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In a speech to the South Carolina Democratic Party, Vice President Joe Biden issued a warning to his Republican colleagues: It’s “never” been “a good bet to bet against the American people.”
“One of the things that bothers me most about the new Republican Party is how down on America they are, how down on our prospects they are, how they talk about how we’re getting clobbered, how they talk about things that have no relationship to reality. All in the name of making sure the very few at the top do very well,” Biden said in Columbia, S.C., on Friday night.
C-SPAN branded the speech as the kickoff of its Road to the White House 2016 coverage. South Carolina is an early primary state, and Biden’s address struck many of the same notes as his Campaign 2012 stump speeches.
“They’re not bad guys. They actually believe it. They actually believe if you free up completely somehow all this will tickle down. It never has. It never will. My Republican colleagues who talk about us being in decline, let me remind them, let me remind them, it’s never ever in the history of this country, been a good bet to bet against the American people.”
According to the Labor Department, nonfarm unemployment fell to 7.5 percent last month and nonfarm payrolls increased by 165,000 jobs. Biden painted a bright picture for U.S. as it competes with China’s economy.
“American workers, American entrepreneurs, American companies are more innovative, more imaginative than any country in the world including in China. How many times have you heard graduation speeches down here of someone standing up and saying, ‘since the mid-nineties, China produces six times as many engineers as we have.’ They do,” Biden told the crowd.
“Name me one product that they brought to the international market. Name me one innovative change they made. Why? Because in order to innovate, you have to challenge orthodoxy. You have to challenge what went before and you can’t do that in a country that doesn’t allow you to breathe free and speak openly.”
Blessing himself, Biden joked about the “fiscal cliff” agreement he negotiated with Senate Republicans earlier this year.
“I always have to be the bearer of bad news because I’m always asked at the end to negotiate these fiscal cliff deals,” Biden said.
“Well, the last one wasn’t a bad deal.”
The former Delaware senator praised the deal for raising taxes on the wealthy, which he claimed would lower the nation’s deficit by $600 billion.
He added that the tax hikes were not “a punishment.”
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