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THE WHITE HOUSE

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


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
AT A CAMPAIGN EVENT

Culinary Academy of Las Vegas Events Center
Las Vegas, Nevada


11:42 A.M. PDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hey, everybody. How are you? (Applause.) Thank you. I'm just wild about Harry. (Applause.) Harry is the kind of guy in my neighborhood, where I grew up -- this is no malarkey -- (laughter) -- where I grew up, man, when you thought you may have to go into the next neighborhood and there might be a fight, you wanted Harry with you. (Laughter.) I tell you what, I never had Harry's hands. He had that straight left that was pretty good. (Laughter.) I had those soft hands to catch a football, which I thought was going to lead me to be a great college football player.

I went to the University of Delaware to play college football. I hung out on the freshman team, returned punts -- we were just sort of practice for the varsity -- (laughter) -- and my mother never wanted me to play, and she said, Joe, I don't care what your hands are, you've got a 1.98, you're on academic probation -- you're not playing anything. (Laughter.) And back out one more time.

But I tell you what, Harry, I -- if I had to be remembered for anything, although it wouldn't be true, I'd rather be thought of as a great athlete but I never made it. (Laughter.) But thank you. And Landra, thank you for sticking with Harry all these years. As we Roman Catholics, no purgatory for you kid; straight to heaven. Straight to heaven. (Laughter.)

My mom used to say --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: My turn to speak. You can have the mic next. (Laughter and applause.) I'm only kidding. I know -- I'm serious.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) So that's very nice. I do have a bad habit of saying what I think. (Laughter.) I never say anything I don't think. Problem is I sometimes say all that I think. (Laughter.)

But, look, I can't tell you how, although I'm almost 3,000 miles away from home, I'm home. I'm in a union hall -- I'm home. (Applause.)

I'd like, with your permission, to ask three of my friends to come out here who I am running with. We're running together: Congresswoman Dina Titus -- (applause) -- good to see you. Also, our next senator from the state of Nevada -- Shelley Berkley is here. (Applause.) We need this woman in the Senate to keep this man Majority Leader. (Applause.) And State Senator Steven Horsford, our next congressman. Steve, come on out here. (Applause.) This is a team. And I was -- earlier this morning I was with John Ashagara. John and I spent some time together this morning. He is out campaigning. We did a little campaigning together ourselves this morning and he is not here, but he's also a great candidate. You've got a really fine, fine ticket.

Folks, before I get started I want to remind you all that which you already know, because you've been registering people, that voting starts in Nevada on Saturday. (Applause.) So don't wait until Election Day to have your voice heard. Don't wait.

Folks, you've now had three debates -- two Presidential Debates and one Vice Presidential Debate. (Applause.) And I think one thing has come across clearly to the American people: We have fundamentally different views on how to move this country forward, and a fundamentally different set of values.

Folks, the differences are profound. On foreign policy, on Afghanistan, I made it clear the President and I will end this war in 2015, period. End it and period. (Applause.) We have trained 315,000 Afghanis. Our job will be done. It's their responsibility to take care of their country in 2014. (Applause.)

Now, Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, they made it clear they're willing to stay. When asked, would they guarantee to leave in 2014, they said maybe -- it depends. It depends on conditions on the ground. Like everything with them, it depends. It depends on the day. It depends on where they are. It depends on who they're talking to. Governor Romney has changed his position on so many things you just never know.

Another place where our differences -- our values could not be more stark are where Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, how they view women's rights.

Look, I want to be -- make no mistake about this. I've made this, and so has Barack, abundantly clear our whole careers: I am absolutely -- we are absolutely positive -- so make no mistake -- absolutely, positively committed to making sure that my daughter, his daughters, and my four granddaughters have every single right my sons have and every single opportunity my grandson has, without exception. (Applause.) Without exception -- there is no exception.

You heard the debates. Romney and Ryan made it very clear that they're willing to impose their private views on the American public and American women. It's clear they don't believe in protecting equal access to health care. On women's health, they want to turn the power back to the insurance companies, allow them to continue to charge you women 50 percent more than men are charged for the same policy, allowing them to continue to label pregnancy a preexisting condition.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not making that up. That sounds like it's so bizarre, you may -- that's true. They made it very clear: They don't believe a woman has a right to control her own body. We disagree. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, but now they're saying they're willing to make an exception in the cases of incest and rape. But Congressman Ryan, as a leader in the House, even blocked those exceptions from being put into law. These guys pledged they would defund Planned Parenthood, which so many women rely on for basic health needs -- just basic health needs.

And after these debates, do you have any doubt who they will likely appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States? How much chance do you think Roe v. Wade will survive after four years of a Romney Supreme Court? On Tuesday, when Governor Romney was asked a direct question in the debate about equal pay for women, he started out by talking about binders. Binders. (Laughter.) Binders full of qualified women's names. (Laughter.) The idea he'd have to go ask somebody to put together a binder is unusual. (Laughter.) And by the way, he never did answer the question on equal pay. Never answered it. (Applause.)

But that shouldn't surprise you -- that shouldn't surprise you coming from a man who, according to his senior advisor, after the debate, said he wasn't even for the Lilly Ledbetter Act. An act that, I might point out, Congressman Ryan voted against. Talk about being out of touch. Whoa.

Let me tell you another area where I think these guys are so far out of touch with the American people -- it's on immigration. It's not only -- look, they're not only out of touch -- and I want you to listen to this please. They're not only out of touch with the Hispanic community; he's out of touch with the vast majority of the American people.

Although the American people may not calculate it in numbers -- the American people don't know the precise numbers, but they do know something incredible is happening in this country: 16.5 percent of all the students on a college campus as I speak are Hispanic. In public schools, grades K through 12, 25 percent of all those students are Hispanic.

Ladies and gentlemen, and when they -- when the American people look at these numbers, they see what we see: great promise for America, great opportunity. And so I've got to tell you, I was not only proud of my President, but I was even more proud of the American people because they thoroughly, overwhelmingly supported the action taken by the President when he lifted the cloud of deportation off of 1 million kids. (Applause.) These children brought here through no fault of their own -- these kids didn't choose to come to America, but they did right by America and it's time America does right by them. (Applause.)

Look, the President had to act because the Republicans would not act on the DREAM Act. They would not let it pass, an act that Romney said were it to have passed and he were President, he would veto it. His answer on immigration, astounding: self-deportation. (Laughter.) Is he serious? Is he serious? Talk about being out of touch.

And now, it's not just these core issues, now it's fascinating to watch, Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan in the last -- since their convention are literally abandoning the core organizing principles of the new Republican Party. I mean it sincerely, the new right -- the new right. Remember why Ryan was chosen? My colleagues can tell you. He was chosen because he was the -- and he is a smart guy -- that's not -- that's a serious point -- he was considered the smart guy in the House who came up with how they're going to go out and fundamentally change the social contract because that's what conservatives have been arguing all along -- whether it's in education, or Medicare, whatever. They've been arguing that all along. So that's why he was picked. That's why he was picked.

The second thing that they base this entire rationale for this new Republican Party -- and this is not your father's Republican Party. This is not even Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party. (Laughter.) No, it's not. The second piece of this, the second pillar was these $5 trillion in tax cuts and these cuts to vital programs. And all of a sudden -- all of a sudden, Romney claims he does not have a $5 trillion tax cut. (Laughter.)

Ryan told me they don't have a $5 trillion tax cut. All of a sudden Ryan says -- and I think I'm paraphrasing because the press are here. I want to make sure I don't -- I think this is the quote, but I'm not 100 percent sure. (Laughter.) I know but I'm accurately paraphrasing. When he was on one of the shows, they said, well, what about the Ryan budget cuts? He said, we don't cut the budget. He said, we just slow the growth. You know Ryan saying his budget doesn't eviscerate Medicare and education is like Romney going in an unemployment line and saying to the guy, look, I didn't outsource your job, I off-shored your job. (Laughter and applause.)

Do you remember -- do you all remember when I was about -- before the Republican Convention, I was pointing when The Washington Post said that running Bain, that Bain Capital, that Romney was a pioneer in outsourcing. And then I pointed out -- well, the response was -- "the counterattack" on me was, the Vice President just -- from his campaign -- the Vice President just doesn't understand. There is a real difference between outsourcing and off-shoring. (Laughter.) Whoa, tell that to the guy who doesn't have a job. (Laughter.)

As the President said the day after the debate, Romney's plan were awful sketchy. Sketchy. Well, folks, I don't they were just sketchy, I think they were Etch-a-sketchy. (Laughter and applause.) They were Etch-a-sketchy.

You know, folks, when the country is facing dilemmas and opportunity like the ones we inherited, you'd think it would be like in the past -- people would stand up and tell you what they believed in, tell you what they were for and why they were for it, and tell you why they were going to fight for that. That's totally legitimate. I don't denigrate their ideas. I just am having trouble now figuring out what they are. (Laughter.) Because of all a sudden they're not what they've been talking about -- for real.

Look, it's time to stop hiding the ball -- to use a football metaphor. Now, after the policies they supported, which caused the Great Recession, that caused a crushing blow to the middle class, they say now they're for the middle class. You know the most astonishing thing I found out about their convention; they stood up there and they discovered the middle class. (Laughter.) It was like, my God, there's a middle class. They talked more about the middle class in that convention and since then than they have in the previous I don't know how many years.

My dad used to have an expression -- and Harry knew my dad. I was privileged to be able to introduce my dad to Harry. My dad was a real gentleman, and my dad used to have an expression. When someone would come up to him and say, Joe -- his name was Joe -- Joe, let me tell you what I value. My dad would look back and say, Charlie, don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, I will tell you what you value. (Laughter and applause.) Show me your budget, I will tell you what you value.

So let's take a look. Let's take a look at their budget -- because we know their budget. We know their budget. They've already passed it through the Republican House, stopped by Harry Reid in the Senate, but they already passed it. (Applause.) They've already voted on it. They've already laid it out, the one they're running against -- they've laid it out. And let me tell you what it does on taxes -- they want to maintain the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent.

Let's get this straight what that means. And, by the way, wealthy people are just as patriotic as poor folks. They're not even asking for these extensions. These tax cuts are supposed to expire on January 1. But let's take a look at what that tax cut does. $800 billion, if you extend the top tax cut, goes to people who make a minimum of $1 million a year. Now, hear -- this is the God's truth -- I've been saying this, you've never heard anybody contradict it. The facts are the facts. They're stubborn things. One hundred and twenty thousand families if we continue the top tax bracket cut -- top 2 percent -- 120,000 families will continue to get $500 billion -- one-half trillion dollars -- additional tax cuts in the next 10 years.

AUDIENCE: Wow.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And if you add in the Romney tax cut, the $5 trillion one, they get an additional $250,000-a-year tax cut.

Now, no wonder they don't want to talk about it anymore. No, I'm being serious. They won't tell you how they're going to pay for these tax cuts -- just like before they didn't pay for it. One of the reasons we doubled the -- they doubled the budget in the Bush years is they added two wars on a credit card, a prescription drug benefit on a credit card -- and, Harry, remember, I offered legislation to pay for them -- and a trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthy on top of the middle-class tax cut we were pushing.

Now, the reason they're not going to tell you about this is because, as the experts across the board point out, if this tax cut of theirs goes through, the average middle-class families with a child will pay $2,000 a year more in taxes.

On Medicare, they've already laid out their plan -- they're going to turn it into a voucher system. Anyone who will collect that voucher, according to every expert, will end up having to pay tens of thousands of dollars more during the lifetime of Medicare out of their pockets. And they can't afford it.

They say they want to protect Medicaid, yet they cut $800 billion, send it back to the states which all projections show -- they've already voted for this -- knock 19 million people off of Medicaid, including 1 million seniors. How are they going to be able to stay in those nursing homes? And I'm not just talking about poor folks, I'm talking about middle-class folks, where we all come from. In many states, you've got to sell every asset you have before you qualify for Medicare to get into nursing homes. Where are they going to go?

It includes tens of thousands of middle-class families who have children with disabilities like autism and Down syndrome -- they're gone. They're gone.

It decimates education, eliminates help for middle-class families to get their kids to college with a $250 tax credit. It cuts Pell grants for working-class families who we've increased from 6 million to 9 million in college now just because we did one thing with Harry's leadership -- we stopped paying the banks $60 billion over 10 years. (Applause.) That's what we did.

Look, folks, people think this is harsh, what I'm about to say, but it's just factual -- in my view, these guys -- each of these guys, including the candidates, signed a pledge to a guy named Grover Norquist --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, really, this is pretty amazing in a country this big and this powerful -- all those Republicans signed a pledge saying, we will not -- we will not ask one thin dime more from millionaires. We promise you, we will not in any way raise revenue from them. We will not raise taxes at all on anybody, period.

Instead of signing a pledge to Grover Norquist, they should sign a pledge to the middle class. (Applause.) They should sign a pledge that says, we're going to level the playing field. (Applause.) We're going to give you a fair shot again. That's all the people in your neighborhood want. (Applause.) They're not asking for anything. They just want a fair shot, a level playing field.

And that's exactly what the President and I are going to do on education. We're going to continue to improve education and fund it, maintaining tax cuts for college education, Pell grants -- recruiting a hundred thousand new math and science teachers so we have the most advanced students in the world. (Applause.) Insisting on higher standards for everyone involved in education -- students, teachers, administrators -- because we believe, as my mother used to say, children tend to become that which you expect from them. And we expect a lot from all of our children. (Applause.)

Second, on jobs, we're going to create a million new manufacturing jobs by helping businesses double their exports and give tax breaks to companies that stay here, come home here and don't go abroad. (Applause.)

Romney and Ryan have a new substantive tax proposal. It's called a territorial tax. It means that. Find the cheapest tax haven in the world, whatever country you want to pick. Go build your factory there. Hire cheap labor, the Bain way. And then, whatever profit you make, you can keep -- you can bring it home and never have to pay a penny on it. No new jobs created here. No, this is real.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That will create 800,000 jobs -- all of them abroad, all of them. Remember when Romney said in the convention speech the first thing I'm going to do is take a jobs tour. Well, for him it's going to have to be a foreign trip. (Applause.)

Look, we're going to train 2 million Americans for the job skills they need over the next three years through our community colleges. There are 600,000 high-tech manufacturing jobs available right now in America without the skills to fill them. We're pairing up those companies with community colleges, filling that void.

Third, on energy, we are going to cut our oil imports in half, produce more American-made energy -- oil, clean coal and renewable energy -- biofuels, wind, solar. (Applause.) And we're going to continue to engage in conservation. We have doubled the fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, which they opposed, which will save $1.7 trillion at the pump for the American people and save 12 billion gallons of oil. (Applause.)

Fourth, on taxes, we're going to continue to cut taxes for the middle class. We're going to ask the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Nothing strange about that. That's how America was built.

And, lastly, we're going to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion. We already reduced it a trillion dollars. Well, we're going to ask the wealthy to pay more. We're going to end the war in Afghanistan, saving over $815 billion over the next 10 years. And we're going to take that money and reduce the deficit and invest in home -- bridges, school, roads. (Applause.)

Look, folks, this is all about --

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

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's all about one basic thing. It's all about expanding the middle class. There's no secret about this, man. When the middle class does well -- and you unions built the middle class -- (applause) -- when the middle class does well -- all kidding aside, I mean, this is just simple logic. When the middle class does well, we create a lot of millionaires. We make sure that people who have -- they're climbing to get into the middle class come up. It's the way in which -- it's the way in which to grow the country. It's how we've always done it.

But you know what it's mostly about now for the President and me? Because of what Ryan and Romney supported and voted for -- in the case of Ryan, the last -- the previous eight years, everything from shredding regulations on Wall Street and big banks and continue to hemorrhage tax cuts for the super wealthy. We were left with a catastrophe for the middle class. That's what produced the Great Recession.

Looks, folks, I love how they dismissively say -- and they're trying to be fair, I think -- they say, we admit that President Obama was left a difficult situation. Where in God's name do they think it came from? (Laughter.) No, no, really. Really. They act like that one day this Great Recession just fell out of the sky, plop, landed on our desk.

Look, how can you solve a problem if you don't acknowledge what caused the problem? How can you do that? (Applause.) And, ladies and gentlemen, what caused the problem is letting Wall Street write their own rules, turning over the keys to the kingdom to the banks -- let them write their own rules -- and these massive tax cuts. The last time we did that -- we've seen this movie before -- the last time we did that, it resulted in the slowest job growth since World War II. It doubled the national debt. And it left you, the American people, with a $16 trillion hole in your well.

No state has been hit any harder than yours on mortgage foreclosures. But all of you out there who didn't have any funny mortgages, all of you who never missed a mortgage payment, all of you who did it by the numbers, one day you woke up and you found out, because two folks on the block had foreclosed, all of a sudden -- you thought you had $250,000 equity in your home, and you found you had $50,000. The very thing you planned on to be able to borrow against to send your kid to school, the very thing you planned on to be able to have a decent retirement so you wouldn't have to rely upon your children -- you saw your pension plans be eviscerated.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're not going back to that.

AUDIENCE: No!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We're not going back to that. (Applause.)

Look, let me sum this up. Let me get out of your hair here by saying, look, folks, I've said it before, we have a fundamentally different vision, fundamentally different value set. And there's no place it is more starkly seen than in how Romney and Ryan view the American people. This is for real, now. I mean, we can use it as a campaign slogan, but think about what they really -- they're not bad men. They're decent men. They're good fathers; they're good husbands. But I don't understand how they believe -- and they do believe -- Ryan has written a book called, "The Young Guns," with two other fellows -- members of the House. No, these are the Republican leaders in the House.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Young guns with no bullets.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Unfortunately, the bullets are aimed at you. (Laughter.)

Here's what happened. These guys talk -- they use phrases like -- I've never heard them before from Republicans. Look, we are a culture of dependency that they divide the country. There was a speech that Congressman Ryan made in Washington to a group sponsored by the American Spectator that he -- where he talks about makers and takers -- we're made up of makers and takers. He said 30 percent of the American people are takers. And that famous -- sometimes it's what you do when you don't think people are watching that matters.

Well, Governor Romney didn't think people were watching when he said 47 percent of the people are unwilling -- and this is the part that bothered me the most -- I took offense to. Here's the phrase he used: They're unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. He actually believes that 47 -- but think about what they means. Think about what that means if you really believe half the country is unwilling to take responsibility.

Ladies and gentlemen, he went out -- he went on to say it's not my job to worry about those people. Well, folks, the American people should worry about them, because they do not understand the country, at least the one I live in. When they talk about that 47 percent, they were talking about my mom and dad who broke their neck their whole life, worked like hell. My mom and dad and many of you are part of that 82 percent of those 47 [percent]. Over 82 percent of them, they pay their payroll taxes, they pay their property tax, they pay at an effective rate higher than Romney pays his federal taxes. (Applause.)

They're also made up -- 10 percent of those people are seniors who have worked their whole life, paid for their Social Security, and now have nothing else to live on, so they're not paying taxes on it. They're the other 47 percent -- the rest of it.

And then, the remainder of those people -- this is factual -- the remainder of those people are disabled veterans and the 68,000 warriors we have in Afghanistan right now defending the United States of America. (Applause.) Because guess what? They're not paying any taxes on their income, nor should they pay any taxes on their income. (Applause.)

And, folks, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge it this time, which I try to do all the time. Having been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq over 20 times, my son having served a year in Iraq, I want to tell you something, man -- the sacrifices -- how many of you know someone who served in Iraq or [Afghanistan]? (Applause.) How many of you know someone who has been injured or lost in Iraq and [Afghanistan]? Well, let me tell you something, we owe -- we owe -- we owe these families more than we can ever pay them.

Ladies and gentlemen, so far -- when you're in the theater in Iraq or Afghanistan, the vets can tell you this if they're there, when the military talks about someone who has been killed, they refer to them as a Fallen Angel. And more than one occasion flying in and out of Iraq, I have had a colonel say to me, he does not need my permission: Permission to board a Fallen Angel, Mr. Vice President. Because they strap them in the center of that C-17 to take them home to a family waiting for them. It turns that C-17 from an aircraft to a cathedral, and those families -- those families have -- we can never repay them. There's 50,010 -- I check every single day the exact number -- 50,010 wounded, coming home.

Look, folks, we only have one truly sacred obligation. We have obligations to the elderly, to our children, to the environment. We only have one truly sacred obligation, and that's to equip those who we send to war and care for them when they come home from the war. (Applause.)

So, ladies and gentlemen, these guys and women, they represent the spirit of America. This generation, post-9/11 generation has done more than any generation. Over -- they've had over 2 million of them strap on those boots and walk across the sands and the deserts in Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan. They have stood up; they've been deployed more than once. They represent what the American people are about. They are who we are. That's the generation coming up. They are not takers, they are makers. They are the people who give. (Applause.)

The American people are so much better, so much stronger, so much more responsible than these guys give them credit for. I have never seen two candidates for high office more negative about the state of America, more negative about our prospects, and more negative about the responsibility the American people are willing to take.

All their talk about culture of dependency, American decline -- I've got news for them: We are not in decline. This is not a dependent nation. And I've got one more piece of news for my friends: It has never, never, never been a good bet to bet against the American people. (Applause.)

We are coming back. And with your help, we will come back. We will win. We win Nevada, we win the election.

God bless you all, and may God protect our troops. Go get 'em. Go get 'em.

END 12:16 P.M. PDT