VP Debate: Biden, Ryan at each other on everything

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Rep. Paul Ryan of Wis­con­sin shake hands after the vice pres­i­den­tial debate at Cen­tre Col­lege, Thurs­day, Oct. 11, 2012, in Danville, Ky. (AP Photo/Pool-Michael Reynolds)

DAVID ESPO, MATTHEW DALY

Asso­ci­ated Press

DANVILLE, Ky. — At odds early and often, Joe Biden and Repub­li­can Paul Ryan squab­bled over the econ­omy, taxes, Medicare and more Thurs­day night in a con­tentious, interruption-filled debate. “That is a bunch of malarkey,” the vice pres­i­dent retorted after a par­tic­u­larly tough Ryan attack on the administration’s for­eign policy.

“I know you’re under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground, but I think peo­ple would be bet­ter served if we don’t inter­rupt each other,” Ryan said later to his rival, refer­ring to Demo­c­ra­tic pres­sure on Biden to make up for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s list­less per­for­mance in last week’s debate with Mitt Romney.

There was noth­ing list­less this time as the 69-year-old Biden sat next to the 42-year old Wis­con­sin con­gress­man on a stage at Cen­tre Col­lege in Kentucky.

Ninety min­utes after the ini­tial dis­agree­ment over for­eign pol­icy, the two men clashed sharply over steps to reduce fed­eral deficits.

“The pres­i­dent likes to say he has a plan,” Ryan said, but in fact “he gave a speech” and never backed it up with details.

Biden con­ceded Repub­li­cans indeed have a plan, but he said if it were enacted, it would have “evis­cer­ated all the things the mid­dle class care about.”

The debate took place a lit­tle more than a week after Obama and Rom­ney met in the first of their three debates — an encounter that has fueled a Repub­li­can come­back in opin­ion polls.

With Democ­rats eager for Biden to show the spark the pres­i­dent lacked, he did so.

Unprompted, he brought up the video in which Rom­ney had said 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans pay no fed­eral income tax, view them­selves as vic­tims and do not take respon­si­bil­ity for their own lives.

“It’s about time they take respon­si­bil­ity” instead of sign­ing pledges to avoid rais­ing taxes, Biden said — of Rom­ney, Ryan and the Republicans.

The ser­ial dis­agree­ments started imme­di­ately after the smiles and hand­shakes of the opening.

Ryan said in the debate’s open­ing moments that U.S. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens had been denied suf­fi­cient secu­rity by admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials. Stevens died in a ter­ror­ist attack on the U.S. Con­sulate in Beng­hazi on Sept. 11.

“Not a sin­gle thing he said is accu­rate,” Demo­c­rat Biden shot back.

Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike have said in recent days the pres­i­den­tial race now approx­i­mates the com­pet­i­tive sit­u­a­tion in place before the two polit­i­cal con­ven­tions. The two men are gen­er­ally sep­a­rated by a point or two in national pub­lic opin­ion polls and in sev­eral bat­tle­ground states, with Obama hold­ing a slen­der lead in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Both the pres­i­dent and Rom­ney cam­paigned in bat­tle­ground states dur­ing the day before ced­ing the spot­light to their polit­i­cal part­ners for the evening.

In Ken­tucky, Biden and Ryan seemed primed for a show­down from their open­ing moments on stage, and nei­ther seemed will­ing to let the other have the final word. They inter­rupted each other repeat­edly — and mod­er­a­tor Martha Rad­datz of ABC as well.

With Democ­rats eager for Biden to show the spark the pres­i­dent lacked, he did so.

Unprompted, he brought up the video in which Rom­ney had said 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans pay no fed­eral income tax, view them­selves as vic­tims and do not take respon­si­bil­ity for their own lives.

“It’s about time they take respon­si­bil­ity” instead of sign­ing pledges to avoid rais­ing taxes, Biden said — of Rom­ney, Ryan and the Republicans.

But Ryan quickly turned to dreary eco­nomic sta­tis­tics — 23 mil­lion are strug­gling to work, he said, and 15 per­cent of the coun­try is liv­ing in poverty. “This is not what a real recov­ery looks like.”

Medicare was a flash­point, as well. Ryan said Obama’s health care plan had diverted $716 bil­lion from the pro­gram for seniors and cre­ated a new board that could deny care to patients who need it.

Democ­rats “haven’t put a cred­i­ble solu­tion on the table,” he said. “They’ll tell you about vouch­ers. They’ll say all these things to try to scare people.”

Biden quickly said that Ryan had authored not one but two pro­pos­als in which seniors would be given gov­ern­ment pay­ments that might not cover the entirety of their care. Oth­er­wise, he said, the Romney-Ryan approach wouldn’t achieve the sav­ings they claimed.

Unlike Obama, Biden had no qualms about launch­ing a per­sonal attack on Romney.

After Ryan argued that Romney’s plan would pay for reduced tax rates by elim­i­nat­ing tax loop­holes for the wealthy, Biden noted that on a recent inter­view on CBS’ “60 Min­utes,” Rom­ney defended the 14 per­cent tax rate he pays on his $20 mil­lion income as fair, even though it’s a lower rate than some lower income tax­pay­ers pay.

“You think these guys are going to go out there and cut those loop­holes,” Biden asked, address­ing the national TV audience.

Across 90 min­utes, the two men agreed pre­cisely once.

That was when Ryan, refer­ring to the war in Afghanistan, said the cal­en­dar was the same each year. Biden agreed to that, but not to the under­ly­ing point, which was that it was a mis­take for Obama to have announced a date for the with­drawal of the remain­der of the U.S. com­bat troops.

The fiercest clash over for­eign pol­icy came in the debate’s open­ing moments, when Ryan cited events across the Mid­dle East as well as Stevens’ death in Libya as evi­dence that the administration’s for­eign pol­icy was unrav­el­ing. The Repub­li­can also said the admin­is­tra­tion had failed to give Stevens the same level of pro­tec­tion as the U.S. ambas­sador in Paris receives.

Biden rebutted by say­ing that the bud­get that Ryan authored as chair­man of the House Bud­get Com­mit­tee had cut the administration’s fund­ing request for diplo­matic secu­rity by $300 million.

On the nation’s econ­omy, both men were asked directly when his side could reduce unem­ploy­ment to 6 per­cent from the cur­rent 7.8 per­cent. Both men sidestepped.

Biden repeated the president’s con­tention that the nation is mov­ing in the right direc­tion, while Ryan stated the Repub­li­can view that eco­nomic strug­gle per­sists even though Democ­rats had con­trol of both houses of Con­gress dur­ing the first two years of Obama’s term.

“Where are the 5 mil­lion green jobs” we were told would be cre­ated? Ryan said to Biden.

Obama cam­paigned in Florida dur­ing the day. Mock­ing recent changes in Romney’s rhetoric, he told a rally in Miami rally, “After run­ning for more than a year in which he called him­self severely con­ser­v­a­tive, Mitt Rom­ney is try­ing to con­vince you that he was severely kidding.”

Rom­ney vis­ited with 93-year-old Billy Gra­ham in North Car­olina before speak­ing to an evening rally in Asheville, N.C. “Prayer is the most help­ful thing you can do for me,” he told the evangelist.

For Biden, Thurs­day night’s debate was his first since the 2008 cam­paign, when he shared a stage with Sarah Palin, then John McCain’s run­ning mate.

Ryan spars fre­quently with Democ­rats dur­ing debates on leg­is­la­tion on the House floor and in the House Bud­get Com­mit­tee, which he chairs, but not in a one-on-one encounter cov­er­ing 90 min­utes and a vir­tu­ally unlim­ited range of topics.

For all their dif­fer­ences, the two men shared a com­mon objec­tive, to advance the cause of their tick­ets in a close race for the pres­i­dency — and avoid a gaffe that might for­ever seal their place in the his­tory of debates.

Romney’s choice of Ryan as run­ning mate over the sum­mer cheered con­ser­v­a­tives in the House, many of whom regard him as their leader on bud­get and eco­nomic issues. The seven-term law­maker has authored a pair of deficit-reducing bud­gets in the past two years that call for spend­ing cuts and changes in Medicare, blue­prints that Repub­li­cans passed through the House and Obama and his allies in Con­gress fre­quently crit­i­cize. He also cham­pi­ons a no-tax increase approach to eco­nomic policy.

As a sen­a­tor before becom­ing vice pres­i­dent, Biden was chair­man of the For­eign Rela­tions and Judi­ciary com­mit­tees, and he has long expe­ri­ence in national secu­rity issues. More recently, he was Obama’s point man in ardu­ous, ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful nego­ti­a­tions with Repub­li­cans on steps to cut the deficit.

Both Ryan and Biden held exten­sive rehearsals, with stand-ins for their opponents.

Biden turned to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is well-versed in Ryan’s pol­icy views from his tenure as senior Demo­c­rat on the Bud­get Committee.

Ryan’s foil in rehearsal was for­mer Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Ted Olson, a skill­ful court­room advocate.

Posted by AP News on Oct 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.