WASHINGTON (PAI)-Congress’ ruling Republicans ‰ÛÓ and the entire party behind them ‰ÛÒ have abandoned the U.S. middle class and its values, Vice President Joe Biden says.
Speaking Sept. 8 to a Center for American Progress symposium, the Democratic vice president particularly hit the Republicans for absolute opposition to measures in 2009 to pull the U.S. out of the Great Recession. The slump, also called the Bush Crash, began in 2008.
Unions strongly supported those measures, including the $787 billion stimulus law, which Biden’s boss, Democratic President Barack Obama, pushed through Capitol Hill on party-line votes. But Obama had to compromise, by including more business tax cuts, to overcome a Senate GOP-led filibuster. And labor felt the stimulus should have been double.
Analysts said Biden’s speech both touted administration economic accomplishments for the middle class and revved up enthusiasm for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama’s former Secretary of State, who is running to succeed him.
It also comes when unions are trying to convince their members to back Clinton and not her GOP foe, anti-worker millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump.
An internal AFL-CIO poll, released to The Hill, an “insider” publication, the day before, shows 36 percent of unionists in key swing states such as Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania back Trump. That’s down from 41 percent in June. Unions, who formally endorsed Clinton, expect that number to decline further. In 2012, 38 percent backed GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
“Look, our Republican friends, they’re not bad guys,” Biden explained in his talk. “I’m one of those Democrats who actually likes a lot of them. They say they’re for growing the middle class, but they have a different value-set than we do. They reject middle-class values, which are the distinguishing feature of our democracy.”
The outcome and perception of the stimulus law tested those values, Biden admitted. That’s because the Obama administration did not do a good job of touting its benefits to workers and the middle class.
Meanwhile, looking back on his 36 years as a U.S. senator from Delaware, Biden said more in sorrow than in anger that “this is not your father’s Republican Party” willing to work on bipartisan solutions for the country’s problems.
In particular, Biden criticized the Republicans, as he has before, for deciding to let the Detroit-based auto firms die when they ran into big financial trouble due to the recession.
Congressional Republicans said then the U.S. had enough auto capacity - in the antiunion “transplant” auto plants in the South. An unspoken subtext of their campaign was to kill not just the Detroit 3 car companies, but the United Auto Workers, too.
“Republicans accepted that the U.S. auto industry was going to wither,” he said. “Auto workers made incredible sacrifices to make that recovery work. These are middle-class jobs. You can raise a family on these jobs. There’s nothing you can give an individual or family more than piece of mind,” he explained.
Though Biden did not say so, the GOP - and particularly its radical right Tea Partyites capitalized on anger against what it called the stimulus law’s “bailouts” of banks and the auto industry and against the Affordable Care Act, to take over control in the 2010 elections.
But Biden didn’t confine his criticism of the Republicans to anti-recession measures. Instead he reminded the audience that as Budget Committee Chairman, current House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., led a GOP crusade against bedrock programs.
“They want to privatize Social Security. Cut Social Security. They voucherize Medicare. What does that do? Lower the standard of living for middle-income people.” And while Republicans don’t oppose women in the workforce, “they oppose fair pay legislation.
“They’re not bad guys, but they don’t understand. They don’t understand how extraordinary ordinary Americans are and what their value-set is.”
“I love my Republican friends when they start talking about they’re for productivity. We should invest in a larger tax credit for child care across the board. What do these guys say? No. But they continue to keep tax credits in the (tax) code that have no relevance to growth.”
After Biden’s keynote address, the CAP symposium broke into closed-door workshops on jobs and the economy. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler participated in those sessions, but had no prepared remarks.
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