DURHAM, N.C. — Vice President Biden swiped at his challenger, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), on Monday, saying that while he is “a “good man,” the presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee has a “fundamentally flawed vision.”
Two days after presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney announced Ryan as his running mate, Biden cranked up his rhetoric, taking aim at the Republican congressman and his proposals.
"Congressman Ryan has given definition to the vague commitments that Romney’s been making," he said, making his first remarks since the Ryan announcement at a local armory before a crowd of approximately 900 people.
“His definition is — it's clear, Congressman Ryan and the congressional Republicans, as one person said, have already passed in the House what Gov. Romney is promising to give the whole nation,” Biden said. “And ladies and gentlemen, we know, we know for certain, what I’ve been saying for a long time, there is no distinction, let’s get this straight, there is no distinction between what the Republican Congress has been proposing the last two years, actually the last four years, and what Gov. Romney wants to do.”
“So let’s cut through all this," the vice president added. "We’re running against, or they are running on, what the Republican Congress has been promoting for the past four years."
Biden sought to portray no daylight between Romney’s policies and what Ryan has proposed. And a particularly pugnacious Biden also aimed to pour cold water on the tax plan trumpeted by Romney and Ryan.
“There is no distinction between what the Republican Congress has been proposing over the last two years” and what Romney is promoting, he said. “What’s gutsy about giving millionaires another tax break? What’s gutsy about gutting Medicare, Medicaid and education?”
Biden frequently referred to Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, during his address, at one point quoting from the congressman’s acceptance speech on Saturday, where he said he and Romney would “restore dreams and greatness.”
"What he didn't say, what he didn't say was that the very plans he voted for, what Romney has supported, put America's greatness at jeopardy. How do they think we got in this mess in the first place?
"As my little granddaughter would say, 'Was it Casper the Ghost who came along and did this?' Who did it?"
But Biden said Romney and Ryan would be like “the last administration on steroids."
For more on Biden's remarks, click here.
