, you know we should have been sworn in -- like the old days -- on March the 20th, instead of January 20th. He looked at me like, what the hell are you talking about? And I said, because that way no one would have any doubt who is responsible for where we are -- none, none.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what happened? We got elected. The things that we said we were going to do we did. The stock market started coming back. Employment began to increase. We start to level out. College access is increasing, a whole range of things that are positive indicators.

And then, along came the 2010 election. We lost the House and they brought all of it to a screeching halt, to an absolute screeching halt. And that's why we've acted almost independently by executive authority on the things we've been able to get done.

But here's what happened as well. In politics, every once in a while in American politics, although the facts overwhelmingly lean in the direction of making a particular case it doesn't sink through to the public until an event occurs, an event. The event that occurred that broke the bubble and made the American people realize who is on first and who is on second was their overreaching on the payroll tax. They were overreaching and it became overwhelmingly clear cumulatively -- but that event made people realize these guys really aren't for us. These guys really aren't where we are.

And so what we've been able to do is get things moving back in the right direction. Had we lost last time, it would have been terrible. But this time around, whomever the Democratic nominee was would have won in a walk, and would have had a franchise for the next three to four terms -- the Democrats -- because it would have been so overwhelmingly clear.

The fact that we started to move things in the right direction, continuing to move in the right direction -- foreign and domestic policy -- what's going to happen is, if we were to lose this race, you're going to see this revert rapidly. On American foreign policy and American domestic policy, you're going to see them undo every one of the things we did, and it's going to be a long, long time before we're able to gain the initiative again. And so that's what I mean by this election being so critically important.

If they end health care, if they actually change the foreign policy and go it alone again, if they actually engage in the kind of activity of deregulating Wall Street again, if they do the things which they've stated straightforwardly they're going to do -- and lastly, folks, the Court's at stake -- the Supreme Court of the United States and the federal court system. And whoever is the next President is going to have an opportunity to set as his or her imperator -- in this case there's only men left -- his imperator on what that court is going to look like for the next three decades. And you saw what happened with Alito, and you saw what happened with Roberts who we have in the Court.

Some of you may remember I got excoriated for going after Roberts, and working so hard against him being in the Court because he's one of the most talented, most gifted, and most persuasive guys on the right that has taken the Court in a direction that is absolutely dangerous for the United States of America. And the next President is going to fill that dance card out. So this is a really, very, very critical election, to state the obvious.

Conclude by saying, I got elected when I was 29. There was actually one person elected younger than me in American history, but I got elected -- I wasn't old enough to be sworn in when I got elected. I had to wait to be eligible to be sworn in, you have to be 30 to be sworn in. And I was characterized then as a young, idealistic -- idealist who is optimistic. If you notice, all the national press accounts of me, among other things, one of the things they usually add is, Biden is the White House optimist.

I find it kind of strange. I'm the oldest guy in the place. I've been there longer than anybody. I didn't, as my grandpop would say, fall off the turnip wagon yesterday, but I'm the most optimistic guy. But I am absolutely, positively optimistic, because I think America, unrelated to Joe Biden and Barack Obama, the American people given a shot, I think we're on the verge of a renaissance in this country that will put us a position to be able to lead the world in the 21st century and be the leading economy in the 21st century.

The capacity exists and you can almost feel it. People are tired of being tired. People are tired of being put down. People are tired of our position. Everybody talks about China. Ladies and gentlemen, China is a great country. I hope China continues to grow for its own stability and our sake. But China's old expression goes, ain't a patch on our jeans.

Our economy is 3.5 times as large. Our annual GDP per person is 10 times as large -- $4,500 versus $45,000. They have to find 20 million new jobs per year just to stay even. They have to continue a mercantile practice which is going to cause their inflation to go through the ceiling over the next four years in ways -- they have a housing bubble they're looking at that make ours look like it was small. They're in a circumstance where they have overwhelming problems with entitlements.

We think -- you may recall when I was there in the summer, Romney nailed me for saying, Biden condoned their one-China policy. He took out of context what I said. I was making a case to the -- in the People's -- in this large auditorium with Hu, the President and others, and I was taking questions, and I said, look, I said -- they said, well, you have real economic problems. And I said, we do, but I said thank God we don't have yours. And they looked at me and I said, I'm not going to argue with you about your one-child policy. But you have four people retired for every one person working. What are you going to do? And their face, you could literally see them go like -- I said we got a problem with entitlements we're going to fix. But my God, thank God we don't have your problem. (Laughter.)

And I went on to say, by the way -- this is after we were downgraded -- I went on to say, you know, I know everybody wants me to explain and then justify our system. I said, your investments are just fine. And I said, the fact that our economy is three and a half times as large as you doesn't mean we don't want you to grow. We want you to grow. And by the way, I suggest -- don't buy any more American Treasury bills. It's okay. And our ambassador nearly had a coronary arrest. (Laughter.) And I said -- because I said, you own 1 percent of our financial instruments; you own 7 percent of our T-bills. We owe it to the American people -- don't worry, it's going to be fine, but it's okay if you don't invest. It's okay if you don't invest.

Ladies and gentlemen, part of what we have to do is remind the American people that as bad as this recession has been, we are better positioned than any nation in the world. And mark my words, within the next four years you're going to hear the word I'm about to mention five times as many times you're going to hear the word outsourcing, and it's called insourcing. We just met with the largest corporations in America, including the DuPont company, and Siemens, and Rolls Royce, and Ford Motor Company and Master Lock. They're bringing jobs home by the thousands. Because guess what? Cost of employment in China has gone up 20 percent per year the last few years, and it's going to continue to be. Their cheap labor is gone. Everybody is off the farm; they're all in the cities.

So my generic point is, we've got to have some confidence. Some confidence about what the possibilities are. The possibilities are immense -- immense for the country. And the guy to make sure they have a shot of emerging is Barack Obama. So thanks for helping him, thanks for helping us, and why don't I hush up and take any questions you might have.

Hey Bruce Singer (ph), how are you? (Applause.) Good to see you, Bruce. How are you? Fire away.

By the way, I used to be a United States senator, so I'm used to not being taken seriously. So if you have to go, leave, I get it.

Yes, sir.

Q You guys -- well, thank you for coming today, Mr. Vice President. Can you talk a little bit about what you guys are going to do to fix the education system in America?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'll do it very, very briefly. We've invested more, with your help, than any administration or any three administrations combined. And the one thing everyone knows is the one, single most important thing to do, to do away with the learning gap that sits out there. We invested significant amounts of money into early education.

Early education is the single most important place to invest money at the front end. Kids coming out of barrios and neighborhoods on the East side of Wilmington, Delaware, they start off with a vocabulary that's half the vocabulary of the kid coming out of a middle-class or an upper-class neighborhood. That is a hell of a steep slope they start off with. It's found that if you start them off at ages three, four and five, you exponentially increase their ability to compete, you exponentially increase the prospects of them graduating, and you exponentially increase the prospects they'll be successful.

The second thing we've done is we have gone out and we've genuinely engaged in significant reforms of the education system. We cannot educate our kids the same way we did 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago. We don't go to school long enough. We don't have as much -- we don't have a demanding enough curricula in many places. We are in a position where we should be rewarding teachers much more and demanding much more of them in terms of longer days and greater show of productivity in their classrooms. We're doing that. At first we had an uprising with the teachers' unions; now the teachers' unions are working with us.

The third thing we've done is we have stopped the slide of qualified kids not being able to go to school -- to college, post-high school. We used to be, over a decade ago -- or actually in 2000, just a turn, 1997 -- we were the number-one in the world in the percent of the population we graduated from college. We're now number 16 -- 16 in the world. My wife Jill, who teaches full-time, as I said, has a great expression. She says, any country that out-educates us will out-compete us. It is simply not possible for us to lead the world with the 16th least educated country in the world.

And so we have gone out of our way to do a whole range of things relative to access to college in addition to limiting the amount of college debt you have to pay back per year so you don't have to make a choice to take a job you don't have any interest in because it makes more money versus one where you can think you can thrive in.

We've also made sure that -- for example, there are 9 million more kids in college today, this very day, because of us increasing Pell grants than there were two years ago; 9 million qualified kids from income -- homes with incomes under $50,000 -- qualified -- who couldn't go to college because they had no financial access to get to college.

And we have -- I was just in little Nevada. Nevada has 380,000 people who are able to take -- families take advantage of writing off up to $10,000 a year, the cost of college for their kids. If they've got four kids in college, their parents -- God love them -- it means either Mormons or Catholics, and they're -- (laughter) -- I'm a Catholic. They're in real trouble.

But seriously, you get to write off the bottom line, $2,500. It's a credit. So if your taxes are $2,500, you got one kid in college and you're paying -- or post-high school and you're paying more than $2,500, you don't pay any federal tax.

If in fact your taxes are $1,500 you get a check back for 1,000 bucks. Coming from a family like that, it's the difference between whether or not you can continue to keep your kid in school and pay the automobile insurance, or keep the lights on. It matters to people.

But even more than that, what we're doing is we have set a national goal to say that, by the year 2020, once again, we'll lead the world.

We're doing one more thing, and some of you are very -- many of you are very prosperous, significant citizens in this community, and you're on the boards of some of the great universities around here. We're coming back to you all and saying, you've got to cut college -- cut the increase in college tuition. In the last 20 years, it's gone up 470 percent, the last 10 years 287 percent. It makes health care pale by comparison, in terms of the increased costs.

And so there has to be a change. And there's a number of ways. We're working with 100 college presidents to make sure we are able to hold down the increases in education. Because the federal government puts $50 billion a year into American colleges through college aid and assistance that students would not otherwise have to be able to attend those schools. And if you continue to -- the argument is that the very wealthy -- not the very -- that the wealthy and the poor benefit from this, but the middle class get killed, because the middle class -- it still becomes a bridge too far; 2,500 bucks in terms of assistance and the tuition gets raised 2,600 bucks, it doesn't do you much. It's still a bridge too far.

And so we're working very hard and getting great cooperation. I recently met with the president of the University of Pennsylvania who is involved in this, and we're working very hard to figure out how to retain -- maintain college cost without, in fact, increasing quality. There's a lot more we're doing.

But I was asked at a foreign policy forum -- you know, I'm supposedly a foreign policy expert, and I always joke an expert is anyone from out of town with a briefcase. (Laughter.) I don't have a briefcase with me today.

But I was asked at the foreign policy forum, what's the most important thing we can do to maintain America's security? And I said, have the best educated population in the world. And I mean that literally. I don't mean that -- I mean, just purely from a foreign policy, national security point of view.

So it is the single biggest domestic issue for us, and that is access to education, access to a fine education, and that starts in pre-school. (Applause.)

Yes.

Q Hi, Mr. Vice President. I had the pleasure of being with your wife on Wednesday at the Apps for Heroes event up in San Francisco. Oh, it was fantastic. And for those of you don't know about it, it's several technology companies have put together apps so that veterans can get hired by companies very easily. They can be recruited so that their jobs that they did in the military can be transferred to civilian jobs, and in my particular case so that they get hired and get paid, and companies can get their work opportunity tax credit.

So as someone who grew up in the military, thank you very much for being in the forefront of supporting our veterans. It's very huge.

My question, though, is, there are still people unemployed and the unemployment benefits are going to be coming due again, and we have a very recalcitrant Congress. Do you really think that we're going to be able to get anything out of these Republicans over the next two months, and what are we going to do? Because right now they're trying to portray the people who are on unemployment as uneducated, when 84 percent of them have high school degrees; that they're on drugs -- that's why they want them to have the drug test. I mean, I am very much afraid that we're going to be in the same position we were in before.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I think this is one we're going to win because what happened was -- what we were able to do this last fight on both extension of unemployment as well as the payroll tax, is we didn't have the sword of Damocles hanging over our head. The sword of Damocles was that these guys say, you know, if you don't cooperate with me I'm going to blow my brains out. These guys actually would blow their brains out.

They actually -- where I was the chief negotiator on the deficit reduction package, as well as I'm making sure we actually paid our national debt, that we didn't renege for the first time in American history, which would have been disastrous.

But the Republican leaders who I have worked with for a long time and have known a long time -- I've known Mitch McConnell and John Boehner for over 30 years -- I disagree with them, but they're not -- these guys aren't crazy. And they kept telling me these guys are -- we have -- I won't publicly say how they characterize some of their people, but we have an unusual group, they say. (Laughter.) And he said, they'll actually vote this down. I'd say, that's an unfair negotiating practice. Don't tell me because you got crazy people I have to concede more. That was -- well, here's what happened. You think I'm joking? I'm not joking.

I actually -- if you remember about those long meetings, I was put in charge of -- by the President, to negotiate with the House and Senate to get a deal. I actually had a handshake from Eric Cantor. By the way, he is the guy Democrats love to hate. But he is a smart guy and he is a straight guy. I fundamentally disagree with him, but he is straight, says what he means and does what he says.

We shook hands. We had a deal. He called me back later that night and, he said, I can't do it. I'll lose my position in leadership. I said, no, you don't have to explain to me your political circumstance. I understand. You can't get it done.

Then, remember the President started negotiating with Boehner. And remember what he did, four days out he said, Joe, you do it now. I said, oh, thanks, four days. (Laughter.) And you think I'm joking. I'm not joking. You know I'm not joking. (Laughter.) So I ended up with a handshake with Boehner, what we were able to cut. We agreed to cut the deficit by $4 trillion -- $4 trillion -- the same deal that -- the same number that the committee everybody talks so much about, the Simpson-Bowles committee had agreed on. We agreed.

He called me back about eight hours later. He said, I can't do it. I can't get it done. The reason I've never outed these guys is they really meant to do it. They tried to do it, but they've got a caucus that just is impossible.

And so, what happened was -- as you'll recall -- is that we finally decided -- the one thing I was able to negotiate was I was able to negotiate a trillion-dollar cut and a promise of trillion-two or the automatic cuts if it didn't occur. But the most important thing everybody said -- the most important thing we got was we got the national debt kicked down the road until the election, which means they no longer could hang this sword over our head which would have caused our credit rating and our credibility in the world to plummet. It would have plummeted us, we believe, into a deep, deep recession if not a depression had we reneged on our national debt.

And so with that out of the way, now if you notice everybody says, well, why is the President finally playing hardball? Because he can. Because you don't have a guy with a gun at his head saying, I'm going to blow my brains out and spatter it all over your desk if you don't give me what I want.

Well, what happens now is we say, go ahead, blow your brains out. It's okay. And that's exactly what they did. It's exactly what they did. (Laughter.) Seriously, not a joke. I mean, think about it in political terms. What did they do this last negotiating cycle? They exposed exactly who the devil they are.

And now what's happened is a lot of these tea party guys -- they were this group of 89 they said -- this group of 89, guess what, we've gone over their heads. I'll give you one example. In the state of Pennsylvania, which is my home state and where I -- it's the only state I'm more popular in than my own, because it's the only media that I've had for 36 years is Philadelphia media. I'm born and raised in Scranton. I've done probably 500 events for the Democratic Party there.

Well, what happened is we lost five seats to five tea party guys. But not one of those districts are tea party districts. So what's happened is we've gone over their heads to their folks now. Now, for the first time, these guys are actually feeling pressure. And so, that's why you saw them cave at the end of the day on the payroll tax through this month. And they will in fact move now.

I believe we will get the unemployment extension. And the reason why this thing about being on drugs and all that malarkey they use like they used to use, Cadillac's and food stamps and sunglasses and buying vodka -- all that stuff that used to be in the beginning of the Clinton administration. Guess what, too many middle-class people have a neighbor or themselves who are out of work. It's not like they're looking -- it's in that other neighborhood; it's in my neighborhood.

My house is upside-down. I never missed a mortgage payment in -- literally is not, even though I know -- I stopped. They're saying, Joe, is it really true your net worth is only $150,000? And I said I wished they hadn't printed that. (Laughter.) I had the distinction of being the poorest man in the Congress for 36 years, or in the Senate I was always one, two, three or four. Well, I don't know if you saw The Washington Post, and ABC did a piece on it, and I think the quote is, it's probable no man has been sworn in as Vice President with fewer assets than Joe Biden. (Laughter.) I assume they meant financial assets. They may have been talking about something else. (Laughter.) But my house is not upside-down -- as little as I have.

But here's the point: Everybody knows somebody in their neighborhood who never missed a mortgage payment, and because the two foreclosures in the neighborhood and one up the block and a guy -- three people unemployed, guess what? All of a sudden, their home is upside-down. So they're not buying the malarkey.

So for all those reasons and more, I believe we will get unemployment extended. I don't think we'll get it for 96 weeks. I think we'll get it for 48 weeks, and I think that will be enough to get us, if we get elected to get through. And hopefully, we're going to be in a position where the unemployment rate continues to increase.

Because I think if you look around, Europe is not as likely to implode as people thought it was. The Germans are finally -- and the French are finally figuring out they have to build a firewall. They can do it on their own. Not done yet, not done yet. But it is more hopeful than it was before. And the Chinese economy grew at 8.6 percent last -- not what they expected, but still. So the bottom line is, I think we're going to be okay.

Q Sir, can we make this the last one?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, we'll make the -- well, I'm going to do two or three more and we'll do them quick. I'll give them -- not give a detailed explanation.

Q Thank you, Mr. Vice President. It's an honor to thank you for your leadership on the Violence Against Women Act. I'm very grateful for your leadership. There are very few people who are advancing the rights of women, I feel, left in the federal government.

As a fellow Catholic, I have concern about the role that the bishops will play in decisions you make regarding women's health and other women's rights. And so I just wanted you to talk a little bit about that.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Let me say very briefly, there is -- you have no fear in this administration that there will be any stepping back from or walking away from women's health issues, including abortion, contraception, and all those other issues you already talked about. And that's number one.

Number two, we've started a new initiative -- as you know, I've started a new initiative with the President's permission on violence against women. Because we're finding out that, as successful as it was, and that violence against women is down 50 percent, it is actually not down in a coterie of folks from age 14 to 24. And so we have a basic new way of -- a major new initiative, and we've been going into -- and I just did a deal where there were 1,000 high school assemblies on the telephone, talking about the new initiative we had relative to violence -- date violence and date rape. And so it is -- rape is rape is rape, whether the woman is drunk or sober, whether it's in a back of a car or in her dorm, whether she's a prostitute or she is a virgin. Rape is rape is rape. No is no is no. And that's the thrust of our entire new initiative. We've worked -- we're doing a lot on it; you'll see a lot more.

Okay, a couple more then I'm out of here.

Q Could you talk about immigration?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I will talk about immigration. We are committed to -- and there is no possibility of any of it happening in the near term -- we're committed to a comprehensive education reform -- I mean, excuse me, immigration reform. You have to deal -- no matter what, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how politically charged it is, you have to deal with the 14 million folks that are here. You're not going to line up wagon trains and box cars and so on. It's -- you have to deal with it. That's why we think the Dream Act should be passed, we should move on that.

We also believe -- hey, Mickey -- we also believe that you have to be in a position where at the other end -- I just met with a lot of folks -- for years, I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and the H1B visas are a big deal, and I have been a big promoter of these visas. We should be doing something at both ends here. At the other end, we should be saying, anybody who graduates from a -- gets a doctorate degree from an accredited university in the United States of America, when they get the degree they get a seven-year green card attached to it -- stapled to it. We think we should be encouraging people to come who have skills as well.

We also think that we're going to be able to do this because the nation has gone through sort of this -- this almost necessary convulsion, and you've seen it on full display in the Republican primary, and you've been attitudes gradually begin to change about immigration in this country and gradually begin to change about the need because there's been such a national debate that has been some of it so -- not on the merits, but nonetheless allowed people to vent.

You're seeing this sort of working its way through. I think the country is going to be positioned next year with a new Congress to begin to actually make some significant and genuine move toward genuine immigration reform.

And I'll give you one anecdotal piece of evidence. Little old Delaware is one of the few states from Maine to Virginia, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi that actually grew 20 percent. And it's a small state; it's only a million people now. But it grew 20 percent. Of that growth, the 20 percent growth in population, 25 percent of that was Mexican American. The very part in -- my state is a very conservative state. They talk at you like this -- Ruth Singer is the only one who knows this; she's a Wilmington girl -- but upstate and downstate is, they talk at you like this, lot of good old boys to our -- we have the ninth highest, eighth highest black population in America because we were a slave state; 19.8 percent of our state is -- any rate, that's how I got involved in politics, because of the civil rights movement and so on.

But you'd think we'd have these problems, particularly in the southern part of the state. In fact, now, there is an overwhelming reception, positive reception because these Mexican Americans who have come in and are -- legally, many of them, the vast majority of them -- they in fact are welcome, they're the best workers -- everybody is out there saying, we want these guys, we want them. And so they're opening up community colleges. And so it's a real fundamental change.

Now, I know you have a totally different -- and whatever dilemma immigration causes in Delaware, it is exponentially more complicated in the Southwest. I get it. But nonetheless, I think attitudes are beginning to change.

Last question I'll take. Yes, sir.

Q Mr. Vice President, thank you for being here and thank you for everything you're doing. (Inaudible) infrastructure, you're in L.A., so we've got to ask you about that. The President made reference to it in the (inaudible) speech. Here in L.A., we passed a tax on ourselves, got two-thirds of the vote for a half-cent sales tax. The mayor has talked to you about this. We got (inaudible) 30 years of infrastructure; we're trying to frontload that in 10 years --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, you have our support as you know, number one. Number two, we have two major initiatives that -- as a matter of fact I met with your lieutenant governor who is really big in this for the LA initiative, as well as the one in San Francisco. I think we're going to be able to have a little bit of seed money to help with that. I can't say that. I don't want to sound like Solyndra, like somehow -- but seriously, I think LA is competing and it has to be at the top of the agenda for this. (Applause.)

Your governor made the right decision on high-speed rail. Now, look, if we sit back -- in terms of infrastructure, the Society of Engineers says we are behind the curve about $1.7 trillion in terms of necessary infrastructure repair that's necessary in the United States of America. And if you had amnesia, if you had been in a coma for the last 10 years and I awakened you, blindfolded you, and dropped you in the Beijing airport and then took you to the LA airport and said, which one is in America -- (laughter) -- it's the best way to say it. But I'm serious.

One of the things where everybody is beginning to realize is infrastructure means business. Infrastructure is what keeps people -- that makes companies invest. The infrastructure of this country is in bad, bad shape. Between now and 2055, it's expected there will be another 100 million people in the United States of America. And so, the idea that we can live with and function based on the present infrastructure is not possible.

And so, as a consequence of that, we think it's the single biggest domestic investment we should be making. And one of the things that can't be the total measure of the kind of infrastructure we invest in is like high-speed rail. You can say now that if you build that first leg of the high-speed rail, on a per-passenger basis it's going to be more expensive to have someone commute on that rail or run on that rail than it would be if they were in their car even with gasoline and even the millions of hours of lost productivity, traffic, and all the rest.

But the truth of the matter is if you don't start that process, you will never ultimately drive down the cost and increase the consumption of whatever that product is. It's like -- I'm a big high-speed rail guy. And one of the people -- arguing with me -- a Democrat in San Francisco was arguing with me about it. They didn't think the governor should have gone forward with his proposal. And, he said, we can't afford it.

And, I said -- and this is an old friend of mine. And, I said, Charlie, thank God you weren't around when Eisenhower came up with the highway bill -- (laughter) -- seriously. And, I said, you would have been a real pain in the rear. (Laughter.) I said, guess what, just let me remind you. I said, we did not build a million miles of highway.

We built a ribbon from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and it was another 14 years before we built the Northeast extension going from Philadelphia up to the state line through Scranton and up that way. I said, take a look at how the highways were stitched together. And the more you did, the more it became efficient, the more -- and so on and so forth.

And so, that's how we have to be thinking about that. We can't be -- this is a good way to conclude. One of the things in talking to -- I've been meeting with a lot of -- not a lot, but I've been meeting with a lot of corporate executives who have Democratic leanings -- they aren't the majority -- but who are worried about whether we're anti-business and our attitude and the way we talk, et cetera. And last night -- excuse me, the night before last up in San Francisco actually in the valley I talked to a bunch of folks and that came up.

And, I said, guys, let me ask you a question. I said, tell me what the biggest impediment you have -- assuming we were perfect, from your perspective, I said, what's your biggest impediment? And this one CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world said to me -- he said, well, it's having to respond to Wall Street's demand as to what progress we're making on a quarter to quarter basis. It makes it incredibly difficult to plan 10 and 12 years out, because the return on my investment and some of the things I would like to do that I know need to be done will not show any return for four to six to eight quarters, and then modest returns. But the payoff is gigantic if I make the investment.

Well, it's the same thing with transportation and infrastructure -- the same exact thing. The payoff is gigantic, but the near term -- it's a little bit like renewable energy. What's the answer you're getting -- you guys have been ahead of the rest of the country. But what's the answer you get out there? Well, wait a minute, Biden. You continue to push solar or you continue to push wind. Solar is 15 cents a megawatt. I can do it with coal for 3 cents a megawatt.

Well, guess what, if you build enough solar it will be 3 cents a megawatt. And the increase in breakthroughs in technology that have occurred just in solar in the last five years are exponential the way they're occurring. So if you make the measure of whether or not you're going to invest and whether or not there's an immediate return on the investment or a comparable that is equal to or less than the alternative -- whether it's transportation or energy or whatever it is -- you're never, never, never going to grow. And we've never done that as a nation.

And the irony is every Republican President before these guys were not anti-business, they were pro-business in the way we're pro-business. They're the anti-business guys, for real. I'm not playing a game. They're the anti-business guys in the sense that there's -- no business is big enough, no business is powerful enough to put in a new grid nationwide. It's not within the capacity of any single business to do that.

So what have we always done? It has been the seed money of the government that's promoted them to get into it, begin to tie -- make the connections. And that's what we've done -- look, in the middle of the Civil War, we had a guy named Lincoln who decided to take -- give a $16,000 Treasury note for every mile of new railroad laid across the United States to private companies.

He could have cared less about what was going on in the Dakotas and Montana and Idaho and Washington state. They had nothing to do with the Civil War from his perspective, as a practical matter. That was not where it was going to be won or lost -- that he was in the middle of the war, doing that?

In the middle of his term, what did old Dwight Eisenhower do? He came up with a thing called ARPA. He invested a lot of money in it because he knew we had to have breakthrough kind of research done, and it was not merely the R&D for application. It was just pure exploration. What happened? We came up with a thing called ARPANET. ARPANET is the Internet. No company would have ever expended that front-end money to be able to get there now.

Now, obviously private industry has moved it well beyond anything the government could possibly do or should have done, but it was that seed money.

I can give you scores of examples, and that's where it is in terms of transportation, infrastructure and energy. And, guys, absolutely last statement. Can you imagine us being able to maintain our place in the world in the 21st century with the same education policy, with the same energy policy that we have today? It virtually will be impossible -- impossible.

So now is the time to make these moves. I think the country is ready, and I think in large part the ready is because not so that we have been as good as we could be in explaining our position and what we've done, and we could get better at it, and we will get better. But I think the thing that's helped us the most is the contrast in making them understand where we are when they know full well where the other team is.

The President is always quoting me these days, but it's not really my quote. I want to make it clear. I always attribute -- I had experience with that once. (Laughter.)

I tell the story about Kevin White, the former mayor of Boston, who was a phenom in 1970. He was elected, and he was the new -- he was like John Lindsay was in 1966 in New York and what Barack Obama in 2008. He was the new phenom. And running for reelection, he was in trouble.

And I was up in Boston as a 30-year-old senator, and Ted Kennedy had asked me to speak to the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and I couldn't believe I was -- Ted Kennedy was asking me to speak at -- at a function. I was scared to death. And I remember shaving in the Copley Hotel, and