Ryan Backs Biden on ‘Buried’ Middle Class
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(BURLINGTON, Iowa) — Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan found a rare point of agreement Tuesday with his Democratic opponent, after Vice President Joe Biden said earlier that the middle class has been “buried” over the last four years.
Ryan, on the last stop of his bus tour of the battleground state of Iowa, said he and presidential candidate Mitt Romney agree that middle-class Americans “are being buried by the Obama administration’s economic failures.”
“Vice President Biden just today said that the middle class over the last four years has been quote ‘buried’ — we agree,” Ryan said to a crowd in the parking lot of a campaign office. “That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next president of the United States. 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.”
Ryan continued, saying, “Help is on the way”
“You see, the Obama economic agenda failed not because it was stopped, it failed because it was passed,” Ryan said. “Let’s not forget that when the president came into office, he came into one-party rule. He had the ability and the chance to pass everything of his choosing and he did that. And now we’re suffering the consequences.”
At a campaign event in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Biden somewhat stepped on his campaign message when he said the middle class was “buried” over the last four years, the time in which President Obama has been in office.
“This is deadly earnest. How they can justify, how they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years, how in the Lord’s name can they justify raising their taxes. We’ve seen this movie before,” Biden said, while trying to accuse Mitt Romney and Ryan of raising taxes on the middle class.
The Romney campaign quickly jumped on the comment, circulating the video, and Romney even tweeted that he “agree(d)” with Biden.
Biden’s account tweeted that he was “clear” in his remarks that “Romney-Ryan would take us back to the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy.”
In front of several hundred people outside of a campaign office, Ryan praised those who work inside in this swing district, saying “human interaction” is how “we win elections,” and again urging those on board to talk to their neighbors who are still deciding.
“What we do talking person to person, this is how we win elections,” Ryan said, standing in front of the Romney-Ryan campaign bus. “Human interaction, the conversations we have to have with one another, that is how we save our country. This is how we do it. I’m sure each and every one of you can think off the top of your head somebody who thought the hope and change of 2008 sounded great. I’m sure you can think of somebody who voted for that who’s probably thinking twice right now.”
This was Ryan’s final event on a two-day bus tour through the state, the sixth he spent in the state as Romney’s running mate. Earlier Tuesday, he visited a coffeehouse that’s a must-stop on the presidential caucus circuit, urging voters at Elly’s Tea and Coffee House in Muscatine to vote for the GOP ticket.
Recent polls in Iowa find that Romney is lagging slightly behind the president. A Des Moines Register poll from last week had Obama with 49 percent of the vote to 45 percent for Romney.
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