His attack on Ryan's Medicare plan was one of the strongest points in the evening. Unlike his boss he brought up the infamous 47 percent remark [in which Mitt Romney asserted that 47% of the American public accepted entitlements from the federal government in excess of their taxes] and pointed out that not only were his Mom and Dad in the 47%, so were the soldiers in Afghanistan (soldiers in combat don't pay income taxes.)
RYAN: I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith.
BIDEN: My religion defines who I am. And I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position that life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and--I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman. I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women can't control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court--I'm not going to interfere with that.
BIDEN: No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including any hospital--none has to refer contraception. None has to pay for contraception. None has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact.
RYAN: If they agree with you, then why would they keep suing you? It's a distinction without a difference.
RYAN: We don't think that unelected judges should make this decision; that people, through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process, should make this determination.
BIDEN: The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That's how close Roe v. Wade is. Just ask yourself: With Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for Mr. Romney, who do you think he's likely to appoint? Do you think he's likely to appoint someone far right, that would outlaw abortion? I suspect that would happen. I guarantee you that will not happen [with Obama]. We picked people who are open-minded. They've been good justices.
RYAN: Was there a litmus test on them?
BIDEN: There was no litmus test. We picked people who had an open mind, did not come with an agenda.
BIDEN: Go on our website: [Ryan] sent me two letters saying, "Can you send me some stimulus money for companies here in the state of Wisconsin?" We sent millions of dollars.
Q: You did ask for stimulus money, correct?
RYAN: On two occasions, we advocated for constituents who were applying for grants. That's what we do for all constituents.
BIDEN: I love that. This is such a bad program, and he writes me a letter saying it will create growth and jobs. His words. That program was investigated and Congress said it was a model: less than 4/10 of 1% waste or fraud in the program. And all this talk about cronyism--they investigated & did not find one single piece of evidence. It was a good idea. This stopped us from going off the cliff. It set the conditions to be able to grow again. 40% of those green jobs didn't go under. It's a better batting average than investment bankers have.
[Ryan] says that 30% of the American people are takers. Romney points out, 47% of the people won't take responsibility. He's talking about my mother and father. And he's talking about the places I grew up in, my neighbors in Scranton and Claymont. He's talking about the people that have built this country. All they're looking for is an even shot. When they've been given the shot, they've done it. Whenever you level the playing field, they've been able to move.
And they want a little bit of peace of mind. And the president and I are not going to rest until that playing field is leveled, they in fact have a clear shot and they have peace of mind, until they can turn to their kid and say with a degree of confidence, "Honey, it's going to be OK." That's what this is all about.
RYAN: Give younger people, when they become Medicare-eligible, guaranteed coverage options that you can't be denied, including traditional Medicare. Choose your plan, and then Medicare subsidizes your premiums.
BIDEN: It's a voucher. Now they got a new plan: "Trust me, it's not going to cost you any more." Folks, follow your instincts on this one. What we did is we saved $716 billion and applied it to Medicare. We cut the cost of Medicare. We stopped overpaying insurance companies. And it extends the life of Medicare to 2024. They want to wipe this all out. It also gave more benefits. Any senior out there, ask yourself: Do you have more benefits today? You do. If you're near the doughnut hole, you have $600 more to help your prescription drug costs. You get wellness visits without copays. They wipe all of this out, and Medicare becomes insolvent in 2016.
RYAN: And it would deny seniors choices.
BIDEN: All you seniors out there, have you been denied choices? Have you lost Medicare Advantage?
RYAN: Because it's working well right now.
BIDEN: Because we changed the law!
Q: Why not very slowly raise the Medicare eligibility age by two years, as Congressman Ryan suggests?
BIDEN: I was there when we did that with Social Security, in 1983. We made the system solvent to 2033. We will not, though, be part of any voucher [that says] when you're 65, go out there, shop for the best insurance you can get; you're out of Medicare. This voucher will not keep pace with health care costs, because if it did keep pace with health care costs, there would be no savings.
RYAN: A voucher is you go to your mailbox, get a check and buy something. Nobody's proposing that.
RYAN: It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn't we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi?
BIDEN: With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. The congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for.
Q: What were you first told about the attack? Why were people talking about protests?
BIDEN: Because that's exactly what we were told by the intelligence community. You know, usually when there's a crisis, we pull together as a nation. But even before we knew what happened to the ambassador, the governor was holding a press conference. That's not presidential leadership.
RYAN: Let's not forget that they came in with one-party control. When Barack Obama was elected, his party controlled everything. They had the ability to do everything of their choosing, and look at where we are right now. They passed a stimulus, the idea that we could borrow $831 billion, spend it on all these special interest groups and that it would work out just fine, that unemployment would never get to 8 percent. It went up above 8 percent for 43 months.
RYAN: You don't cut defense by a trillion dollars.
BIDEN: Who's cutting it by a trillion?
RYAN: We're going to cut 80,000 soldiers, 20,000 Marines, 120 cargo planes. We're going to push the Joint Strike Fighter out. We're cutting missile defense. If these cuts go through, our Navy will be the smallest it has been since before World War I. This invites weakness.
BIDEN: Look, we don't cut it. The military says, we need a smaller, leaner Army. We need more special forces. We don't need more M1 tanks. What we need is more UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called "drones"]. That was the decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended to us and agreed to by the president.
BIDEN: I don't know how long it will take. We can and we will get it under 6%. Let's look at where we were when we came to office. The economy was in free fall. The Great Recession hit. Nine million people lost their job, $1.6 trillion in wealth lost in equity in your homes & in retirement accounts. We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. Romney said, no, let Detroit go bankrupt. We moved in and helped people refinance their homes. Governor Romney said, no, let foreclosures hit the bottom. But it shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says 47% of the American people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives. [Rep. Ryan] recently said 30% of the American people are takers. These people are my mom and dad, the people I grew up with, my neighbors. They pay more effective tax than Governor Romney pays in his federal income tax
BIDEN: We will not privatize it. If we had listened to Romney and the congressman during the Bush years, imagine where all those seniors would be now if their money had been in the market. Their ideas are old, and their ideas are bad.
BIDEN: The middle class will pay less, and people making a million dollars or more will begin to contribute slightly more. Let me give you one concrete example: the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. We're arguing that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should be allowed to expire. $800 billion of that goes to people making a minimum of a million dollars. They're patriotic Americans; they're not asking for this continued tax cut; they're not suggesting it; but [the Republicans] are insisting on it. 120,000 families, by continuing that tax cut, will get an additional $500 billion in tax relief in the next 10 years, and their income is an average of $8 million. We want to extend permanently the middle-class tax cut. These guys won't allow us to. They're holding hostage the middle-class tax cut to the super wealthy.
RYAN: Our entire premise of these tax reform plans is to grow the economy and create jobs.
BIDEN: You think these guys are going to go out there and cut those loopholes? The biggest loophole they take advantage of is the carried interest loophole and capital gains loophole. They exempt that. The only way you can find $5 trillion in loopholes is cut the mortgage deduction for middle-class people, cut the health care deduction for middle-class people, take away their ability to get a tax break to send their kids to college. That's why they [won't provide specifics].
Q: Is he wrong about that?
RYAN: He is wrong about that. You can cut tax rates by 20% and still preserve these important preferences for middle-class taxpayers.
BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible. It's been done before.
BIDEN: It has never been done before.
With regard to Afghanistan, he said he will end the war in 2014. Governor Romney said, #1, we should not set a date, and #2, with regard to 2014, it depends.
When it came to Osama bin Laden, the president, the first day in office, he called in the CIA and signed an order saying, 'my highest priority is to get bin Laden.' Prior to Pres. Obama being sworn in, Governor Romney was asked a question about how he would proceed. He said, 'I wouldn't move heaven and earth to get bin Laden.' He didn't understand it was more than about taking a murderer off the battlefield; it was about restoring America's heart.
And lastly, the president has led with a steady hand and clear vision. Governor Romney, the opposite. The last thing we need now is another war.
RYAN: We cannot allow Iran to gain a nuclear weapons capability. This administration watered down sanctions, delayed sanctions, tried to stop us from putting the tough sanctions in place. Now we have them in place because of Congress.
BIDEN: Incredible. These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions, period. Look, imagine had we let the Republican Congress work out the sanctions. You think there's any possibility the entire world would have joined us, Russia and China, all of our allies? These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions, period, period. You're talking about doing more; are you going to go to war? Is that you want to do now?
RYAN: We want to prevent war!
BIDEN: We feel quite confident we could deal a serious blow to the Iranians. But #2, the Israelis and the US--our intelligence communities are absolutely the same exact place in terms of how close the Iranians are to getting a nuclear weapon. They are a good way away. When [Ryan] talks about fissile material, they have to take this highly enriched uranium, get it from 20% up. Then they have to be able to have something to put it in. There is no weapon that the Iranians have at this point. Both the Israelis and we know we'll know if they start the process of building a weapon. So all this bluster I keep hearing--Let's all calm down a little bit here. Iran is more isolated today than when we took office. It was on the ascendancy when we took office. It is totally isolated.
RYAN: We don't want to lose the gains we've gotten. We agree with the administration on their 2014 transition. And that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists.
BIDEN: Let's keep our eye on the ball. The fact is we went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans, al-Qaida. We've decimated al-Qaida central. We have eliminated Osama bin Laden. That was our purpose. And in fact, in the meantime, what we said we would do, we would help train the Afghan military. It's their responsibility to take over their own security. That's why, with 49 of our allies in Afghanistan, we've agreed on a gradual drawdown so we're out of there in the year 2014. [Ryan & Romney] say it's based on conditions, which means it depends. It does not depend for us. We are leaving in 2014, period.
BIDEN: It's a different country. It's a different country. It is five times as large geographically. It has 1/5 the population that is Libya. It's in a part of the world where you're not going to see whatever would come from that war. If it blows up and the wrong people gain control, it's going to have impact on the entire region, causing potentially regional wars. And all this loose talk of [Ryan and] Romney, about how we could do so much more there, what more would they do other than put American boots on the ground? The last thing America needs is to get into another ground war in the Middle East.
RYAN: Nobody is proposing to send American troops to Syria. But we would not be going through the UN.
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The above quotations are from 2012 Vice Presidential Debate Rep. Paul Ryan (R) vs. V.P. Joe Biden (D) Oct. 11, 2012. Click here for main summary page. Click here for a profile of Joe Biden. Click here for Joe Biden on all issues.
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