Joe Biden was working the phones on the eve of a major John McCain effort in Wisconsin. With McCain hitting the trail here today and Friday, the Obama campaign makes V.P. candidate Biden available, and he says their ticket will be better for hard pressed middle class families. "People talk about things Barack and I want to do, relative to the middle class, as somehow extravagant," Biden claimed, but asked "when have we ever grown the economy, when the middle class is shrinking?"
Will Barack Obama really will go through the federal budget "with a fine tooth comb," to eliminate waste? "The answer is yes," insists Biden. "And if you wonder whether or not two Democrats can do that, look back at what happened during the Clinton years."
He also says McCain's proposal to freeze most government spending would do little to help the middle class. "John wants to freeze everything that affects the middle class, and the working poor, but he doesn't freeze anything that helps the very wealthy and corporate America. I mean, this is the same old malarkey."
Asked what sort of sacrifices Americans might have to make because of the financial crisis and the recession — a question which neither candidate addressed with any specificity during Tuesday night's second presidential debate — Biden said sacrifice will have to made by "those of us who have the most," while acknowledging that transitions in energy and transportation will be challenging.
Joe Biden was less equivocal, in stating what got us into our economic crisis: the economic policies of the Bush administration. "It's an economic philosophy that says what we're going to do is have massive tax cuts for the very wealthiest . . . we are going to deregulate everything on the grounds that the free market will make it work, and look at where it got us. There's no doubt what got us here, generically, anyway."
Biden gave an interview Wednesday, as John McCain prepared for two days of Wisconsin campaign stops in Waukesha, Mosinee and La Crosse. Efforts to get an interview with GOP V-P candidate Sarah Palin did not pan out.