Posted on 09/04/2009 1:14:01 AM PDT by BradtotheBone
Vice President Joe Biden tried to blunt lingering skepticism of the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus plan Thursday.
“I believe this was the right thing to do morally,” Biden said in a speech the White House billed as a major address. “It was also the smart thing to do economically.”
Biden’s 35-minute speech included a look back at the state of the economy when President Barack Obama took office, a detailed defense of the stimulus package’s effectiveness in its second 100 days and a plea for patience as it continues to make more of an impact.
The vice president touched briefly on health care reform in his remarks — casting a modernized health care system as part of building a new economic foundation. But he was drawn into a debate beyond his talking points during the question-and-answer portion of the Brookings Institution event when he was asked to gauge the prospects of a bill reaching Obama’s desk.
“We’re going to get something substantial,” Biden predicted. “It’s going to be an awful lot of screaming and hollering before we get there.”
Without prodding, Biden also defended the likely narrow margin by which a health care bill would pass in Congress. “Every major change in health care,” he said, “passed by a couple votes.”
On the economy, Biden acknowledged that the stimulus bill had gotten off to a slow start. “The criticism was legitimate of me that we were moving too slowly,” he said.
But he promised the flow has picked up pace and challenged Republican criticism of the cost of the package, saying GOP lawmakers are responsible for more than a third of it by insisting on $288 billion in tax cuts.
He went further on the attack as he broke the stimulus bill down into three parts. The first one, he said, was designed to “bring relief to those who are falling into the abyss.”
“Now, my Republican critics think maybe we shouldn’t do that,” Biden said. “Maybe that’s the difference between being a Democrat and a Republican."
The other facets of the stimulus package involve investing in infrastructure and getting money to states, which face large budget deficits.
But Biden’s focus on money that’s been pumped into state governments was also met with criticism.
The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy issued a release to reporters following the speech blasting Biden for being “unable to describe how the recovery act is benefiting the most important indicator of economic recovery: the nation’s cities.”
“He even expressed regret that Congress wrote legislation that benefited states, rather than local governments,” the release said.
Biden’s speech ranged from broad-brush assessments and predictions — “We will emerge from this great recession” — to making the case in painstaking detail.
“Next month we’re going to release our initial payments, down payments on the new smart grid, a new superhighway of connectivity that will allow reliable transmission of renewable energy,” Biden said, “allow consumers to have real information in real time about how they're consuming their energy, allow them to adjust the ability to decide to turn their dishwasher on at 11 o’clock automatically.”
Through other initiatives, rural hospitals will also be able to practice “telemedicine,” he said, and ranchers can sell their cattle on the Web at online auctions.
Biden credited the stimulus bill as the reason why the country is talking about getting out of a recession, rather than facing a depression. The bill alone did not spark a turnaround, he said, but “without it we’d be in much deeper trouble.”
“Remember,” he said, “we’re at the nine-mile mark of this marathon.”
STFU about morality, Joe. You wouldn’t know morality if it bit you.
Biden is as stupid as Zero is evil.
Doncha love it when these charlatans talk about morality and religion? They wouldn’t know either if hit over the head with them.
It is never moral to take money from producers and hand it over to parasites. Never.
Theft is never moral.
Well let's see, Joe. A marathon is 26 miles long. That means the "nine-mile mark " is 34.6% of the marathon. Is that what you meant to say, Joe? That hey, we're 34.6% there, folks, so let's keep going?
Well that's inspirational!
Or did you say it because you think a marathon is 10 miles long, and you figger you've gone 90% of the distance because the vote is coming up, and so that's your inspirational exhortation?
Either way Joe, once again, you're a putz.
I couldn’t read anymore of this once I read Biden mention morality.
They think morality is taking money from people who have earned it and giving to people that haven’t. That’s not morality, that’s just evil and it breeds more of the same continuously.
So shut up Joe and go back to playing tiddly winks.
There is no doubt that Joe Biden's moral stature has no problem at all with stealing a trillion dollars from the American taxpaying public, their children, and childrens' children and stuffing his and the pockets of every one of his and the RAT party's traitorous crooks pals pockets.
How the heck does using even more electricity to turn on a dishwasher automatically, and leaving it to run unattended, (possibly flooding the whole house should it malfunction)save electricity? And thinking that America will be powered by stupid windmills and solar panels is just plain stupidity.
At least it will reduce the risk of flooding your house when that dishwasher on a timer fails to turn on because the wind doesn't blow that day, or the clouds block the sun causing retarded solar panels to fail.
I said it first during the Clarence Thomas hearings when Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I’ll say it again: “Biden is a complete and utter moron.”
Morality my arse, Biden.
Personally, the moral thing would be to have you, Barry, and his band of crazy czars removed, now.
I always thought Biden was an evil moron and this just confirms it. No liberal yet has explained to my satisfaction how taking $787,000,000,000 from the pockets of the taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of various parasites, poorly run businesses, and other inefficient producers of unwanted things is going to stimulate the economy. The losers will get the billions to spend, but the producers will no longer have the money to spend. add in the government inefficiency overhead and it's a net loss to the economy. So for every dollar the losers get from the government to spend, the producers will not spend over a dollar.
This must be a corollary of being taxed into prosperity.
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