Vice President Joe Biden is no stranger to the occasional gaffe or two and on his latest gaffe is being used to fuel Republican Mitt Romney's campaign message.
At a campaign event in Charlotte, N.C., Biden said that the American middle class has "been buried for the last four years."
Here is the longer transcript of Biden's comments:
Look, guys, this is deadly earnest, man. This is deadly earnest! How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that's been buried the last four years? How in the Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts.
So look, folks, we've seen this movie before -- massive tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating restrictions on Wall Street, let the banks write their own rules. We know where it ends. It ends in the catastrophe of the middle class and the Great Recession of 2008. Folks, we cannot go back to that. The President and I have a different way forward.
Ahead of Wednesday's first presidential debate, Romeny's campaign quickly latched onto the comments saying that Biden basically admitted that President Barack Obama's policies have hurt the middle class.
Romney posted on Facebook that he thought Biden's comment was right on par:
I agree with Joe Biden, the middle class has been buried the last four years, which is why we need a change in November. http://mi.tt/SAAPNH
Politics
While speaking in Burlington, Iowa, RGOp Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan said he agreed with Biden's words:
"Vice President Biden just today said that the middle class over the last four years has been quote "buried' -- we agree! That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next President of the United States," Ryan told supporters.
"Of course the middle class has been buried. They are being buried by regulations, they are being buried by taxes…they are being buried by borrowing, they are being buried by the Obama Administration's economic failures. You see the Obama economic agenda failed not because it was stopped, it failed because it was passed."
The Obama campaign responded that the whole thing was taken out of context. Per spokeswoman Lis Smith:
"Another day, another desperate and out-of-context attack from the Romney campaign. As the Vice President has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy -- and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies. With more than five million private-sector jobs created since 2010, the Vice President and President Obama will continue to help the middle class recover and move the nation forward."
What do you think about Biden's comments?
