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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release October 22, 2012


REMARKS OF VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
AT A CAMPAIGN EVENT

J. Babe Stearn Community Center
Canton, Ohio


11:53 A.M. EDT


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hello, Canton, Ohio. (Applause.) Hello, hello, hello. (Applause.) Hey, you all --

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You all just met -- you all just met the love of my life and the life of my love, my daughter. My wife has pointed out, she has owned me since the moment she has been born. (Laughter.)

And to all you daughters who have similar relationships to your father, just remember, be gentle, you have them in the palm of your hand. (Laughter.) Just be gentle.

And, Governor, it's great, great to be here with you. (Applause.) I want to tell you what a difference a governor makes. Gov, you heard that gentleman over there yell, give them hell, Joe?

AUDIENCE: Well, I want to tell you, I'm reminded of Harry Truman's expression. When someone yelled that to him, he said, I'm not going to give them hell. I'm just going to tell them the truth, they're going to think it's hell. (Laughter and applause.) That was Harry Truman.

Doreen, thank you so very, very much. Doreen said as we were coming by, she said, this is an honor to be able to introduce you. It's an honor -- it's an honor to have a citizen like Doreen want to do this. No really. I mean you guys so underestimate the impact you have on those of us who run for office. I mean this sincerely. Ted can tell you. It's amazing to me. Ted and I talk about it. We marvel at the number of you who go so far out of your way to help us. And I just want to tell you from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you. Thank you for your support. (Applause.)

And by the way, in the neighborhood I come from, you want Ted Strickland on your side. This is one stand-up man. (Applause.) This is a stand-up guy. I got the feeling if someone jumped me as I was heading to my car, he'd jump in. (Laughter.)

Look, folks, it is great to be here in the J. Babe Stearn Center. I understand Babe Stearn's wife is here somewhere. I'm told.

MRS. STEARN: Right here.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's a pleasure to meet you. I hear wonderful things about you back there. Thank you. (Applause.) And your husband was quite a guy everybody tells me.

I only have one regret and that is that, as I was telling Ted, I wish I was around this weekend for the Bulldog-Tigers' game. (Applause.) And I'm not kidding. I had less than a stellar college football career, but I was a pretty good high school ballplayer. And I promise you, those of you from this area, you don't know it, but any high school that has a great program -- and the school I went to, we had an undefeated -- everybody, even back when I graduated, I'm serious, in the '60s -- I graduated in '65 [sic] from high school, everybody knew about this rivalry. I'm serious. Everybody in the country knows about it. (Applause.) You have produced some amazing, amazing ballplayers, man. I understand this is over a hundred years now this has been going on. What I want to know, in the off-season, you all still talk to one another?

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. No, no, no. (Laughter.) Well, let me tell you something, before I begin, I want to remind you of what Doreen already said, through a whole lot of hard work, early voting sites in Ohio will be open for extended hours. (Applause.)

And that means you can go in and vote any time between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. And the sooner you vote, the better the momentum. So, folks, go vote.

And, folks, the President will have his third debate tonight with Governor Romney. (Applause.) And of course, I had my one debate with Paul Ryan. (Applause.) I don't want to go home. (Laughter.)

Look, the one thing that's come across clearly to the American people is that the President and I Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, we have fundamentally different views on how to move this country forward. But equally as important, we have a fundamentally different value set in terms of how to base government. Ladies and gentlemen, and the differences are profound -- they're profound.

On foreign policy, as Ted mentioned, Afghanistan, the President and I have made it absolutely clear, we will leave Afghanistan in 2014, period. (Applause.) And the reason is through the great sacrifice of some in this room and my son, and many other people, we have already trained 315,000 Afghan military. They are in a position, and they will be fully capable of taking responsibility for their own country -- their own country. (Applause.)

Now, Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, they made it clear they're willing to stay if you watched our debate. They say that we can leave in 2014, maybe. They said, "It depends." Ladies and gentlemen, like everything with them, it depends. It depends. It depends on what day you find these guys. (Laughter.) No really. It depends.

Another place where the difference could not be more stark between the Governor and the President and the Congressman and me is on women's rights. (Applause.) Look, President Obama -- President Obama and I, and you should not have any illusions about this, if there's any one thing that we are absolutely convicted about -- we're absolutely committed that my daughter and his daughters, my four granddaughters have the exact same opportunities as my sons and my grandson -- the exact same opportunities. (Applause.) That's here. That's here. And that's here.

Romney and Ryan have made it very clear they don't believe a woman has a right to control their -- they're willing to impose their private -- their private views on the public. Look, one of -- on the issue of women's health, they want to turn the power back to the insurance companies.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, this is important. No, I don't need your boos, we need your support. It's important to tell other people this. We changed the law so that no longer will it be allowed for an insurance company to charge a woman 50 percent more than a man for the same insurance. (Applause.) No longer will they be able to. No longer will they be able to, as they do now, list pregnancy as a preexisting condition. They want to move it back and give the insurance companies back the responsibility.

And, folks, I haven't talked about what the Romney-appointed Supreme Court would look like. Just imagine.

AUDIENCE: No!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: So, folks, when Governor Romney was asked the direct question in the debate about equal pay for women, he started talking about binders. (Laughter and applause.) Whoa! Binders of qualified women that he learned were out there. (Laughter.) And in the process, he never did say whether or not women were entitled to equal pay for the same work as men. He never answered that.

But that shouldn't surprise you, coming from a man who, according to his senior advisor, wasn't even supportive of the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and Ryan voted against it. So, folks, talk about being out of touch. It's not just the Grand Cayman Islands [sic] and Swiss bank accounts and exporting everything to China. This guy is out of touch on most of the fundamental issues that -- (applause.) Americans moved beyond where these guys are.

And now they're even abandoning the central organizing principle of their party's agenda. All of a sudden, Romney claims that he doesn't have a $5 trillion tax cut. They've been running on this now for a year and a half.

AUDIENCE: Romnesia!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Now, the President has a new term for it, as you all said. What is it?

AUDIENCE: Romnesia!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Romnesia. I tell you, man. (Laughter.) And by the way, guess what. Guess what -- it's contagious. (Laughter.) Because all of a sudden, Ryan says that his budget, which already passed the House of Representatives, doesn't actually cut vital programs. They've got new terminology -- it slows their growth. (Laughter.) I would say it stunts their existence. (Applause.)

Ryan now saying that his budget doesn't decimate Medicare, eviscerate education. That's a little bit like Governor Romney standing in an unemployment line, looking at the guy who's waiting to pick up his unemployment check, and say, I didn't outsource your job, I just off-shored your job. (Laughter.) And by the way, folks, that's not just the punch line. That's how they went after me, that I didn't understand the difference between outsourcing and off-shoring. (Laughter.) Tell that to the guy or the woman who doesn't have a job.

When The Washington Post reported that Romney, at Bain Capital, was a pioneer in helping companies take work that was being done or could have continued to be done in the United States and shipping it overseas, a lot to China, his response was -- his response, Romney's response was to make a distinction between off-shoring and outsourcing.

Now, look, some of Romney's defenders -- some of Romney's defenders say that I'm being unfair, that his job wasn't -- at Bain wasn't about outsourcing or off-shoring, it was just about making a profit. That's what they're supposed to do. Okay. Well, when he became governor of Massachusetts, we saw it wasn't just his job, it was his philosophy. Now, this is hard to believe, folks, but this is a fact. Governor Romney, as governor of the state of Massachusetts --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: All right, Joe. (Laughter and applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I realize that maybe looked more symbolic than it is. (Laughter.) As a governor of Massachusetts -- as the governor of Massachusetts -- as the governor -- (laughter) -- as the governor of Massachusetts, his administration signed -- this is the truth -- it's almost like I'm making this up, but I'm not. (Laughter.) His administration as governor signed a $160,000 a month contract that paid people abroad to help poor people in Massachusetts get their food stamps. So when the Massachusetts legislature -- when he did that, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law saying you can't outsource our contracts overseas. You can't do that. And he vetoed it.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And now, for the cruel irony, an unemployed worker in Massachusetts calls the state help line. She calls to ask about her unemployment benefits. She ends up talking to someone in another country who has the job she could have been doing. And this is the guy who's running ads here nonstop in Ohio saying he's going to get tough on China? Come on, man. Come on, man, please, give us some credit.

And in his book -- he wrote a book called, "No Apologies." Well, in that book, he called the President of the United States a protectionist when the President stepped up and stopped the unfair surge of Chinese tires that were hurting American workers in international court. The President won that case. He saved 100,000 -- excuse me -- put 1,000 American workers to work, including a whole lot of Ohioans back to work. (Applause.)

But Romney, the guy who's going to get tough on China, just before he formally announced, wrote this book saying, no, no, that's bad for America, he's being a protectionist.

And one more thing. He and Ryan now have a new idea. They're not talking much about it anymore, but a new idea -- again, I'm not making it up. It's called -- they want to change the corporate taxes. It's called a territorial tax. What that means is if you're going to build a factory, whether it's a steel factory or you're making whatever, you go and you look around the world for the country that has the lowest tax rate for corporations. You go build your corporation there, and under this territorial tax law, the only tax that corporation will ever have to pay is what they pay in that country. And they can bring all the profits home, made by cheap labor -- the Bain way -- they can bring them all home and never have to pay any American taxes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Malarkey! (Laughter.)

Now, here's the deal. By the way, that's more than malarkey. That's deadly. And here's why it is. It is pointed out that that will create 800,000 new jobs -- all of them abroad. And this is a guy who's running ads telling you how he's going to get tough on China?
And as the President said the day after the debate with Governor Romney, he said Governor Romney's plans are sketchy. (Laughter.) Now, look, as Vice President, it's not my job nor is it I'm inclined to correct the President, but in this case I am. His plans aren't sketchy, they're Etch-a-sketchy. (Laughter.) They're like shaking that little tablet out there. (Applause.) It's underway, guys. We are seeing the remaking of Mitt Romney right before our eyes.

Folks, the stakes in this country are too high, too important. It's time for people to stand up and say what they believe in. Elections for President are primarily about character. And I'm telling you, my guy has got character. (Applause.) This guy has courage in his soul, compassion in his heart, and he's got steel in his spine. (Applause.) There's not a day that's gone by in the last four years that I haven't been grateful that Barack Obama is our President. (Applause.)

I've watched him. It's his courage -- his courage to make a tough call, to say what he means, and does do what he says that make a difference.

The best I can say about our opponents is they have, as we Roman Catholics say, they've sort of had an epiphany. (Laughter.) We've had a conversion. Somehow, right after their convention, they discovered the middle class. (Laughter.) There is a middle class, America. And now they say they value the middle class and have the same values as the middle class.

Well, my dad used to have an expression -- when someone would go up and -- my dad's name was Joe, and say, Joe, let me tell you what I value. My dad would look at them and say, Charlie, don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget -- I will tell you what you value. (Applause.) Show me your budget.

So let's take a look at their budget. Let's look at what they value. On taxes, Romney wants to maintain the Bush tax cuts for the rich. That's $800 billion more over the next 10 years for people making a minimum of $1 million. That's $500 billion going to 120,000 families. Ladies and gentlemen, and they talk about our debt, they talk about our problems. How do you justify that? And on top of that, Romney has been running on a $5 trillion tax cut, which would give another $250,000 a year to those same 120,000 families. And this guy says he cares about the middle class?

He also says, when asked how he's going to pay for it, he says it's revenue neutral. That's Washington speak for I don't know. (Laughter and applause.) But when asked how he's going to pay for it, he won't tell you how. Why? Because the experts point out there aren't enough loopholes in the law to pay for it. He can't name one. Remember when I asked Ryan? Remember when he was asked? Name me one loophole you'll close, Congressman, Governor? Not one. Not one.

There is one loophole they did speak to. They said there's one they would not close. That's the loophole that allows Mitt Romney to pay 14 percent on $20 million in income.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: By the way, if this weren't so serious, you'd think I was making it up, but it's exactly what they said. Outside experts have pointed out that he's going to have to pay for this $5 trillion tax cut by raising taxes on middle-class families with children $2,000 a year. How can you justify that? How can you justify that?

Ladies and gentlemen, on Medicare, he's going to turn it into a voucher system, which is going to --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- which is going to cost seniors, according to outside experts, tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket over the lifetime for their Medicare. He slashes Medicaid, decimates education.

Look, instead of signing pledges to a right-wing guy names Grover Norquist to cut taxes for the wealthy, they should be signing a pledge to the middle-class people of America -- (applause) -- saying we will not raise your taxes, saying we will level the playing field, saying we're going to give you a fair shot again. That's the pledge they should be signing, and that's the pledge we have signed. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Ladies and gentlemen, here's how we're going to keep that pledge. On education, we're going to continue to improve and fund education because it's the foundation upon which we will remain the dominant economic power in the 21st century. (Applause.) My wife has an expression -- she's a full-time teacher -- says any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us. We must be number one in the world. (Applause.)

That's why we're going to maintain that $2,500-a-year tax cut credit that a lot of you middle-class families use to keep your kids in school; expand Pell grants which we have now 9 million kids in school from working-class families. (Applause.) And 100,000 new math and science teachers to keep us the most aggressive nation in the world. (Applause.)

Second, on jobs, we're going to continue to rebuild the manufacturing base in America. That's why we rescued the automobile industry -- (applause) -- right here, right in Ohio. That means 100,000 jobs directly supported by that industry. And steel in coming back -- (applause) -- here in Canton, and Lorain and Youngstown. (Applause.) Seriously. Where is written that we can't once again be the number-one steel producer in the world? Where is that written? (Applause.)

Look, we're going to continue this momentum by creating a million new manufacturing jobs and help business double their exports? How? Exports how? Tax breaks to companies that come home -- not to those that go abroad. (Applause.)

We're going to train for our community college system 2 million Americans with jobs skills over the next three years, locking up and tying up business and community college, work that has to be done, making sure that students can walk out and into a job, a decent-paying job.

On energy, we're going to continue to cut our oil imports, as we already have. We're going to cut them in half and produce more American-made energy -- oil, clean coal, natural gas right here in Ohio -- (applause) -- which alone will create 600,000 new jobs over the next decade. (Applause.) Renewable resources -- wind, solar, biofuel, conservation -- we've doubled fuel efficiency for cars and trucks. It's going to save $1.7 trillion for you at the gas pump and $12 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of that happening.

Ladies and gentlemen, and we're working on conversion so that more cars, trucks, and busses can run on natural gas, helping the environment and saving people hundreds of billions of dollars over time. (Applause.)

Look folks, and on taxes, we know how to grow the economy. You never grow it from the top down. It grows from the middle out. (Applause.) And by the way, when the middle class is doing well, everybody does well. The poor have a way up. We create a lot of millionaires in the process, and the wealthy do very well as well. That's why we cut middle-class taxes 3,600 bucks the first year. That's why we cut small business taxes 18 times. And we're going to insist on keeping the tuition tax credit, continue to expand the childcare tax credit for working families. (Applause.) And we are going to make permanent the middle-class tax cut that they're holding hostage. (Applause.)

But folks, we've already reduced the long-term debt -- a trillion dollars over the next ten years and we're going to do another $3 trillion. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to ask the wealthy, yes, to pay a little bit more. (Applause.)

Look, and just as we did in Iraq, we will end the war in Afghanistan, saving over $800 billion over the next 10 years. (Applause.) We're going to use that to help pay down the debt, and we're going to begin to build roads here in America, bridges here in America, schools here in America. Invest in America. (Applause.)

And folks, on housing, we're going to push for people to be able to modify and refinance their mortgage. There are 14 million of you, tens of thousands here in Ohio, who are paying at over 6 percent because they find their mortgage -- they have never missed a mortgage payment -- all of a sudden, they're upside down in their mortgages because of what's happened in the economy. If we just allow them to refinance at the new rates, they can save over $3,000 a month [sic]. Why don't they get out of the way? And we can do that without any taxpayer money. By a small fee in the largest banks we bailed out, that's all it takes. We will get this done. (Applause.)

Folks, it's all about expanding the middle class. It's all about giving peace of mind to families who have been crushed by the recession. My dad used to have an expression after he had to move from Scranton to Wilmington to look for work, and was gone for about a year before he could take us down. And from the time that occurred, I remember every one of my family members can tell you my dad had an expression. He used to say, Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect. It's about peace of mind -- knowing you can turn to your child and say, Honey, it's going to be okay. That's what, at the end of the day, this is all about.

Romney's plan is so different. It's the same old thing. Massive tax cut to the wealthy; shredding regulations, letting Wall Street gamble with your money again and banks write their own rules. Folks, folks, we've seen that movie before and we know how it ends. It ended in a catastrophe for the middle class, and we're not going to go back.

As I said before, we have a fundamentally different vision. Unlike Romney and Ryan, we really do not see the American people in terms of makers and takers, as they describe them. But Romney does. You heard his 47 percent comment. The thing that offended me most about it was -- he talked about you all not being prepared, us not being prepared, 47 percent of the American people not being prepared to take personal responsibility. He said it's not my job to worry about them.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's all being middle class is about -- taking personal responsibility. The neighborhoods I grew up in, in Scranton and Claymont and Mayfield, it's all about personal responsibility. I really mean it. He's talking about my mom and dad, who busted their necks their whole life. There are millions of working people paying payroll taxes at a higher rate of their total tax -- than their total tax burden in counting state and city and all the rest than Romney pays on his federal income tax.

And these guys are the takers? These are the elderly who worked their whole life and paid for their Social Security, and now aren't paying taxes on that Social Security. These are 68,000 warriors serving right now in the hills of Afghanistan who aren't paying any income tax on their salary, nor should they be paying any income tax on their salary. (Applause.)

Look, folks, how many of you have served in the military or know someone who's served in Afghanistan or Iraq? (Applause.) Well, we owe all of you an incredible debt of gratitude. Our warriors have already paid an incredible, heavy price. Every morning, as Ted knows from traveling with me, I contact the Pentagon to get the latest numbers of those who are killed and injured. The most recent validated numbers from the Pentagon are there were 6,500 what they call in theater -- I've been to Afghanistan and Iraq 20 times -- they refer to them as Fallen Angels. Six thousand five hundred fallen angels; over 50,010, to be precise, wounded; over 17,000 with wounds that will require -- multiple wounds requiring care the rest of their lives. We owe them and their families an overwhelming debt.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you should understand about Barack and me: When it gets down to time, if there's a budget crunch, and who we take care of, we only have one truly sacred obligation. We have a lot of obligations. The only truly sacred obligation we have is to prepare those we send into harm's way, and care for those who come home from war. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the point I want to make to you all is pretty simple. These families are literally the spine of America, and the American people -- here in Canton, in my hometown, all across America -- they are so much better, so much stronger, take so much more responsibility than these guys give them credit for. I've never seen two candidates for the highest office in the land who are more negative about the state of the country, more negative about our prospects for the future, and more negative on the willingness of the American people to do whatever it takes to make it right.

All this talk they have about this culture of dependency, about America being in decline -- honest to God, I don't recognize the country they're talking about. America is so much better positioned than any nation in the world to lead the 21st century. America is coming back -- 31 straight months of private -- (applause) -- 5.2 million jobs. (Applause.) They say -- when you tell them that they say America is in decline. We went from losing 800,000 jobs a month when we took office to creating an average of 167,000 jobs a month for 30 months in a row. And they still say America is in decline.

We brought the unemployment rate down from 10 percent to below 8 percent, yet they say unemployment isn't declining; they say America is declining. Oil production is the highest in 14 years. We're less dependent on foreign oil than any time in 20 years, yet they say America is in decline.

Housing starts are at their highest levels since 2008 -- instead of saying that's a good sign, they say America is in decline. And when we brought our plan to reduce mortgage payments, they said we were being unfair to banks. (Laughter.)

Ladies and gentlemen, you know as -- this is preaching to the choir. America is not in decline. Here's what it is: Romney and Ryan are in denial. (Applause.)

Folks, you know as well as I do there's no quit in America. There is simply no quit in America. (Applause.) And America is coming back. The American people will not go back. The American people only know one way: forward. (Applause.) And I've got news for these guys. I've got news for them. It's never, ever, ever been a good bet to bet against the American people. (Applause.)

Folks, we need you. Together we can win Ohio. (Applause.) And when we win Ohio, we win this election. (Applause.)

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

END 12:25 P.M. EDT